One Hit Wonders: Head East

Ever wonder what happened? Didn't think so.

Everybody has heard of one hit wonders. Bands that surface with a single, catchy tune, and then sort of fade out.

Largely an artifact of the AOR¹ genre, many bands were signed by A&R deals based on the strength of a single tune, often an audience pleaser, and then they struggled to capture that lightning in the bottle again. Many of them have two or three albums before returning to obscurity and their regional touring among their early fans.

Today, we have the band Head East. In 1975, they released an album that is utterly forgettable except for their breakout song, “Never Been Any Reason”. If you grew up listening to rock radio in the 80’s you almost certainly heard this song, but never anything else.

If like me, you might have even bought a used copy of their album because of it, only to play it once and then never remove it from its sleeve ever again.

But oh, what a song.

Enjoy this earworm:

1. Album Oriented Rock, the catch-all for many mainstream rock groups from the 1970 and early 1980’s

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