Eight 1992 one-hit wonders that are all that and a bag of chips

These artists may not have come back on the charts, but they never left our playlists.

1992 was thirty years ago. We'll let that sink in for a minute. 

The era of early internet and slap bracelets brought us such mega-stars like Nirvana, Green Day and Dr. Dre. However, we want to take a look at some of the hits from three decades ago that may not have such sticking power. When you were playing on your SNES, you may have been rocking out to one of these songs - and thought it was totally da bomb.

We're looking at the US Hot 100 chart - international charts and genre charts don't count!

1. Right Said Fred - "I'm Too Sexy"

 

We start our list with arguably one of the most well-known one-hit wonders ever. Even if you didn't grow up in the '90s, you probably have the song stuck in your head just from reading the title. This fun, campy song about being "so sexy it hurts" charted internationally and is still used today in tributes, parodies, and remixes - and even earned the band a cowriting credit on Taylor Swift's "Look What You Made Me Do". While they never had another chart-topper in the US, Right Said Fred has enjoyed ongoing popularity in Europe and is still creating music to this day, with their most recent studio album, Exactly!, being released in 2017.

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2. Joe Public - "Live and Learn"

 

Joe Public was part of the new jack swing genre that gained popularity in the late '80s and early '90s. The hip-hop, dance pop and R&B fusion had everyone grooving, and nowhere was that more clear than with "Live and Learn". Their follow-up album, aptly titled Easy Come, Easy Go didn't acheive the same success.

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3. House of Pain - "Jump Around"

 

Jump around! Jump around! Jump up, jump up, and get down! This hip-hop song is still a crowd-pleasing favorite in party playlists. Off House of Pain's self-titled first album, the music video has become a time capsule of a New York City St. Patrick's Day parade in 1992. After two more albums, the group broke up in 1996. However, they reunited 14 years later in 2010 for a reunion tour, as well as a 25th anniversary tour in 2017.

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4. Tom Cochrane - "Life is a Highway"

 

Is there a song that's appeared on as many road trip playlists as this one? Tom Cochrane's song about cruising down the highway of life was not only a massive hit when it was first released, but a 2006 Rascal Flatts cover recorded for the Pixar movie Cars hit the top 100 again! Now that's staying power. While Cochrane never had another chart-topper as a solo artist in the US, don't feel too bad for him - he's enjoyed a long and very successful career in his home country of Canada, where he is a member of both the Canadian Music Hall of Fame and the Canadian Walk of Fame.

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5. Saigon Kick - "Love Is On The Way"

 

You really thought we'd get through this list without a power ballad? Listening to this song now brings back the feeling of pining over a certain someone while listening to our portable CD player and drinking a Crystal Pepsi. An unlikely slow song from a glam metal band, this hit came off the band's second album and quickly became the voice of the hopeless romantics. The band broke up in the year 2000, but reunited in 2012 to play a string of concerts.

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6. KWS - "Please Don't Go"

 

Okay, so this one was a cover of a 1979 song by KC and the Sunshine Band. However, the funky electric beats of this version had it dancing to the top of the charts over a decade after the original. KWS, named after the initials of all the band members' names, only released one studio album. They had a few more hits in the UK, where they were from, but in America, "Please Don't Go" was all we heard from them.

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7. Wreckx-n-Effect - "Rump Shaker"

 

Another new jack swing group, this bass-heavy track is made for dancing to. While the group had more hits on the US rap charts, they never quite climbed into the top 100 like they did with "Rump Shaker". There has been speculation that M.I.A.'s 2008 mega-hit "Paper Planes" drew inspiration from the chorus of this song, but it's never been confirmed. What do you think? All I wanna do is zoom-zoom-zoom-zoom and a boom-boom...

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8. Sir Mix-a-Lot - "Baby Got Back"

 

We had to close this list with another one-hit super-smash. In a 1992 interview, Sir Mix-a-Lot said that this song was inspired after seeing a Budweiser commercial that featured very thin models. He saw it as a way to push back for women who were harming themselves trying to live up to an unrealistic, "beanpole", model of beauty. It clearly struck a chord and to this day the song and its creator are known worldwide. It was sampled in Nicki Minaj's 2014 hit "Anaconda", Sir Mix-a-Lot appeared as himself in the acclaimed series Bojack Horseman, and in 2019 he even became a spokesperson for Cards Against Humanity.

