one-note

An allusion to the monotony of a single musical note played or sung repeatedly.

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

one-note (not comparable)

1. (idiomatic) Having only one opinion, outlook, tone, etc., especially as expressed repetitively; without variety or range.
   • 1971 March 13, Michael Sragow, “Theatre: Look Back in Anger Tonight at the Loeb Ex”, in Harvard Crimson‎, retrieved July 25, 2009:

     But Pope Brock plays him in such a one-note key of gulping and spitting and snickering cynicism that the spectacle becomes numbing.

   • 1992, Jane Creighton, “Bierce, Fuentes, and the Critique of Reading”, in South Central Review, volume 9, number 2, page 66:

     The footnotes that attend Ambrose Bierce in the U.S. literary canon roughly place him as a minor writer of grotesque supernatural tales and trenchant war stories, a misanthrope, curmudgeon, a purveyor of stringing sarcasms, a one-note wit.

   • 2005, Anahid Kassabian, “Academic Frostbite (A Cautionary Tale)”, in Women's Studies Quarterly, volume 33, number 3/4, page 403:

     To his mind, there was only one right and true position on the question. This sort of one-note response is precisely the problem facing politically engaged academics in the U.S. at the moment.

   • 2009 June 18, Mary Pols, “Year One: Jokes from the Stone Age”, in Time‎, archived from the original on 2013-02-15:

     The movie is one long snigger. […] It might be one-note, but at least it's in the key of funny.

   • 2011 June 3, Benjamin Mercer, “On ‘Drive Angry,’ the Schlocky Role Nicolas Cage Was Born to Play”, in The Atlantic‎:

     Moreover, Drive Angry offers evidence that Cage hasn't recently been one-note in his performances so much as in his choice of schlocky material.

• invariant, monotonal, monotonous

• Johnny-one-note