Is Gnarls Barkley a One Hit Wonder?

The Hero Song

Crazy

1,563,731,702 streams

ONE HIT WONDER

Yes. By the streaming numbers, Gnarls Barkley is a one hit wonder. "Crazy" has 1,563,731,702 streams, against 37,879,815 for their next biggest song "Who's Gonna Save My Soul - Original Mix", a ratio of 41.3x. JustOneHit certifies an artist as a one hit wonder when that ratio is 5.0 or higher.

Ratio

41.3x

Hit Streams

1,563.7M

Verdict

Certified One Hit Wonder

One Hit Wonder Meter

LEGEND
One Hit Wonder

Gnarls Barkley · 41.3x ratio

Streams Comparison

Crazy 1,563,731,702
Who's Gonna Save My Soul - Original Mix 37,879,815
Smiley Faces 32,292,079
Going On 28,737,864
Run (I'm a Natural Disaster) 17,218,888
Gone Daddy Gone 15,306,066
Gone Daddy Gone / I Just Want to Make Love to You 15,295,786
St. Elsewhere 8,776,302
Just a Thought 6,913,207
The Boogie Monster 5,917,579

Other Songs

Tracks 2–10 by streams

2. Who's Gonna Save My Soul - Original Mix 37,879,815
3. Smiley Faces 32,292,079
4. Going On 28,737,864
5. Run (I'm a Natural Disaster) 17,218,888
6. Gone Daddy Gone 15,306,066
7. Gone Daddy Gone / I Just Want to Make Love to You 15,295,786
8. St. Elsewhere 8,776,302
9. Just a Thought 6,913,207
10. The Boogie Monster 5,917,579

The Story

Gnarls Barkley were the collaboration between the singer CeeLo Green and the producer Danger Mouse, and they made one of the defining songs of the 2000s. "Crazy", released in 2006, was a soulful, restless track that became a critical darling and a commercial juggernaut, famously the first song to top the UK chart on downloads alone.

The duo released a second album, and both members had substantial careers elsewhere, CeeLo with his later solo hit "Forget You" and Danger Mouse as a celebrated producer. But under the Gnarls Barkley name, "Crazy" is in a class of its own.

On streaming, it sits near 1.5 billion plays, while their next most-streamed track has only around 36 million. That sends the ratio above 41, many times our 5.0 line.

By our measure Gnarls Barkley are a certified one-hit wonder. It is a project remembered, rightly, for one extraordinary record: a genre-blurring song so complete and so acclaimed that it overshadowed not just the rest of the duo's output but much of what either member did alone. Some collaborations seem to exist to produce one perfect record, and this was emphatically one of them.

Sources

By The JustOneHit Editorial Team Last updated 22 May 2026