The Biggest One-Hit Wonder
Overview
It’s much easier to define a one-hit wonder than the king of pop: a song by an artist who never hit the charts with another song in their careers. The biggest would be the one that spent the most time at the top of the charts; for my purposes, I’m counting weeks in the top ten. I analyzed my data to find songs by artists who never appeared for another song. However, since I don’t have full weekly top 40 or top 100 data, I had to take the top candidates and manually check for other hits. Here are the top one-hit wonders. Clearly, we have three definite winners; two of them are exactly what I think of when I think “one-hit wonder”.
| Artist | Song | Weeks in Top Ten |
|---|---|---|
| Tag Team | Whoomp! (There It Is) | 24 |
| Gotye featuring Kimbra | Somebody That I Used to Know | 24 |
| Los del Rio | Macarena | 23 |
| Terror Squad* | Lean Back | 17 |
| Jennifer Paige* | Crush | 17 |
| Wreckx-N-Effect* | Rump Shaker | 15 |
| Quad City DJs* | C'mon N' Ride It (The Train) | 15 |
| Merril Bainbridge* | Mouth | 15 |
| Mark Morrison* | Return Of The Mack | 15 |
| Ini Kamoze | Here Comes The Hotstepper | 15 |
| Cassie* | Me & U | 15 |
*These artists had a slight amount of additional chart action, but, in my opinion, not enough to deny them their wonderness.
Readers of my generation (i.e. who musically came of age in the 80s) might be shocked that “867-5309” didn’t make the list. It was further down, with 8 weeks in the top ten. Other 80s wonders included “Come on Eileen” (6 weeks) and “Mickey” (10 weeks).
Posts on 50 Years of Pop Songs
– What is the biggest one-hit wonder of all time?
Tags: 50yearsofpop, dataviz, music