There is "one-hit wonder", and then there is "one-hit wonder so total that the gap behind the hit is almost embarrassing to read out loud". This list is the second kind. Every artist on it cleared our ratio of 5.0 ten times over. Most of them cleared it fifty times over. A few cleared it three hundred times over.

The ranking is by our one-hit-wonder ratio: the play count on the hit divided by the play count on the artist's next biggest song. The higher the number, the more total the dominance of one record over everything else under that name. We filtered out the data artifacts where the database only captures a single track (the ratio is a meaningless placeholder there) and required a real audience: only artists with at least five million plays on the hit make this cut.

What you end up with is a parade of records that almost everyone knows, performed by artists almost nobody can name.

The list

1. Tal Bachman: "She's so High" (around 410x). A breezy 1998 pop-rock hit from the son of a Bachman-Turner-Overdrive member. Everything else of his lives in its shadow.

2. Blue Swede: "Hooked on a Feeling" (around 338x). The "ooga-chaka" cover that ate every record they made.

3. Maurice Williams: "Stay" (around 327x). One of the shortest number-ones in US chart history, at barely a minute and a half.

4. Boy Meets Girl: "Waiting for a Star to Fall" (around 322x). Whitney Houston could have had this song. They kept it. They are remembered for one.

5. Starland Vocal Band: "Afternoon Delight" (around 306x). A Grammy-winning 1976 number one with a famously suggestive lyric and almost nothing in the catalogue beyond it.

6. Matthew Wilder: "Break My Stride" (around 287x). A 1983 pop hit that has refused to stop returning, most recently via TikTok.

7. The Archies: "Sugar, Sugar" (around 253x). A fictional cartoon band selling more singles than most real ones managed in 1969.

8. Scott McKenzie: "San Francisco" (around 244x). The unofficial anthem of the Summer of Love. He largely left the music business afterward.

9. Carl Douglas: "Kung Fu Fighting" (around 228x). Dashed off as a B-side, sold the world.

10. Bobby Helms: "Jingle Bell Rock" (around 227x). A holiday standard from 1957 that runs every December and dwarfs everything else he recorded.

11. Ram Jam: "Black Betty" (around 220x). A heavy reading of a much older folk song, and the band's only enduring trace.

12. Silver: "Wham Bam Shang-A-Lang" (around 206x). A short-lived 70s soft-rock band who left exactly one sun-warmed hit behind.

13. Sian Evans: "Hide U (Tinlicker Remix)" (around 180x). A modern melodic-house redo of a Kosheen song. Under her own name, almost nothing else gets played.

14. Mario Winans: "I Don't Wanna Know" (around 162x). A Diddy-stamped 2004 ballad that towers over his catalogue.

15. White Town: "Your Woman" (around 151x). A one-man bedroom project hit UK number one in 1997. He never tried to repeat it.

16. Thurston Harris: "Little Bitty Pretty One" (around 144x). The 1957 R&B version that became a standard, while its singer slipped from view.

17. Randy VanWarmer: "Just When I Needed You Most" (around 142x). A 1979 soft-rock ballad with an unmistakable autoharp solo, and almost nothing else.

18. Terry Jacks: "Seasons in the Sun" (around 139x). A breezy farewell sung from a deathbed perspective, sold millions, then quiet.

19. Billy Crystal: "If I Didn't Have You" (around 131x). An Oscar-winning Pixar duet from a comedian whose music career began and ended there.

20. Bobby McFerrin: "Don't Worry, Be Happy" (around 129x). Not actually his only song, but to streaming listeners it might as well be.

21. Edwyn Collins: "A Girl Like You" (around 123x). The Orange Juice frontman's swaggering solo hit eclipses his post-punk legacy on streams.

22. Samantha Sang: "Emotion" (around 121x). Written and produced by the Bee Gees at the peak of their powers. Nothing else came close.

23. Kevin Lyttle: "Turn Me On" (around 112x). A soca crossover smash that carried a whole genre into the global charts.

24. Elvin Bishop: "Fooled Around and Fell in Love" (around 109x). A famously atypical soft-rock hit from a respected blues guitarist who did not even sing lead on it.

