The Darkness - permission to land?

A Secret Wish. They did make a remix album and a second album 5 years later but by then the ZTT manifesto had crashed and burned.

Surely they're the obvious choice?

'Symphony or Damn', as well as 3 or 4 less great ones.

First, check out this (almost) one shot video from 2001

and then this, from the aforementioned Symphony or Damn

Ordinary Boys
13th Floor Elevators
Black Grape
Zodiac Mindwarp

and (arguably)
Sex Pistols - only one official album, the rest is just an exploitation/raping of whatever is left in the vaults

In 1992, the Manic Street Preachers expressed their intention to release one album (I believe they referred to it as 'the best album ever produced') and then split up. Didn't really happen like that did it?

Search out This Side Of Love from his second album. A great Beatles/Stones/Psych soul thing with a hip hop undercurrent. Sounds very Beck five or six years before Beck did.

Might be on his best of album.

... not technically one hit wonders as it wasn't a hit at the time - now a much acclaimed psychedelic/electronic masterpiece from the late sixties.

Five-star review in 'Q', radio support from Whispering Bob, great band live... but it never really happened for them, sadly.

I guess most people reading the title of the post immediately thought "Terence Trent Darby!". I remember countless people recommending it. As I remember his second album hardly had a chorus or a hook on it.
The same fate befell Alanis Morrisette whose second album "Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie" similarly contained songs with no hooks or choruses.

Although the album was carefully designed to showcase Gregg Alexander's writing; I still love the hit

Crossing The Red Sea With The Adverts....anyone know what happened to them? One album then.. sunk!!

Velvets skiffle, classic bloke-longing-for-unobtainable-girl lyrics, some songs still played at indie discos - but they never lived up to it.

Eno/Byrne - My Life in the Bush of Ghosts
Tonto's Expanding Headband
Jeff Buckley - Grace
Young Disciples - Road to Freedom
Bueno Vista Social Club
Working Week - Working Nights
Television - Marquee Moon

Am I cheating with Little Village?
There's also Mary Margaret O'Hara's Miss America. There are, of course many others that should just have made one album!

First and foremost.. The Stone Roses.

The Delays are another. Coincidentally, I listened to Faded Seaside Glamour tonight whilst making dinner. Just wonderful. The CD wasn't bad, either.

I fear The Feeling will fall into this category.

The Fratellis. Lots of people didn't like them but Costello Music was great.

Oasis (Let's be honest here..)

Lone Justice

Jellyfish (some might like Spilt Milk; compared to Bellybutton, it was very average)

with the Queen collaboration "Under Pressure." Crickey: that's not even an album - it's the one song. Although I gather both acts did have a few other hits so maybe it doesn't really count here...

I'd probably have to go for Propellerheads - decksanddrumsandrockandroll (great title!) but let's not forget Kula Shaker's 'K' and Mansun's Attack of the Grey Lantern

Fantastic debut 'This is Hazelville', saw em play live and they were stunning. Unfortunately they were signed to EMI who dropped them like a hot brick when the albim failed to go triple platinum. There is supposedly a 2nd EMI funded LP in the can but all seems to have gone very quiet on that front.

The Magic Numbers

Big Country

The second and third albums might have a few highlights but there is nothing even approaching the quality or consistency of the debut. Definite one album wonders in my book.

great first album and then follow ups failed

Second album had a couple of good tunes but was mostly pish.

Fine Young Cannibals

Clever-clever indie/world music types with two top 10 hits...I thought they were rather good.

Fantastic post punk album.

Also Fire Engines - Lubricate Your Living Room, and Josef K - The Only Fun In Town.

The Redskins - Neither Washington Nor Moscow, still sounds great too.

Room On Fire wasn´t that poor, but just having left it after Is This It would have granted them icon status rather than "I really liked the first one"-status.

had a cracking début album before splitting up

remember The Pale Fountains? There must be loads of these from that early 80's era.

Where for art thou?

Colourbox

Tracks 2 and 3:

released a wonderful solo album (Lazy, Soft and Slow) before reconvening with House of Love

In Search of Ancient Gods. Do any of you remember this jazzrock suite from 1976 by keyboardist Paul Fishman. It was a goodie, also featured Bill Bruford on drums, then...nothing (I think).

Maybe he did the decent thing, having nothing more to add (unlike -sorry in advance to his fans- Mike Oldfield, who just rehashed and repeated his one trick ad nauseum).

of which three were excellent, but I'll bet that most people will only remember Love and Money for their second, the Gary Katz produced "Strange Kind of Love"

Plus of course The Kane Gang

because their second album was quite big, but for many people there was only one album by The Christians

Black Monk Time

I Hate You

made during a break in the long and splendidly un-illustrious, but much loved, career of The Men They Couldn't Hang

and the commotions... rattlesnakes. He never got better than that.

made just the one album, 24 Years of Hunger. Still a favourite of mine

Frankie Goes to Hollywood - Welcome to the Pleasuredome.

