Beck needs a loud caveat. The American musician is one of the most acclaimed and restlessly inventive artists of his generation, a multiple Grammy winner with a decades-long catalogue that hops between folk, funk, hip-hop, and lush pop. To call him a one-hit wonder is, by any reasonable measure, absurd.
But on streaming, one song towers over the rest. "Loser", his 1993 breakthrough, was a slacker-era collage of fuzzy blues guitar and deadpan rap, and its ironic refrain made it a generational anthem. It remains far and away his most-streamed track.
His deep, beloved catalogue, including the whole of records like Odelay and Sea Change, trails well behind it on streams. Dividing "Loser" by his second biggest gives a ratio of about 7, past our 5.0 line.
So by our strict, numbers-only measure, Beck registers as a certified one-hit wonder. We flag it as exactly the kind of distortion our threshold exposes: a critically revered, prolific artist whose single most famous early song, the one casual listeners reach for first, has on streams pulled far enough ahead to outrun a long and adventurous career.