Four 1990s ridiculously good alternative rock one-hit wonders

Letters To Cleo

If any band on this list exemplifies one-hit-wonder status, it's Letters to Cleo. The four-piece formed in Boston in 1990 and built up a decent following in the cities' college bars and clubs. Fronted by lead singer Kay Hanley, the band had a feminine perspective to voice its hooky guitar-based alternative rock chops.

Like the Screaming Trees before them, Letters to Cleo enjoyed much of their success due to the placement of a song on a soundtrack. The band's mainstream breakthrough would come when their song "Here and Now" was featured on the soundtrack to the hit TV show Melrose Place. The popularity of the program with young Gen X viewers helped propel the song to number 10 on the Billboard Modern Rock Singles chart.

"Here and Now" sounds like what happens when you combine early 1990s alternative rock with the fast stream of conscious vocals made popular by Pearl Jam vocalist Eddie Vedder. Letters to Cleo vocalist Hanley shifts between a flurry of words that come at you like an assembly line gone haywire, but slows down the pace to add emphasis to the last words of every verse.

The chorus then explodes after a small build-up into Hanley singing so fast she would give the grimiest of punk bands a run for their money in the category of vocal velocity. The rapid delivery of words is a hook unto itself, but somehow the band is able to land back into the mid-tempo groove they locked into to begin the song.

Letters to Cleo would not produce another hit single equaling the success of "Here and Now," but the band would continue on recording albums and touring into the late 1990s. While not active at all times, Letters to Cleo are known to reform for shows from time to time in their native Boston, and occasionally record ever so often,

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