'80s One-Hit Wonders 2

Like meteorites they came out of nowhere, to illuminate our skies with bursts of pop magic and then flare out, just as quickly as they'd appeared. And for some reason there was a shower of them in the '80s, hence this second batch, featuring "Suddenly" — the tune forever associated with Scott and Charlene's wedding on Neighbours — by Rose Tattoo frontman Angry Anderson, Belouis Some's seriously kinky "Imagination", and Spagna's "Call Me". There are some big names among the one-hit footnotes in Next Steps.

The very concept of the one-hit wonder seems to rely on flash-in-the-pan artists, but that's not always the case — take the Traveling Wilburys ("Handle With Care"), a supergroup made up of Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, Roy Orbison, Jeff Lynne, and George Harrison; or Graham Bonnet, the former Rainbow vocalist who scored briefly with "Night Games". But those are the exceptions. Department S fizzed briefly with the excellent "Is Vic There?" and Classix Nouveaux slowly dissolved after "Is It a Dream". Keep groovin' while the pan flashes . . . deep house features in our one-hit Deep Cuts.

Among our wonderful, one-hit Deep Cuts, you'll find "That's the Way Love Is" by Ten City, pioneers of Chicago Deep House featuring producer Marshall Jefferson, and Canada's Trans-X, whose crisp "Living On Video" (1981) did a great deal to forge the future shape of pop electronica. Prince protegée Sheila E was known as a solo artist in the UK for little more than "The Belle of St. Mark" and Tone-Loc put the cowbell into disposable hip-hop with "Funky Cold Medina".

The musical landscape of the '80s was painted by artists both major and minor, and the one-hit wonders are as much a part of the canvas as anyone. Significantly, this was the first generation to come of age alongside burgeoning music television, so many of these songs — from "Bette Davis Eyes" by Kim Carnes to the sports-clip compilation used on "Let It All Blow" by the Dazz Band — were vividly and inexorably married to wonderfully creative videos. It was a time when the world was changing with breathless speed, and the music remains as fresh and vital as ever, a vital retro force in the 21st century . . . just go shopping for clothes in any major city, and you'll invariably find your ears filled with many of these tunes.