One-hit wonders challenge narratives on musical success

I was asked this week to cover the greatest one-hit wonders of all time. I don’t normally take requests, but this is one I’m willing to tackle—but not really from the perspective that I was requested to. If you look at the history of so-called one-hit wonders, you’ll find a lot of them actually have other hits.

How you define a hit is going to be arbitrary, of course. But if you look at music charts, you’ll tend to find that many bands frequently labeled as one-hit wonders actually scored multiple successes. Today, I have decided to explore that phenomenon.

The first Google result for “One-hit wonders” that I got was “Dexy’s Midnight Runners” for their song “Come On Eileen,” which hit No. 1 on the United Kingdom music charts. But they had a second No. 1 hit, too–1980’s “Geno,” presumably named after the drink at the Perk.

And if you look past No. 1 hits they’ve got “Jackie Wilson Said,” which hit No. 5, and “There, There, My Dear” at No. 7. Classic Rock Magazine proudly proclaimed The Buggles the greatest one-hit wonder in an article published Sept. 18, 2023.

That’s a shame, though, since they’ve got four or five songs that arguably count as hits. “Living in the Plastic Age” broke the top 20 in the U.K., and “Clean Clean” broke the top 40. “On TV” charted poorly but went Gold in Canada for shifting 50,000 units.

“Aha,” the “Take On Me” stars, are massive across Europe. Their first eight albums all went No. 1 in their native Norway. “Aha” is still enjoying chart success today with their 2022 album “True North” going to No. 3. That doesn’t seem like a flash in the pan fueled by a fancy music video–“Aha” are genuine stars. (In Norway, at least.)

The common trend with that bunch is that, while they only had one song succeed in the United States, they had other hits overseas. But there are examples of supposed one-hit wonders striking multiple times in the same country.

Before “All Star” graced the silver screen in Shrek, Smash Mouth was already known for “Walking On The Sun.” Both songs hit No. 1 on the U.S. Adult Pop Airplay charts. They’ve had success beyond that as well with “Then The Morning Comes” hitting No. 2 on that chart and “I’m a Believer” hitting No. 4.

But before “Ice Ice Baby” hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, “Play That Funky Music” had already hit No. 4 and sold half a million copies. And he did the Ninja Rap for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which counts as a successful song in my book.

I could keep rattling off sales data and chart information all day, but I think you get the point. Most of the artists that people think are one-hit wonders aren’t actually one-hit wonders. There are plenty of real “One-Hit Wonders,” sure, but many commonly cited examples aren’t.

All of the artists mentioned in this article come up when you Google “One-Hit Wonder,” and all of them can be found in articles dedicated to the subject in various music and pop culture publications. However, none of these artists are actually one-hit wonders. The data, to me, suggests a trend.

Another way a band can become viewed as a one-hit wonder is by being tied to some other cultural phenomenon. The band Survivor would have had a respectable career even without “Eye of the Tiger.” That song and the album that shares its name probably represented the band’s highest point, but they also had an album called “Vital Signs” that sold one million copies and featured hits of its own. But even having two successful albums, Survivor is referred to as a “One-Hit Wonder” Songwriter.

The reason? If I had to guess, it’s because “Eye of the Tiger” is in Rocky. “Vital Signs” isn’t. The story of Rocky, Survivor and “Eye of the Tiger” isn’t an isolated incident. If you want to know why Smash Mouth’s other hits are ignored in favor of All Star?

The answer is big, green and layered–and his name is Shrek. Shrek did to Smashmouth what Rocky did to Survivor. Those artists are retroactively seen as one-hit wonders due to the popularity of those movies regardless of how successful their other songs were.

There are artists that genuinely did have only one hit. The Elegants were active from 1958 all the way until 2012 and toured with everyone from Buddy Holly to Chuck Berry. They only ever charted once with the song “Little Star” at the start of their career. However, situations like this aren’t as common as you might think. Like any aspect of culture, we’re going to inevitably view music through our own lens and our own biases.

I won’t deny that one-hit wonders exist, but a lot of the major examples you might think of don’t fit that description as accurately as you might imagine. Media is disposable, and what was once appreciated can be lost to time. Even artists like Bon Jovi with long, successful careers might ultimately go down as being remembered mostly for one or two songs like “Living on a Prayer.”

When you combine that with our own cultural attitudes toward what kinds of music we want to consume and the way that media is commercialized, it leads to narratives being built up about artists and their careers that aren’t actually backed up by data. Maybe the next time you hear Tommy Tutone on the radio, you’ll take a look at the numbers before you start making judgments.