Every month on the Positive Cynicism podcast, my friend @mikedekalb and I examine the career of a one hit wonder in a segment entitled Wonder Why.  The song is selected by listeners in a Twitter poll of three choices.  We've been doing this since January of 2018 and the first six editions were pleasant surprises. We got to discover bands that we hadn't really listened to before and for the most part the general consensus was we had missed out on some really good music. Then came the July edition.

The selection for this month is "In the Summertime" by Mungo Jerry.  I did not know this song by name. After listening to it, it was vaguely familiar and I was curious to hear more from Mungo Jerry. I was in for a surprise. Click on the podcast link in the first paragraph to listen to our conversation about this "band" and why we think they were destined to not have any other hits.

One of the thoughts I had coming out of the conversation was, given the success of a song called "In the Summertime" during the summer, how many summer songs belong to one hit wonders? I tried to do some research but couldn't find any good information. Maybe next summer, we'll have a team of research monkeys who can help track down that information.

Related to the aspect of hit summer songs, another interesting aspect of reviewing one hit wonders is to see how many of the songs or artists are timestamps of the era in which they became popular. Certain bands or performers are such a product of the time they became popular that it's hard to imagine them evolving to keep up with musical tastes.

Be sure to vote for the August edition before August 6.

We're dubbing the August edition of #WonderWhy the #LilithFair edition. Which #90s Female One Hit Wonder do you want to know more about?

— Chad Smart, Positive Cynicism Podcast Host (@chadsmart) July 31, 2018