It’s time to play the game again, this is where I dig up a bunch of different songs with the same title and see which one I like the best. I don’t keep an index of these, if you’re curious what I’ve done before just head over to the category on the right and it’ll show you my other posts.

Today I’m doing one that I was going to do awhile back, but instead I got sidetracked and decided to write about an album instead. It’s time to talk about “that one song,” ever famous in music conversation but no one really knows what one song it is. After all this time we can finally answer the question – yes, I know that one song.

A whole bunch of artists have songs called One. I’ve chosen six from artists I know and/or respect. Spoiler alert – I did not choose Creed. Also spoiler alert – if you think you know which one I’m going to pick as the winner, well, you’d be right, this one is obvious as obvious gets. This one is a bit bigger than normal so let’s have at it.

Alanis Morissette

I was very, VERY into Alanis when she burst on the scene, she had quite an effect on 17 year old boys. But I quickly moved on to other territory and haven’t really kept up with Alanis that much since her big break. This is from the 1998 album Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie, which sold a lot and I won’t say much more about because the title is taking up a lot of space.

I haven’t ever heard this song before, as I don’t think I ever listened to this album in full. It’s a pretty good song, not anything that’ll set the world on fire but I’m honestly digging it quite a bit. While Alanis won’t win today’s contest, I can say I should maybe visit more of her work someday.

Fates Warning

This band is a pretty well known quantity in metal but I’ll be honest – I’m not all that familiar with them. For whatever reason I’ve never spent a lot of time with them and it’s been years since I’ve heard them at all.

I was kind of shocked to find that this is, by far, FW’s most streamed song on Spotify. I’m pretty sure the 2000 album it came from didn’t make waves, in fact I can’t find a damn thing about it. But this is apparently a very popular song for some reason. It has far more streams than anything from their popular albums.

This is a really good song, one that would be in contention for today’s crown if it wasn’t for that one song. If nothing else, this reminds me that I really need to brush up on Fates Warning.

Harry Nilsson

A well-respected but perhaps underrated artist, Nilsson had some success in the late 60’s and early 70’s. I know some of his stuff but he’s someone I haven’t spent a ton of time with and also one I should probably add to the to-do list.

Nilsson composed One and released it on his 1968 album Aerial Ballet. It wasn’t a hit for him at the time, but the song would soon get pretty big off a cover version by Three Dog Night. Since this series doesn’t consider cover songs (kind of goes against the whole exercise), I’ll only be looking at Nilsson’s original tune. The song has been widely covered even beyond Three Dog Night, though their version is probably the most well-known.

Nilsson’s OG composition is a good tune. I’m not overly familiar with it but I have heard it before, and it’s been in a bunch of movie soundtracks and stuff like that. I don’t have much criteria to rate how it should place in this contest but I’d give it good marks if I were actually handing out scores.

Simple Plan

Ok, we have a bit of history on ye olde website – as long as I was looking over everything correctly, Simple Plan is the first band to appear in these contests more than once. They were on the Jump one, which they obviously lost, and now they compete in the One gauntlet, which they also have obviously lost.

As I said last time, pop punk isn’t really my bag. I also don’t shit on it just because it’s there to do, and this song is ok. I will say it’s just ok – it’s kind of slow and doesn’t go anywhere. It doesn’t have a leg in this race but hey, maybe at the rate they keep popping up on these, they might sneak away with a win.

U2

It’s time for one of the two very, very well-known versions of One. U2 released this on their 1991 mega-album and direction-changing Achtung Baby. The single was a massive hit and people fall all over themselves to this day to talk about how great it is.

The song was kind of a bridge between what they did in the 80’s and their new direction. Not that the new direction did them any harm – this album was stupid successful. But One was a callback to more familiar U2 material, something for the old folks I guess.

I’ll say this – it’s a really good song. I haven’t heard it in a long time and this is a nice, sad tune. I figured I’d think it was good but I’m a bit taken aback, this is a really great song.

It’s time to sort through the murk and pick a winner. Alanis had a nice tune, as did Harry Nilsson. The metalhead in me would default to Fates Warning, who has a nice offering even with my lack of familiarity. But the U2 song truly did knock me back a bit. They are the clear winner – of second place. Today’s blatantly obvious winner?

Metallica

That’s it, folks. That’s the post. See you next time.