One-hit wonders have established themselves as household names, with popular ballads and movies achieving tremendous success around the globe. However, many producing these works of art have failed to sustain long-term mainstream popularity. But which one-hit-wonder has had the most successful career?
We will examine several recognised one-hit wonder artists, comparing their big hits to their other popular tracks to reveal whether they have continued their success. We will also take a deep dive into the artists behind some well-known Christmas bangers, which are widely regarded as one-hit wonders. We will use Spotify streams and Google search data to reveal which artists’ songs have remained popular globally.
To uncover the biggest one-hit-wonder movie stars, we will look at the nominations and winners of the Best Actor/Actress awards. We will analyse each star’s Rotten Tomatoes profile to see how many of their films were top-rated, revealing the actors with the most hits for which they didn’t win Oscars.
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The most successful ‘one-hit wonder’ music artists
1. A-ha
Total streams of most successful songs on Spotify: 2.2 billion
A-ha are a Norwegian synth-pop band formed in Oslo in 1982. They rose to fame during the mid-80s and achieved their most significant success with their debut album, Hunting High and Low, in 1985.
A-ha shot the eye-catching video for their lead single, “Take on Me,” with the director Steve Barron, who was also behind the video for Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean”. The video’s combination of sketch animation and live-action made it famous on MTV, and the song topped the US Billboard Hot 100, making A-ha the first Norwegian group to do so. The music video has since gained over 2 billion views on YouTube and has been described as a cash cow for its creators. “Take on Me” has also amassed over 2.1 billion Spotify streams. Although the band has been dubbed a ‘one-hit-wonder,’ A-ha’s second most famous song, “The Sun Always Shines on T.V.,” also hit 96.9 million streams.
2. Gnarls Barkley
Total streams of most successful songs on Spotify: 1.2 billion
Gnarls Barkley is an American soul duo composed of singer-songwriter CeeLo Green and producer Danger Mouse. They released their debut studio album, St. Elsewhere, in 2006, which won a Grammy award and went platinum. It contained their first single, "Crazy," an accidental pop success with 1.2 billion Spotify streams, which peaked at number two on the US Hot 100. It also became the UK’s first number-one solely off downloads on the Singles Chart.
The Atlanta hip-hop group released the hit single almost 18 years ago, which forged new territory for the city’s music scene. Although the duo never officially announced a breakup, CeeLo Green went on to great success as a solo artist but has since confirmed plans for the duo to return. CeeLo Green himself could be considered a double-hit wonder artist. “Forget You,” the first single from his third solo studio album, released in 2010, also reached 199 billion Spotify streams.
3. Aqua
Total streams of most successful songs on Spotify: 499.9 million
Aqua is a Danish-Norwegian Europop band formed in 1995 in Copenhagen. They achieved international success in the late 1990s and early 2000s and are best known for their 1997 single “Barbie Girl,” which turned a tongue-in-cheek song about “life in plastic” into a global hit that’s never truly gone away. Aqua sold over eight million copies of the single worldwide, reaching number one in over ten countries and seven on the Billboard Top 100.
In 2023, Aqua was given a second top 10 hit with “Barbie World” from the soundtrack to Greta Gerwig’s Barbie movie. Aqua had several other hits after “Barbie Girl,” including “Doctor Jones,” “Turn Back Time,” and “My Oh My,” which were important in elongating their success beyond their hit single and proving there was more to them than a cartoon pop gimmick.
The ‘one-hit-wonder’ songs with the most searches worldwide
1. Sinéad O’Connor - Nothing Compares 2 U
Annual global searches: 711,500
“Nothing Compares 2 U” is a song written by the American musician Prince for his band The Family. Irish singer-songwriter Sinéad O'Connor recorded a version for her second studio album, “I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got” (1990), co-produced with Nellee Hooper. Her melancholic power ballad became a worldwide hit, and her rendition from 1990 became more famous than Prince’s.
Sinéad O'Connor’s version of “Nothing Compares 2 U” has claimed over 711,500 global searches in the last year, nearly four decades after its release. The unforgettable music video, in which the singer is seen crying while thinking about her mother during the lyrics “all the flowers that you planted mama,” received heavy rotation on MTV. In December 1990, Billboard announced the track as the “#1 World Single" of 1990 at its first Billboard Music Awards.
