KUNG FU FIGHTING
“Kung Fu Fighting” is a disco song written and performed by Carl Douglas and composed and produced by Biddu. It was released as a single in 1974, on the cusp of a chopsocky film craze, and eventually rose to the top of the British and American charts, in addition to reaching number one on the Soul Singles chart. It eventually went on to sell eleven million records worldwide, making it one of the best-selling singles of all time. The song uses the quintessential Oriental riff, a short musical phrase that is used to signify Chinese culture. (More from Wikipedia)
The term “one-hit wonder” is usually taken to mean a band or artist who manages to create one good song, and then makes a big hit with it. I remember Stephen Colbert joking one time about Carl Douglas and his huge hit song in 1974, “Kung Fu Fighting”. Douglas managed to hit the intersection of two big crazes of that period – disco dancing and kung fu movies – and made one of the biggest hit songs of all time, with 11 million copies sold. Colbert was saying that his album had a lot of other songs on it, and none of the rest of them were about kung fu at all; the way he was saying it implied that they were all quite bad. I cannot say myself that I ever heard anything by Douglas other than his hit song, but he is often cited as a true one-hit wonder.
(May 2012)
