Nicolette Larson was an American singer admired in the California rock scene of the late 1970s, a warm, versatile voice who sang alongside Neil Young, Linda Ronstadt, and many others. Her place on this list is a matter of measurement, not standing, because her best-known recording rests on one breezy hit.
"Lotta Love", released in 1978, is a smooth, sun-dappled cover of a Neil Young song, and it became a top-ten hit on the US Billboard Hot 100, the record that defines her solo career.
On streaming, "Lotta Love" sits near 35 million plays, while her next most-streamed track trails at around three million. That sends the ratio above 11, far past our 5.0 line.
By our measure Nicolette Larson is a certified one-hit wonder, with the caveat that she was a respected, much-in-demand singer with a real catalogue and many collaborations. It is simply that one warm, breezy cover reached the wider public far beyond the rest of her work, and on streams it stands well ahead of everything else she recorded before her untimely death in 1997. Her sunlit reading of the Neil Young song became a soft-rock staple, a reminder of a warm and versatile voice that graced far more records than the casual listener might guess.