The most successful Christmas ‘one-hit wonder’ artists
1. Bobby Helms
Total streams of most successful songs on Spotify: 969 million
Bobby Helms was an American country singer best known for his 1957 Christmas hit, “Jingle Bell Rock.” He also had two earlier hit records from that year: “Fraulein,” which hit number one on the country charts, and “My Special Angel,” his second number-one hit.
“Jingle Bell Rock” was released two days before Christmas in 1957. The song quickly rose to No. 6 on the Billboard Best Sellers in Stores and continued to reappear in the pop rankings, confirming the song’s status as a true Christmas classic. The holiday tune became a hit for many reasons, including its unique sound and rockabilly beat, its -holiday spirit with lyrics like “Giddy-up jingle horse, pick up your feet”, and, notably, its radio play. According to Luminate, the song has been played on the radio over 40,000 times yearly since 2018.
Its popularity increased dramatically with the introduction of on-demand streaming, with 969 million Spotify listens, and it re-entered the Hot 100 in 2016. Helms continued to tour and record for the next three decades but never again achieved the great success he had with his Christmas hit.
2. Jose Feliciano
Total streams of most successful songs on Spotify: 916.7 million
José Montserrate Feliciano García is a Puerto Rican musician. He recorded many international hits, including his rendition of the Doors' "Light My Fire" and his self-penned Christmas song "Feliz Navidad."
“Feliz Navidad” is a Christmas song written and first recorded in 1970 and has since been a huge success, appearing in many movies and TV shows. Its simple, heartfelt lyrics greeting “Feliz Navidad, próspero año y felicidad" ("Merry Christmas, a prosperous year and happiness"), followed by the English words "I wanna wish you a Merry Christmas from the bottom of my heart" has gained popularity around the world. It's been covered by musical artists as diverse as Celine Dion and BTS.
3. Band Aid
Total streams of most successful songs on Spotify: 565.9 million
Band Aid released their charity song “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” in 1984. Bob Geldof and Midge Ure wrote the song to raise money for the 1983-1985 famine in Ethiopia. The supergroup assembled by Geldof and Ure consisted of famous British and Irish musical acts.
“Do They Know It’s Christmas” entered the UK Singles Chart at number one, where it remained for five weeks and became the 1984 Christmas No. 1. The song sold a million copies in the first week, making it the fastest-selling single in UK chart history. The song raised £8 million for Ethiopia within a year, far exceeding Geldof’s hopes.
Some critics, however, have viewed the song as condescending and offensive for its depiction of Ethiopians and its description of Africa as barren. Midge Ure wrote, "It was all about generating money. The song didn't matter: the song was secondary, almost irrelevant."
4. Jona Lewie
Total streams of most successful songs on Spotify: 101 million
Jona Lewis is an English singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, best known for his 1980 UK hit “Stop the Cavalry.” It is one of the best-known and most successful Christmas hits of all time, despite the fact it was never intended to be a Christmas song and was instead written as a war protest. Nonetheless, Christmas always held great importance during World War I.
The Great War was infamously meant to be “over by Christmas” but went on for four horrific years. In 1914, there was, of course, the Christmas truce and the unofficial ceasefires. Lewie recalls the lyrics, “Christmas Day itself is so cold and particularly miserable that he wishes to himself that he was back at home, in the warm, with his girlfriend.” He also explained, “To be honest, it was always intended as an anti-war song rather than a festive song.
“Stop The Cavalry” got to No. 3 in December 1980, selling close to a million records in the UK, and has been streamed on Spotify 101 million times.
5. Gayla Peevey
Total streams of most successful songs on Spotify: 92.7 million
"I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas" is a Christmas song written by John Rox and performed by then-ten-year-old Oklahoma City singer Gayla Peevey in 1953. The song was a huge success and became a holiday classic. Its popularity gained nationwide attention and inspired the Oklahoma City Zoo to start a campaign to gift Peevey a hippopotamus for Christmas, which she received but later donated to the zoo.
In December 1953, the record peaked at number twenty-four on the Billboard Music Chart and sold more than 300,000 copies, and Peevey even performed the song on the Ed Sullivan Show.
