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Sometimes, a single song can change a musician or band’s entire career. In fact, that’s often the case.
The one-hit wonder is perhaps the most fascinating phenomenon in the world of music. An artist shoots to the top of the charts with a song that the whole world loves. Then, poof, they’re suddenly gone and never heard from again.
Oftentimes, this one song is enough to keep that artist well-paid and booked on concert tours for years to come, with crowds filling venues often just to hear the encore.
Songs like “Macarena” by Los Del Rio, “Closing Time” by Semisonic, and “Come On Eileen” by Dexys Midnight Runners are some of the biggest one-hit wonders of all time.
But what about the biggest one-hit wonders this century? Well, we’re counting them down.
13) Passenger – ‘Let Her Go’ (2012)
In 2012, English singer-songwriter Michael David Rosenberg, better known as Passenger, reached No. 5 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 and had the No. 1 song in 20 different countries with his melancholic single, “Let Her Go.”
The song, which won Passenger a Brit Award for British Single of the Year, and the British Academy’s Ivor Novello Award for Most Performed Work, has over 2.7 billion streams on Spotify, making it by far his most famous work.
By comparison, his next biggest hit, “Simple Song,” has just over 140 million streams and no other song has reached the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States.
12) Crazy Town – ‘Butterfly’ (2000)
By far the oldest song on this list, “Butterfly” by Crazy Town was released in October of 2000 and took off in early 2001 when it was released as part of the CD, The Gift of Game.
The song reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 twice in 2001, once in March and again in April.
Guitarist Kraig “Squirrel” Tyler said that the band didn’t release “Butterfly” as the album’s lead single because “We knew all along we didn’t want to release ‘Butterfly’ first because we didn’t want to be known as the band that does ‘Butterfly’. We are looking at this like w
e want to have a career. That isn’t who we are.”
Unfortunately, they failed in that mission.
“Butterfly” has 629,797,298 streams on Spotify, more than 20x more than their second-highest song, “Starry-Eyed Surprise,” which has just 31,191,803.
11) Tones and I – ‘Dance Monkey’ (2019)
Do you ever hear an extremely popular song and wonder, “How on earth did this get so popular?”
Well, that question accurately describes my feelings on the 2019 hit “Dance Monkey.” But Australian electropop singer Tones and I probably won’t care all that much.
The song, which does have an infectious beat, reached No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 1 in over two-dozen countries, including a record-setting 24 weeks at number one on the Australian singles chart.
Tones, whose real name is Toni Watson, told Austrailian radio station Nova FM that she “wrote this song when I was busking, and about the pressure that I felt to always be entertaining people on the street. And if they didn’t like it, when they looked at their phones they could just click something else; … we are all so used to being entertained at the click of a button.”
10) Omi – ‘Cheerleader (Felix Jaehn Remix)’ (2012)
In 2008, Jamaican artist Omi attempted to capitalize on the earlier success of Jamaican stars Sean Paul and Sean Kingston on the global stage with his single “Cheerleader.”
The song wasn’t released until 2012, and didn’t exactly take off. Then in 2014, Omi’s label, Ultra, worked with German DJ Felix Jaehn to remix the song, and thus, a hit was born.
Whilethe remix was officially released in May of 2014, it blew up in 2015, reaching No. 1 on the charts in 20 countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, France, Mexico, Ireland, Sweden, and Germany.
After that, however, Omi has not had a single song on the Billboard Hot 100 in the U.S.
9) Capital Cities – ‘Safe and Sound’ (2011)
In 2011, Indie Pop duo Capital Cities, made up of members Ryan Merchant and Sebu Simonian, released the biggest hit of their careers in the form of “Safe and Sound,” which can now be heard in the background of television commercials everywhere.
While the band’s breakout hit reached only No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the U.S., it topped the charts in several other countries and, most importantly, the music video for the song was nominated for Best Music Video at the 2014 Grammy Awards.
As of today, the song has nearly two billion Spotify streams, while their second most popular song, “Kangaroo Court,” checks in at just under 175 million.
8) Shop Boyz – ‘Party Like A Rockstar’ (2007)
At the start of 2007, nobody outside the city of Atlanta had heard of the rap duo Shop Boyz. By the end of the year, however, almost everyone had thanks to their single “Party Like A Rockstar,” which reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100, No. 3 on the R&B charts (which feels like a questionable distinction), and No. 2 on the hip hop charts.
The song also went triple platinum and was nominated for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group at the 2008 Grammy Awards. The only thing preventing the Shop Boyz from reaching the top of the charts was Rihanna and Jay-Z teaming up for the song “Umbrella,” which is just one of the Barbadian superstar’s 14 No. 1 songs all time.
Unfortunately for the Shop Boyz, they did not come close to that number, never charting again on the Billboard Hot 100.
7) Daniel Powter – ‘Bad Day’ (2005)
The Great White North of Canada has provided us with countless superstar musicians, from Drake, to Justin Bieber, to Neil Young, Celine Dion, and everywhere in between.
Technically speaking, Daniel Powter probably has a spot on that list thanks to his No. 1 single “Bad Day,” which topped both the Billboard Pop 100 and the Billboard Hot 100 in 2006.