Their second album had a couple of singles, but none you'd remember.

Its difficult to imagine now that this was so shocking in it's day.

Have I missed a post somewhere? Surely someone has already mentioned them?

There was a great American band in the mid-80s called Let's Active who released one excellent album, and then I never heard of them again. I think REM's producer, Mitch Easter, was involved.

*Wikipedia update* The album I've got is called Cypress. They did release two more, but I've never heard of them, so they still qualify in my book.

Then there's True Love Stories, the one and only Jilted John album and a teen-pop classic. If you only know the single, prepare to be amazed by the mixture of wit and pathos Graham Fellows conjures up across the LP’s 12 (?) tracks, including something suspiciously like a song cycle that fills the second side, telling the story of a teenager who leaves home, hooks up with an older woman, and eventually returns home older and wiser. And you've got to love an album whose tracklisting encompasses both ‘Baz’s party’ and ‘Fancy mice’.

Steely Dan today reminded me of Rosie Vela, any of the Massive know what became of her? Zazu was wonderful and this......

Eponymous album containing 'Horse With No Name' (Song with no tune!)

that boy could sing 'tho

Wallflowers didn't really progress past "Bringing Down The Horse". Now young Jakob is doing solo albums.
Tonic had a fantastic start on Lemon Parade and seemed to run out of material completely on the second album.

I loved their album, I saw them live, I thought they were on the verge of the really big time. But.... nothing. Where have they gone?

The eponymous first album is one of the great summer albums IMHO, the first half in particular. I got the second album a few years later and was thoroughly underwhelmed. I think they were dropped but kept going for a long time after.

Amazing album of Zambian psych, recently re-released

Solid first album- I dipped into it again recently for the first time in over a decade probably, and I was surprised how much of it I still enjoyed. The second album did very poorly, I don't recall even hearing it. It might have been a perfectly good album, but given that there was a 4 or 5 year gap between they perhaps just lost momentum- outta sight, outta mind and all that.

By Lord David of Hepworth, in the mag, that all acts can be represented by just one album.

Much as I love them, Led Zep are neatly encapsulated by their first album. Everything else consolidated the template so brilliantly laid down on that electrifying first record.

by Girls At Our Best was pretty great in 1981, and still is now.

First album wasn't bad, can't honestly recall hearing anything from the follow-up

made a cracking debut album and that was it. The first three tracks as evidence:

......came up with the brilliant "Relish" which had not one duff track on it, then nothing for about 4 years and the lobotomised, disappointing "Righteous Love" which I bought as soon as it hit the shops and have played twice since.

Overdue a proper re-issue. This one's a fave:

Symphony or Damn, TTD's third LP, is quite good (or at least the bits of it I've heard).

But as an impressionable teenager I was utterly obsessed with theaudience, Sophie Ellis-Bextor's pretentiously spelled, too-clever-for-their-own-good pre-fame indie outfit.

They did just one album, which I listened to for the first time in years and realised I have literally no idea if it's any good because it's so mixed up with nostalgia for my idiot teenage self.

That said, this is definitely brilliant:

'Get Out And Walk' - one of the great albums of the '80s

They were "Big In Japan."

I know that there have been other albums, but nothing even close to 'Silk Degrees'. He even managed to release a very good album on 9/11. Needless to say it got missed.

Has anybody mentioned Postal Service yet?

Well, it's my favourite album of theirs anyway. Also the Stone Roses' first and the Las' only, plus Terence Trent Darby, Young Marble Giants, MEO 245 (using 'hit' loosely) and of course the still out of print but in demand Modern Eon. One could also mention Colourfield, but my list is getting very eighties. Whatever happened to The xx and School of Seven Bells?

Montrose - Montrose.

An all time classic debut album. One and only decent album,but boy was it a good one.

It still powers out of the speakers today !

Blind Faith have to be near the top of anyone's "One Album Wonder" list.

They made one album only (rated by me as a 6, on a personal scale of 1=Shite to 10=Wonderful) in their brief lifespan and then they remembered why half of them broke up as Cream and sensibly called it a day. I saw them at their Hyde Park free-concert debut and was rather underwhelmed.

I never bought the album at the time, though I may well have done, because my housemate of the time did buy it as soon as it came out and money was too tight to permit duplicates.

This reminds me of a situation which other readers may have encountered, i.e. the divvying-up of communal record collections when housemates move out. We decided to toss a coin for albums we couldn't agree upon. I called wrong on almost every single toss and have borne a (very mild) grudge ever since.