Chris de Burgh needs a caveat up front. The British-Irish singer-songwriter has had a long and successful career spanning decades, with a devoted following and a substantial catalogue, including the much-loved Christmas song "A Spaceman Came Travelling". By the standards of that career he is not a one-hit wonder.
But on streaming, one ballad has pulled enormously ahead of the rest. "The Lady in Red", released in 1986, is a slow, swooning love song that became a worldwide number one and an enduring first-dance and slow-dance standard, far outstripping everything else he recorded.
His other songs remain known to fans but trail well behind on streams. "The Lady in Red" sits near 623 million plays, while his next most-streamed track, "A Spaceman Came Travelling", trails at around 38 million. That sends the ratio above 16, far past our 5.0 line.
So by our strict, numbers-only measure, Chris de Burgh registers as a certified one-hit wonder. We flag the caveat: this is an established artist with a long, varied catalogue, whose single most romantic standard has, on streams, simply outrun a career's worth of other songs.