One song was all it took: The biggest one-hit wonders
One song was all it took: The biggest one-hit wonders
One song was all it took: The biggest one-hit wonders
Gary Oberholzer
One song was all it took: The biggest one-hit wonders
Some songs don’t need an entire career behind them.
They arrive, take over the radio, get stuck in everyone’s head — and somehow stay there for decades.
That’s the peculiar magic of the one-hit wonder: one song can be enough to define an artist, dominate a moment in pop culture and keep turning up at parties, on playlists and on the radio years later.
Listen to the HOT 1027 News Report on World One Hit Wonder Day below:
Notable one hit wonders we all know and love – played on HOT 102.7FM include:
Matthew Wilder – Break My Stride
Few songs sound quite as relentlessly cheerful as Break My Stride — but it was actually born out of frustration.
Matthew Wilder had struggled to find a breakthrough and channelled some of that frustration into a defiantly upbeat song about refusing to be held back.
Released in 1983, Break My Stride became his signature hit and decades later found a whole new audience online.
So what happened next? — Matthew Wilder
Wilder may not have repeated the chart success of Break My Stride as a solo artist, but he certainly didn’t disappear from music. He moved behind the scenes and built a successful career as a songwriter and producer, working with artists including No Doubt and contributing to the music for Disney’s Mulan. So while the hits stopped coming under his own name, his music career carried on very successfully.
Soft Cell – Tainted Love
Here’s the twist: one of the most unmistakably Eighties songs actually began in the Sixties.
Gloria Jones first recorded Tainted Love in 1965, but it failed to become a hit. Soft Cell picked it up years later, stripped it back, added synths and released their version in 1981.
Suddenly, a forgotten Sixties song had become one of the defining sounds of a completely different decade.
Norman Greenbaum – Spirit in the Sky
Few songs have an opening guitar sound quite like Spirit in the Sky.
Greenbaum has said the inspiration came after watching gospel music on television. The result was an unlikely combination of psychedelic rock, gospel and one of the most recognisable riffs of the era.
And the stories don’t stop there.
So what happened next? — Norman Greenbaum
Greenbaum did try to follow Spirit in the Sky with more music, but nothing came close to matching its success. He later reflected that he never fitted particularly neatly into one musical genre, and by around 1980 his recording career had largely wound down. The song, however, refused to disappear — turning up repeatedly in films, adverts and cover versions long after Greenbaum had stepped away from the spotlight.
Dexys Midnight Runners – Come On Eileen
Dungarees. Fiddles. That chorus.
Released in 1982, Come On Eileen became one of the defining pop songs of the early Eighties. MTV was still relatively new, and the song’s distinctive video helped introduce Dexys Midnight Runners to a massive American audience.
So what happened next? — Dexys Midnight Runners
Dexys are another reminder that “one-hit wonder” can depend very much on where you live. They enjoyed several hits in the UK, but Come On Eileen became the song that defined them internationally. Frontman Kevin Rowland was also determined not to simply make another version of the same hit, and the band’s later music became less obviously commercial. The group eventually split, although Dexys would later return in different forms.
A-ha – Take On Me
A-ha need an asterisk next to the words “one-hit wonder”.
In the United States, Take On Me became their defining hit, helped by its groundbreaking mix of live action and pencil-sketch animation.
But elsewhere, the story was very different. The Norwegian band enjoyed substantial success across Europe and continued releasing hit records long after Take On Me. Their “one-hit wonder” status really depends on which country’s charts you’re looking at.
Nena – 99 Luftballons
That same rule applies to Nena.
99 Luftballons imagined balloons being mistaken for a military threat and triggering a disastrous chain of events. The German-language track became an international hit, while Nena continued enjoying considerable success at home.
Chumbawamba – Tubthumping
And finally, perhaps the strangest transformation of all.
Chumbawamba had spent years as an openly anarchist political band before Tubthumping turned them into unlikely pop stars in 1997.
A group known for political activism suddenly had the world singing along to a chorus about getting knocked down, getting back up again — and having a few drinks along the way.
So what happened next? — Chumbawamba
Chumbawamba definitely didn’t arrive with Tubthumping and vanish again. The band had already been making music for well over a decade before their unlikely 1997 pop breakthrough, and they continued for many years afterwards. In fact, Chumbawamba only called it quits in 2012 after roughly three decades together — having released numerous albums and spent most of their career making music very different from the party anthem that made them famous.
That may be the real magic of the one-hit wonder: You don’t necessarily need a string of number ones.
Sometimes, you just need one song nobody can forget.