Powter did have two other songs, “Love You Lately” and “Cupid,” which I’m sure you’ve all heard of, break into the top 50 on the Billboard Hot 100, so his status as a one-hit wonder if relatively questionable.
But given the popularity of “Bad Day” to anything else he’s released (over 700 million more Spotify streams), we’ll allow it!
6) Magic! – ‘Rude’ (2013)
Sticking with the high-pitched Canadian artists theme, we’ve got “Rude” by Toronto-based band Magic!
Magic! was founded in 2012 and immediately found success with their debut single, a song about getting shut down while asking your girlfriend’s father is you can marry her.
How or why this song got popular, nobody quite knows. The weird thing about “Rude” is that it topped the charts in the U.S., U.K., and several other countries, but never actually reached No. 1 in Canada!
To his credit, the lead singer of the group, known monomously as Nasri, based the song on a real-life story of a toxic relationship he had with an ex-girlfriend.
Unfortunately, his future relationships must have gone better, because Magic! has released three more albums in the last decade,
and not a single song has reached the top 100 in either the U.S. or the U.K.
5) Glass Animals – ‘Heat Waves’ (2020)
Okay, I’ll admit it, as one-hit wonders go, I actually mostly enjoyed “Heat Waves,” a 2020 single by British Indie Pop group Glass Animals that reached No. 1 in just about every major category it qualified for in the U.S. as well as the Hot 100.
Likely “Rude” by Magic!, however, the song did not hit No. 1 in the band’s home country, reaching only No. 5 on the U.K. singles chart.
The song, which first charted in the U.S. in late 2020, took a record 59 weeks to climb to No. 1 in the U.S., where it sat for five weeks in early 2022. In total, the song charted for 91 weeks, breaking the previous record set by The Weeknd with “Blinding Lights” by The Weeknd. However, that record was later broken with Teddy Swims’ hit single “Lose Control” in 2025.
Glass Animals have released four albums and countless singles over the last decade-plus, but no other song of theirs has charted in the U.S. or the U.K.
4) Rebecca Black – ‘Friday’ (2011)
Ah, yes, the song that was so bad, it was good.
In 2011, American singer-songwriter Rebecca Black released her debut single, “Friday,” which, as far as we know to this point, was genuinely intended to be a hit song.
However, it gained popularity when comedian Michael J. Nelson called it “the worst video ever made” on Twitter, and the song was featured on comedian Daniel Tosh’s show, Tosh.0. At that point, most believed that Black and her record company intentionally made the song, which is about partying on a Friday night, as cringy as possible.
While “Friday” only reached No. 58 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100, the video has 178 million views on YouTube and launched Black into the spotlight, for better or worse.
3) Psy – ‘Gangnam Style’ (2012)
These days, K-Pop is unavoidable in the United States, exemplified by the immense success of the recent Netflix movie KPop Demon Hunters.
But in 2012, almost nobody in the country was familiar with the genre, and especially not with the artist Psy.
However, that would quickly change.
“Gangnam Style” was first released on Psy’s YouTube channel before hitting the airwaves and immediately debuting at No. 1 in Korea. Within a month, it became a megahit across the country, reaching No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 thanks in part to the artist’s unique dance moves. At the time, that was the highest a Korean artist had ever charted in the U.S.
“Gangnam Style” hit No. 1 in more than 30 countries, including Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom.
While Psy is a megastar in his native South Korea, Gangnam Style is by far his biggest hit in the U.S., and one of the biggest individual hits of the century across the world.
2) Baauer – ‘Harlem Shake’ (2012)
Depending on who and the age of the person you ask, you may get two very different answers when you ask someone to do the Harlem Shake.
However, American DJ Baauer struck gold with his 2012 EDM single “Harlem Shake,” which did not become immediately popular, but surged in 2013 when it became a huge internet meme and its associated dance became popular on the social media video platform Vine.
The meme sent the song flying up the charts to No. 1 in the U.S, No. 3 in the U.K., and into the top 10 across Europe. The virality of the song was so large and unique that it forced Billboard to enact a policy that included video streams as a component of their charts.
Meanwhile, the DJ, who was just 23 at the time, has produced countless songs since, none of which has charted at all on the Billboard Hot 100.
1) Gotye ft. Kimbra – “Somebody That I Used To Know” (2011)
It’s the only logical answer for No. 1 on this list.
In 2011, Australian singer and New Zealander Kimbra combined for “Somebody That I Used To Know,” an Alt-Pop song that was seemingly unavoidable.
The song reached the top of the charts in the U.S., U.K, Australia, New Zealand, and 25 other official charts. Meanwhile, the associated music video has nearly 2.6 billion views.
However, what sets “Somebody That I Used To Know” apart isn’t just the fact that Gotye never charted again in any country, but the fact that he just straight up stopped making music under his own name after the song’s fame.
In several interviews since the song blew up, the musician, who was born in Belgium and whose real name is Wouter André “Wally” De Backer, has stated that he didn’t like the fame that came with the hit song, and he instead returned to making music with his band, The Basics, while playing shows in relative anonymity outside of the country of Australia.
Show up. Making a classic. Leave.
Well done, sir.