Blonde Redhead are an American art-rock band, founded by an Italian-Japanese trio, whose place on this list is purely a matter of measurement. Across decades they built a deeply admired, atmospheric catalogue that critics and devoted fans treasure, the kind of band whose work is followed album by album rather than single by single.
But streaming gathers around one haunting song. "For the Damaged Coda", a fragile, eerie track from their 2000 album, reached a vast new audience after being used in the animated series Rick and Morty, where it became inseparable from one of the show's most memorable characters.
On streaming, "For the Damaged Coda" sits near 91 million plays, while their next most-streamed track trails at around 16 million. That puts the ratio above 5, over our line.
So by our strict, numbers-only measure, Blonde Redhead register as a certified one-hit wonder, and we flag the caveat firmly. This is a respected, influential band with a rich and varied catalogue. It is only that one fragile, screen-boosted song found a far wider audience than the rest, and on streams it has pulled just far enough ahead to tip the maths.