Numlock Sunday: Chris Dalla Riva on the rise and fall of the sax solo

Photo by Jose Antonio Gallego Vázquez on Unsplash

By Walt Hickey

Welcome to the Numlock Sunday edition.

This week, I spoke to Christ Dalla Riva, who writes

Can't Get Much Higher

. Here's a recent story I wrote about:

A new analysis dove deep into the phenomenon of the two-hit wonder: those artists who managed to escape the notoriety of being just a one-hit wonder by managing a second popular hit but never really broke out far beyond that. Looking at the Billboard Hot 100 charts from its inception to 2010, there have been 3,271 artists who have landed at least two top-30 hits — one of which made the top 10 but never again pulled off the feat and never actually managed to have a top 10 album. The list, in order of popularity, is full of ’em; the most popular is the artist Gerardo Ortiz, who performed “Rico Suave” ( No. 7 hit) and “We Want the Funk” (No. 16), followed by a-ha with “Take On Me” (No. 1) and “The Sun Always Shines on T.V.” (No. 20). Other major two-hit wonders include Cascada with “Evacuate the Dan…