4 Non Blondes were a San Francisco rock band fronted by Linda Perry, and they belong to the cleanest category of one-hit wonder: a single enormous song and very little else. "What's Up?", released in 1992 with Perry's raw, soaring vocal and its endlessly chanted "hey-yeah-yeah-yeah" refrain, became a global hit and an enduring karaoke and singalong staple.
The band released only one album before splitting, and Perry went on to a hugely successful career as a songwriter and producer for other stars. But under the 4 Non Blondes name, "What's Up?" is essentially the whole story.
On streaming, the song sits near 1.4 billion plays, while genuinely different tracks from the band trail far behind. That sends the ratio above 30, many times our 5.0 line.
By our measure 4 Non Blondes are a certified one-hit wonder, and an archetypal one. One band, one album, one colossal song, after which its leader quietly became one of the most successful behind-the-scenes figures in pop while the hit kept ringing out on its own. For a band with a single album to their name, that one song has proved astonishingly hard to dislodge from the culture.