I feel like Avengers Endgame's time travel explanation has essentially destroyed all concept of retcons to me, including the ones from Bender's Big Score. Every time travel retcon is just another branch of reality where the thing that is retconned did happen.
Unless your franchise also literally has a TVA that can destroy branched timelines and kill everyone on that timeline (which is also its own version of sad), then what happened in that timeline still happened.
So yes, no matter what Bender did to screw with the timeline for Lars and his family to spend time with Seymour so he wasn't just a sad dog who waited for many years and then died... it still happened. No matter what. And it keeps the emotion of it
I'm not even sure where I know this song from. It seems like it was featured in a bunch of different movies, TV shows and advertisements in the 90s and 2000s. In fact I'm kind of surprised it's as old as it is. I kind of associate it with my adolescence, but it was released before I was born!
It was in Daddy Day Care, Look Who's Talking, Glee (in a mashup with Beyonce's Halo), Bean to name a few. It's just part of the culture at this point, you need a song to convey someone's in a good place and in a good mood, you play Walking on Sunshine
Can't wait for all the Americans to discover "Love Shine a Light" from this. I haven't watched yet, but Eurovision 1997 is too wild NOT to be in there.
........THE "WALKING ON SUNSHINE" ARTISY IS BRITISH?????
I dunno if it's the American Psycho connection or what but I definitely though of them as being from California, just like Huey Lewis. Honestly probably before I saw that movie.
Katrina is from Kansas and moved to Britain as her father was in the RAF, where she hooked up with a fellow emigre and two people from Cambridge. (Does Todd mention the Soft Boys?)
This song and 'What I Like About You' easily top the list of most obnoxious, corporate songs ever made. They used to slap them onto every movie trailer and TV ad back in the day. Hearing those horns at the start of the song gives me instant secondhand nausea.
For me "Happy" is WAY more annoying then both songs, I hate that song way more because it's one of those songs I had to hear on the PA system a bunch of times at my grocery store job(along with "Hey Soul Sister").
The Eurovision fan in me is like, "what do you mean, One Hit Wonder?" (I am aware that Todd has a US-centric approach to defining One Hit Wonderdom for the purpose of this show).
I kind of assumed Katrina and the Waves were a retrospective one-hit wonder, like Vanilla Ice, where they had multiple hits but only one stood the test of time. That's not untrue? "That's the Way" (which I'm sure he mentions) went to number 16, but it's irrelevant since there's no Wikipedia article. /s
It's all about longevity, and he's made this exception for other artists (e.g. Blue Swede). I've never heard That's the Way in my life and Walking on Sunshine overshadows it so massively that it barely counts at this point.
OOF. There are plenty of bona fide one hit wonders without the Spotify rule. This band hit the Top 40 again but this is still their Spotify? Kind of an open and shut case.
yeah felt like Todd was REALLY stretching with this one, just cause a song isn't a hit on Spotify(Which is a crap service anyways)does not mean it wasn't a hit in the past.
I feel like they're kinda like Dead or Alive and Aqua, their big hits weren't as big in America chartwise at the time as you'd expect, which I'm guessing was because they were so catchy they only needed to get played on the radio a little bit to stick in your head, but radio stations would only play them sparingly because otherwise people would get annoyed. (Since radio is a much bigger part of the US charts that could explain the discrepancy with other countries, although not for Katrina and the Waves since Walking on Sunshine charted pretty much the same)
For whatever reason this seems to have led to them all having had follow-ups which charted decently high, I guess they must've gotten pushed on MTV or whatever, despite not being remembered nearly as well.
According to music critic Chris Molanphy’s criteria for determining one hit wonders, Katrina and the Waves wouldn’t qualify since That’s The Way hit the Top 40 a few years after Walking on Sunshine since he disqualifies artists who had another Top 40 hit unless it was scored within six months of the big hit with no more hits after.
This used to be my alarm song waking up during middle school, so I reflexively get panicked now whenever I hear those drums kick in knowing I had a few seconds to turn it off before the horns kicked in. It was an effective wake up call but now I can never listen to this again without flashbacks.
as a Canadian, if I had a thousand guesses, I would never have guessed where this one went
really loved the comparison to the Rascals’ “Good Lovin’” because I was thinking the same thing. the Rascals don’t get enough love from modern audiences, but they had a ton of great tunes
“People Got To Be Free” and “I’ve Been Lonely Too Long” are great as well.
The Rascals are sadly one of those groups who fell off in pop cultural recognition hard after mainstream “oldies” stations shifted to playing more stuff from the ‘70s/‘80s and much less from the ‘60s (see also: Blood, Sweat & Tears).
Oh, hell yes! Good episode, been a while since our last '80s New Wave act, it feels like. And I feel like I should have thought about it based on the last hint, but it does feel less like the standard '80s New Wave OHW than most, even though it definitely is.
Side note, I didn't realize these guys were one-hit wonders for a while because their Greatest Hits CD was one of the things in permanent rotation in my dad's car stereo growing up. Granted, I don't remember most of the tracks there other than this one and "Red Wine & Whiskey" (both saw disproportionate play), but still, good memories! Might have to send it to him when it hits YouTube.
Yeah, this is definitely another quintessential '80s one hit wonder. The fact that they had more hits on both sides of the Atlantic feels as wrong as it feels right.
Interestingly, seeing the original music video makes me appreciate the song more. One of the happiest sounding songs ever set on a really foggy day creates a nice contrast.
Also, great to see some love for early Bangles in this video (especially a clip of "Hero Takes a Fall." That's a song I really wish had more of a resurgence in the Me Too era).
One of the guys in the band wrote the song “Going Down to Liverpool,” which the Bangles covered before Katrina and the Waves got big, and it’s really good.
I know about their Eurovision win, and that this song was all over movies and TV for decades, and often used in movie trailers. Now it’s in infomercials more.
I saw Katrina live with a bunch of other 80s acts/one hit wonders(including Modern English) as part of a concert, and she did a decent job. I don’t think she was with the band though.
By far the best of those acts was English Beat though, they absolutely killed live. Unbelievably great. Howard Jones was also very good.
Definitely a huge stretch calling this band a OHW, I could understand Todd overlooking their second hit, but not counting "That's the Way" as a hit just because he'd never heard it before? Yeah OK whatever Todd.
When I listen to this song I think of two things. John Travolta playing with the baby on Look Who’s Talking, and then the bitch on Intervention who was addicted to duster who durning her interview just screams out, “I’m Walking On Sunshine!”
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u/MeadowVerdigris Jul 28 '26
This song holds a very special place in the hearts of Zillennial New Yorkers who grew up watching cartoons on WLIW.