Eamon

Sounding like Justin Timberlake’s foul-mouthed brother with an eye toward infiltration of the chitlin circuit, Eamon scored an unlikely Top 20 pop hit with his late-2003 debut single “Fuck It (I Don’t Want You Back).” The unfiltered, retro-styled R&B ballad was big enough to make the parent full-length I Don't Want You Back (2004) a gold album. Hindered later by multiple label deals that went awry, the singer/songwriter and arranger would be a natural inclusion in any “One-hit wonders of the 2000s” feature — with a note that his success was a precursor to CeeLo Green’s “Fuck You” — yet he has persevered for over two decades while recording comparatively refined, equally confident work such as Golden Rail Motel (2017), and No Matter the Season (2022).
Staten Island native Eamon Doyle started performing at a young age with his father’s doo wop group. By his mid-teens, he had a job in a recording studio, where his talent was noticed and nurtured by manager and First Priority Music founder Nat Robinson, rapper/producer Milk Dee (previously of Audio Two), and fellow producer Mark Passy. Signed to Jive thanks to Robinson, Eamon debuted with “Fuck It (I Don’t Want You Back)” near the end of 2003. Written by Eamon, producer Milk, and Passy, the song reached number 16 on the Hot 100 and fared even better outside the U.S., topping the pop charts in the U.K., Germany, Italy, and Australia, among other territories. I Don't Want You Back, the parent album, entered the Billboard 200 at number seven upon release in February 2004, and the next month went gold. The single eventually earned its own gold certification.
Eamon continued to work closely with Robinson and Milk on his second album for Jive. Love & Pain, which also featured productions from the likes of V. Jeffrey Smith, Happy Perez, and Needlz, was released in December 2006, but only outside the U.S. The same month, Ghostface Killah, who had contributed to Eamon’s first album, released More Fish, featuring Eamon on the track “Gotta Hold On.” Off the Jive roster within a couple years, Eamon worked primarily behind the scenes — he sang background on Shafiq Husayn’s Shafiq En' A-Free-Ka — and relocated to Los Angeles. A subsequent solo deal went sour, resulting in a shelved album. He was featured throughout the following decade on tracks by R.A. the Rugged Man and Jedi Mind Tricks, among others, and in 2017 finally released a third album, Golden Rail Motel, co-executive produced by Jedi Mind Tricks member Vinnie Paz. Five years later, Eamon returned with No Matter the Season, released on Now-Again with samples sourced from African recordings the label previously reissued. ~ Andy Kellman