This is the first installment of a five-part series this week documenting songs by “no-hit wonders.” Although these artists may have had cult followings and minor success on some of the “genre” charts, they didn’t even register enough mainstream success to really qualify as “one-hit wonders.” The tracks featured in this series reached the ears of TWTR podcast host Brian Kelley one way or another, and the objective of these posts is to hopefully focus some attention on some great songs that didn’t get the notoriety they likely deserved.
It was some time in 2004 or 2005, and I was driving on the New Jersey Turnpike on my way to a weekend sports writing gig I had back then. I was listening to my favorite radio station, 88.5 FM WXPN, and the on-air person announced the next song was from a Brooklyn-based band called Pitty Sing. The song they played was “Radio” and it didn’t take long to check all the right boxes on my checklist of musical preferences. Arena rock drum intro…check. Driving, distorted guitar riff…check. Synths…check. 80s pop/rock sensibilities…check. Catchy chorus…check.
I reached for a pen and a scrap of paper and wrote down the name of the band and the song title so I could quickly find and download it from iTunes when I was back at my computer.
Unfortunately, as this In Music We Trust article from 2005 points out, the marketing for “Radio” was somewhat mishandled and this great dance-pop/rock song never really went anywhere–aside from apparently being pre-loaded into Creative Zen, Microsoft Zune and other MP3 players.
Amazingly, there are many similarities in sound and style to The Killers, whose mega-successful Hot Fuss was released around the same time as Pitty Sing’s self-titled album, so you would think a wide audience was primed for that type of sound. Yet, The Killers became international stars while Pitty Sing faded into oblivion.
Pitty Sing’s leader, Paul Holmes, went on to form another short-lived band called Paul and the Patients. Today, he calls himself an “artist, composer and producer working in NYC and L.A.” and can be found on SoundCloud.
As a YouTube comment under the video notes: “In a just universe, this would have been a monster hit.”
Tandem With The Random 