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63 Comments

Threnody 4 months ago
Jump Around by House of Pain appears in several of my memories from this time period but I really was amazed to realize that Everlast was actually in House of Pain because his solo stuff was much more appealing to me. You remember "What It's Like" don't you? Yeah, same guy who was 'Jumpin' Around' previously. Quite a change - and for the better if you ask me. And even if you don't. 😄
JDnHuntsvilleAL 27 months ago
Except for snippets of "I'm so sexy", I have never heard of any of these songs, and based on the comments below, it's obvious the MeTV Millennials running this web site are WAY OUT OF TOUCH with reality. They DEFINITELY need to stop saying crap like "...had EVERYONE grooving..."
anthony 32 months ago
Only heard of the first one and I think it was in a commercial. Most music I heard of in the last 30 years is from a commercial, wedding or a movie soundtrack.
NYRY11 32 months ago
Tom Cochran and red rider also had a MTV hit with Lunatic Fringe. Forgot when year
JamesB 32 months ago
I listened to new music daily in the 90's and must've avoided crap-pop radio or music videos to miss most of these! I know Right Said Fred (as a joke) and Sir Mixalot from another joke on a "Friends" episode. Overall, I don't think 1992 was a great year for music!
KellyTenace 32 months ago
Based on many of the comments here, I might be led to believe that I must be either way younger or way older than everyone else here, but I'm not that old or that young so that seems unlikely. So I'm not sure how anyone between about 30 and 60 could possibly not be aware of most of these and, for that matter, liked at least a few of them. At the very least, the Tom Cochrane and Sir Mix-a-Lot tracks are classics and, frankly, very good representatives of their respective genres.
Well I listened to them (or at least parts of them) now and find it quite easy to understand why nobody likes them.
JimmyD 32 months ago
Heard a couple of these on the radio, but they're all pretty much garbage.
KellyTenace JimmyD 32 months ago
Disagree, boomer.
And I disagree with you, Millennial.
Sooner 32 months ago
You lost me with these songs. The 90s is when I gave up on radio music. Even the Doctor of Rock, a younger guy, will tell you that music went in the dumpster after the 80s.
Rick 32 months ago
Sir Mix-a-Lot never had another hit!?

I'm not a big hip-hop guy, but both that song and his name are well known to me.
mdit21 32 months ago
My playlists contain much different music.


[Remembering Florence Ballard today 2/22/22]
AnnaRentzVandenhazel 32 months ago
4. Life is a Highway was recorded THREE times. As this article says, Tom Cochrane was the original artist, and Rascal Flatts was made famous by the Cars movie. Apparently the author of this story doesn't follow country music very well, it was also recorded in 1998 by Chris LeDoux. In 2010 I played my newly-purchased Chris LeDoux CD with the latter version for my son and his friend to see what they thought of it, and both boys blurted out accusingly, "That's not Rascal Flatts!"
denny AnnaRentzVandenhazel 32 months ago
Ledoux>Rascal Flatts

I liked Chris, can't stand Flatts.
Zip 32 months ago
Honestly, when I first heard "I'm too sexy" on the radio that we listened to at work, when I worked at the meat department of a local grocery store, I thought it was some lame song that the dj's on the radio had come up with. I couldn't believe it was an actual song by an actual musical group.

Not that it didn't grow on me.
AnnaRentzVandenhazel Zip 32 months ago
My husband detests that song to this day (I don't mind it but won't "kill" to hear it again), probably because his younger brother who was staying with us at the time played it to death. Anyway, when he heard the name of the group, Right Said Fred, ever-after he referred to them as "Drop Dead Fred" (the name of a movie that had come out a few years earlier about an imaginary friend come to life and causing trouble).
Zip AnnaRentzVandenhazel 32 months ago
Good name for them.

Yes, I remember Drop Dead, Fred. With Rik Mayhall(sp?) of The Young Ones.
Catman 32 months ago
In 1992 I was trying to defend the nation from this kind of music.
OK, just kidding.
Lighten up, kids.
Honestly, with the exception of "too sexy" I never heard any of these groups.
Musta been out of the country or something.
daDoctah 32 months ago
They left out one with a rock-solid television connection: "How Do You Talk to An Angel?" by the Heights. Also the theme song to the TV series "The Heights", the song was a Billboard Number One hit single but the show itself was cancelled after only 13 weeks.
Zip daDoctah 32 months ago
Don't remember "The Heights", but I do remember the singer of that song, mostly because he played on a bunch of episodes of Beverly Hills, 90210, which I did used to watch.
denny daDoctah 32 months ago
That's a good song.
.
mkedave 32 months ago
"Jump Around". Start of the 4th quarter, every Wisconsin Badger home game at Camp Randall Stadium.
MrsPhilHarris 32 months ago
Btw I ate half a bag of chips while reading the article and comments.
MrsPhilHarris 32 months ago
Love Life Is A Highway. From Mozambique to those Memphis nights the Khyber Pass to Vancouver’s lights…


SienaJackson 32 months ago
I love all but a couple. I didn’t care for “Rump Shaker”, “Jump Around” or “Live and Learn” but the rest are great.
I have a funny story about "Rump Shaker". I saw the video on MTV and thankfully it was harmless despite that title. Whenever you hear a saxophone solo, you see a girl in a bikini standing in the ocean playing said instrument. My husband was watching something else a few days later, and our 3-year-old son accidently changed the channel. I was in another room and heard that familiar sax solo, and joked "he wanted to see that girl in a bikini playing the saxophone!" My husband had never seen the video so he was dumbfounded that I knew what was on the screen - "how did you know?"
A few years ago my brother-in-law was watching a rerun of Gilligan's Island and sang along with the opening lyrics. My niece remarked, "Gee Dad, you learned them really fast."
KawiVulc 32 months ago
The eighties... where music went to die..... by '92 it was over.
KawiVulc 32 months ago
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anthony KawiVulc 32 months ago
There was still a lot of good music in the 80's. Not as much as the 70's or 60's. But your right the late 80's was the beginning of the end.
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