Sophie Ellis-Bextor is an English pop singer with a genuine career behind her, a run of UK hits across the 2000s and a long-standing presence in British pop. So her appearance here needs a caveat: by the standards of her home country she was never a one-hit wonder.
But on global streaming, one song has pulled enormously ahead, helped by an unexpected revival. "Murder on the Dancefloor", her glamorous 2001 disco-pop single, found a vast new audience decades later when it featured prominently in the acclaimed 2023 film Saltburn, sending it surging back up charts around the world. It now sits near 865 million plays.
Her other hits remain known in Britain but trail far behind on global streams. Dividing the hit by her next genuinely different track gives a ratio above 20, many times our 5.0 line.
So by our strict, numbers-only measure, Sophie Ellis-Bextor registers as a certified one-hit wonder. We flag the caveat: this is an established UK pop artist whose one most universal song, given a startling second life by a hit film, has on streams alone outrun a real and varied career.