The Christmas one-hit-wonder songs with the most searches worldwide
1. Band Aid - Do They Know It’s Christmas?
Annual global searches: 345,300
Band Aid’s top streamed hit was also the most searched, with “Do They Know It’s Christmas” topping the list with 345,300 searches.
The charity single encouraged the British public to get involved in special events to raise money, and the song helped define the 1980s.
“Do They Know It’s Christmas” also led to other charity singles, such as “We Are the World” by the U.S.A. for Africa and the 1985 Live Aid concert. The concert, organised by Bob Geldof, was held in July 1985 at Wembley Stadium in London and John F. Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia. The event featured over 70 artists and bands, including Queen, Sting, Duran Duran, and David Bowie, and raised an estimated £150 million for famine relief in Ethiopia.
The actors with the most one-hit-wonder movies
To collect our data on one-hit-wonder actors and actresses, we took the Academy Award winners and nominees for Best Actor/Actress over the last ten years. We gathered each movie star's best films on Rotten Tomatoes to reveal the actors with the biggest hits for which they didn’t win an Oscar.
1. Matt Damon
Number of top-rated movies: 21
Matt Damon has become a global superstar with the “Bourne” action franchise, with the five films grossing a combined £1.2 billion worldwide. Damon won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 1997 for Good Will Hunting, which he co-wrote with Ben Affleck. He has starred in several box office hits, including The Bourne Identity (2002), Ocean's Eleven (2001), The Martian (2015), and Interstellar (2014).
Damon was nominated for Best Actor in 2015 but lost out to Eddie Redmayne for his performance in The Theory of Everything (2014). However, he won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor for playing an astronaut stranded on Mars in The Martian (2015). With twenty-one of Matt Damon’s movies scoring over 90% on Rotten Tomatoes, he starred in the most top-rated films in the last ten years, for which he didn’t win any Oscars.
The actresses with the most one-hit-wonder movies
1. Isabelle Huppert and Scarlett Johansson
Number of top-rated movies: 19
Isabelle Huppert is a successful French actress and producer who is considered one of the most prolific stars in international cinema. She has won several awards, including a César Award (the French equivalent of an Oscar) for Best Actress twice, in 1996 for La Cérémonie and in 2017 for Elle.
Huppert has starred in 19 top-rated movies, including The Crime Is Mine (2023) and EO (2022), but only received one Best Actress nomination in 2016 for her role in Elle (2016). Isabelle lost out to Emma Stone for her leading role in La La Land (2016).
Scarlett Johansson has received various accolades, including a British Academy Film Award, a Tony Award, and five Golden Globe Awards. On Rotten Tomatoes, nineteen of Johansson’s movies received over 90% in critics' reviews, notably Fly Me to the Moon (2024) and Anita (2023).
In 2019, Johansson received an Academy Award nomination for her role in Marriage Story (2019) but lost out to the winner, Renée Zellweger, for her starring role in Judy (2019).
Methodology
We created a seed list of the biggest one-hit wonder songs and artists by looking at several listicles, including Rolling Stone, Paste Magazine, and Official Charts. We also used SiriusXFM, Smooth Radio, and Metro to find Christmas one-hit wonders. This data is accurate as of 01/10/2024.
Using Spotify, we collected the number of streams for each one-hit wonder as of 01/10/2024, then navigated to the artist page to add the next-most popular song if it had more than 10 million streams. By counting the artists’ total streams for both songs, we were able to find the biggest one-hit wonders. This method was also used for our Christmas one-hit wonders.
Using Google Keyword Planner, we collected the annual global searches for one-hit wonders between September 2023 and August 2024 to reveal the most searched hits. This data is accurate as of 01/10/2024.
To collect our data on actors and actresses, we used Wikipedia to find the Academy Award winners and nominees for Best Actor/Actress between 2014 and 2023. We removed any actor/actress who appeared more than once. This data is accurate as of 04/10/2024.
For each actor or actress, we used Rotten Tomatoes to see how many of their films received 90% or higher for either their critic or audience scores. We then revealed the stars with the most hits for which they didn’t win Oscars. This data is accurate as of 04/10/2024.
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