We’re back! We’ve finally up and moved to this nice new home on WordPress. I know some of you will miss the old Geocities site with its unique, ahem, charm, but this is really a much better place for us to keep you up to speed on the ever-growing list of one-hit wonders out there in rock and pop music. To celebrate our new digs, we thought we’d give you a writeup on one of my personal favorite artists, the mysterious Valerie Hayes.
Better known by her stage name Hei.se, Valerie Hayes was one of the biggest one-hit wonders of the mid-80s. Her single hit “Drink Me” was a phenomenon in 1986, its dark and gritty tone a stark alternative to the hair metal and electro-pop flooding the charts at the time.
The chorus, with its repeated refrain of ‘Drink me, drink me, darling let’s get kinky,’ comes off as pure pop nonsense at the first listen, but an undeniable poetry eventually emerges in its repetition and variation – ‘baby wants her binky’ emerging as the shout-along line at live performances.
Somehow, Hayes seems a precursor both to the Nirvana-style alienation of the early 90s and the shock-rock tactics of Marilyn Manson a decade later. She presented herself as a goth bubblegum witch, and hinted at true connections to darker powers. Really, her vampire theatrics and feminist overtones wouldn’t be out of place on a concert stage today.
Whether Valerie Hayes was ahead of her time or past it (after all, these sort of tricks go back to Alice Cooper in the 70s and Screamin’ Jay Hawkins in the 50s), she did have her moment. Sadly, ‘Drink Me’ was the sole song Hayes was able to push forward into mainstream acceptance. No other singles from her album Darkness in the Blood charted, and her sophomore effort Pu**y Envy was deemed un-releasable by her label.
Now our standard practice at onehitwonderz is always to provide an update on where the artist is today. Unfortunately, despite a pretty diligent search, we were unable to locate Valerie Hayes. Perhaps she worked a magic trick with her dark powers, because she certainly has managed to disappear.
‘Drink Me’ was all we really got from Ms. Hayes, better known to her public as Hei.se, but perhaps that’s for the best. She achieved her own special sort of fame, as part of the potent, sad crew of one-hit wonders scattered throughout rock and pop history. Hell, that’s more than most of us get.
