The One and Only – Chesney Hawkes

This is another one of those songs. To everyone else it’s that Saturday night sing along one hit wonder. Brilliant song, very catchy, simple title and message. Bit of self promotion never did anyone any harm. The sliding intro is very odd, then to be honest the whole song is a cliche of a 60's meets the 90's, but can't argue with the guitar solo.

For me when I hear it, I’m back sat in the cinema watching the movie it was the theme of. A film called Buddy’s Song, Chesney Hawks played the lead character, a young lad who wanted his music to make him famous. His dad was played by The Who’s Roger Daltry, so this film had some traction in the music world, it was called Buddy’s Song as the dad was obsessed by Buddy Holly. It was the usual boy meets girl she messes him around and all that goes with it. It sadly never really launched Chesney onto global stardom, it seems only into one hit wonder wonderland. Also the movie didn't win any Oscars.

I just remember being sat in the dark next to my friend watching this all unfold, thinking to myself I wish that would happen to me. Not knowing at the time that the video of the song was basically someone watching the film, odd.

Chesney had a good musical pedigree as his real dad was Len 'Chip' Hawkes out of the 60s band The Tremeloes, another band who’s music I grew up listening to and also happen to be based in Essex. This song was written by Nik Kershaw, a big name in the 1980s, I hear his name mentioned a lot in songwriter circles as one of the best hit writers. I know Chesney did have more than this one song as I bought another one of them, I did find the vinyl single of The One and Only when I was clearing up the other day. Fun memories.

Favorite lyric: I can't wear this uniform without some compromises  / Because you'll find out that we come / In different shapes and sizes