25. Perera DJ: "Aventura Noturna" (around 99x). A Brazilian funk posse cut, packed with guest MCs, that dwarfs everything else under the producer's name.

26. Heartland: "I Loved Her First" (around 95x). A father-daughter country ballad that has lived at weddings for nearly two decades.

27. Nayer: "Suave (Kiss Me)" (around 92x). A 2011 Pitbull-and-Mohombi club track on which she takes the lead. Everything else under her name disappears.

28. Caesars: "Jerk It Out" (around 92x). A Swedish garage-rock track lifted to global fame by a single iPod commercial.

29. MoKenStef: "He's Mine" (around 91x). A 1995 R&B trio's cool, knowing single, built on a Bobby Caldwell groove.

30. Luniz: "I Got 5 on It" (around 91x). A West-Coast smoker's anthem that finds new life in films every few years.

31. Looking Glass: "Brandy (You're a Fine Girl)" (around 86x). A 1972 storytelling pop hit famously revived by Guardians of the Galaxy.

32. Junior Senior: "Move Your Feet" (around 81x). A Danish duo's irrepressibly cheerful dance-pop track from 2002.

33. Patrick Swayze: "She's Like the Wind" (around 81x). A Dirty Dancing soundtrack ballad sung by an actor.

34. Philip Bailey: "Easy Lover" (around 80x). The Earth, Wind and Fire singer's Phil-Collins-produced duet so outpaces his solo work that the rest barely registers.

35. King Harvest: "Dancing in the Moonlight" (around 77x). A 1973 soft-pop gem that simply keeps coming back, generation after generation.

36. EMF: "Unbelievable" (around 77x). A late-80s indie-dance breakout whose chorus is still everywhere.

37. Pras: "Ghetto Supastar" (around 73x). A Fugees member's solo hit, big enough to look like a one-hit story under his own name.

38. Mungo Jerry: "In the Summertime" (around 72x). A jug-band-flavoured 1970 anthem that returns every June.

39. Sham Rock: "Tell Me Ma" (around 69x). A traditional folk singalong dressed in 90s pop production. A St. Patrick's Day perennial.

40. Mambo Kingz: "Me Reclama" (around 69x). A Puerto Rican production duo's biggest credit, packed with reggaeton stars.

41. Cali Swag District: "Teach Me How to Dougie" (around 67x). A 2010 dance craze that became a permanent piece of pop-culture vocabulary.

42. The Knack: "My Sharona" (around 66x). The stuttering 1979 power-pop classic that outsold its band into oblivion.

43. Big Mountain: "Baby, I Love Your Way" (around 63x). A reggae remake that became the soundtrack hit and ate the originals.

44. Chesney Hawkes: "The One and Only" (around 63x). A 1991 UK number one so total that his name is shorthand for the one-hit-wonder concept itself.

45. Harvey Danger: "Flagpole Sitta" (around 63x). A nervy, paranoid alt-rock 1998 single that has comfortably outlasted the rest of the band's catalogue.

46. Citizen King: "Better Days" (around 63x). A laid-back 1999 alt-rock-rap hybrid that keeps turning up in adverts.

47. Skee-Lo: "I Wish" (around 63x). A famously wistful 1995 hip-hop hit. Almost everything else by him is forgotten.

48. The Tokens: "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" (around 61x). A 1961 doo-wop adaptation of an older South African song that has never gone away.

49. Mountain: "Mississippi Queen" (around 61x). Cowbell, riff, song. The rest is a footnote.

50. The Adventures of Stevie V: "Dirty Cash (Money Talks)" (around 59x). A turn-of-the-90s UK hip-house hit that outran the producer's whole career.

What this list says

The ratio does not measure quality. It measures concentration. Several artists on this list are genuinely important figures in their genres, including Philip Bailey, Pras, Bobby McFerrin, and Edwyn Collins. The ratio is not judging their careers; it is reading their streaming profile. Their best song is so far ahead of everything else that the gap is what defines them now, fairly or not.

If you would rather read it the other way, by raw reach instead of dominance, see The Biggest One-Hit Wonder of All Time. Or browse the full list and pick your own fights.