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Ongoing History of New Music
The 50 Biggest Alt-Rock One-Hit Wonders of All Time: Part 3 (30-21)
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Terms apply. Learn more@americanexpress.com Business AmEx Business Gold Card built for business by American Express Usually, if something is one of a kind, it is at the very least unique. And if enough people lust after this thing, it can be very, very valuable. Take the case of an artist having one and only one big hit. A song that forever defines them. And no matter how hard they try, the artist is never ever able to scale those heights again. On the positive side, a one hit wonder can provide a steady stream of income for years, even decades. In that sense, if you're a giant success with this one song, you are a giant success forever. If it's sufficiently enduring and popular, this one song could pay for a house, some cars, putting your kids through college, and more. You may never have to work again because of this one song. But it can also be a negative. What? You can only write one good song, What a loser, that kind of thing. And maybe this inability to repeat your success weighs on your psyche. It's not fair, but you know how humans can be. But hey, having one hit is better than having zero hits, right? So shouldn't this achievement be celebrated? I think so. This is part three of the Biggest All Time Alt Rock One Hit Wonders. This is the ongoing History of New Music podcast with Alan Cross. Welcome again, I'm Alan Cross and this is the third installment of a browse through the history of alt rock in an attempt to rank the biggest alt rock one hit wonders of all time. Our starting point is 1976, the year of the original Punk rock explosion. Virtually all alt rock descended from that time. So it kind of makes sense. 2026, which is when this series was conceived, marks 50 years since then. The 50 biggest one hit wonders from 50 years of this kind of music. Now this was a massive undertaking and I make no guarantees that list I came up with will be definitive for all time. Even after we started production, there had to be revisions because I thought of another song that had to be included. But overall I think it's a pretty good ranking. I hope the standard music industry definition of a one hit wonder is an artist who had one song and only one song to make the Billboard top 40. Those 40 slots are where hits have lived since the 1950s. And in pre Internet days you had to sell a lot of physical records and get a lot of radio airplay to get above number 41 on the Hot 100. This is the domain of all those Casey Kasem countdowns, but that's a pretty narrow lane, especially when it comes to the alt rock universe. The Billboard top 40 is the mainstream of the mainstream. Some alt rock songs have crossed over into that realm, but most have not. And with the advent of multi format specific charts along with YouTube and streaming and all that, we can draw on a lot more data to determine one hit wonderness. So here's what I did for this series. I compiled a rough list of about 100 songs which sold well and made alt rock charts over the decades. I filtered for regional hits, downvoting songs that for example, were only hit in the UK or Canada. Everything on this list has to be globally popular, at least reasonably so. Then I looked at the number of Spotify plays each song has had and then added that to the number of its YouTube views. And from there I had Walter the mathematician rank everything on a logarithmic scale, giving each song a one hit wonder power rating between 1 and 10. And from there was a simple matter of sorting things on a spreadsheet. Is this perfect? No. I know that you will inevitably yell at me saying hey, this band had this song and this song too. And that will be true. Their fanbase appreciates more than the one hit. But we're looking at things from 35,000ft. We want an overview of alt rock artists from the last 50 years. And this is key. Who will forever be defined by one and only one song in the eyes of the typical alt rock fan? You got it. And notice that I'm using the term biggest one hit wonder, not greatest. That's important. And that reason will come up later. In the series. So are we clear? Good. Let's continue this march up the list with song number 30, which is from the California band Dishwalla. The name comes from a particular occupation in India, the guy who comes to install a satellite dish for your home. Keyboardist Greg Kolonek came up with it after the group found out that their previous name, Dish, was already being used via a cease and desist order from this other band. He found the word Dishwalla in an article in Wired magazine. Dishwalla was sucked up in the alt rock explosion of the early 1990s and they released a major label debut called Pet yout friends in 1995. There were four singles from that album, but only one troubled the charts. Alt Rock Radio played it, which pushed it up the rock charts, but it also became an actual top 40 hit in both Canada and the U.S. 16 in Canada, no. 15 in the U.S. and the single sold 500,000 copies. Since then there have been 66.2 million Spotify plays and 19 million YouTube views for a total of 85.2 million. Walter the mathematician gives it a one hit wonder power ranking of 4.98 out of 10 and the song is Counting Blue Cars. Dishwalla with number 30 on our list of the biggest alt rock one hit wonders of the last 50 years. Counting Blue Cars. Like I said, massive hit for them and it even won a couple of industry awards in 1996, but nothing happened after that and they broke up in 2005. However, they did reform in 2008 and were found playing bills with other 90s bands like Collective Soul, Vertical Horizon, Fuel, Marcy Playground and Gin blossoms. At number 29. It's a song from 1983 from real life, an Australian synth pop band. They've done okay at home since they came together in 1980. They're still together as far as I know, but outside of Australia and a tiny bit in Germany. That's been it from them. But this debut single was a global hit for them twice. By 1984 it had not only become an alt rock radio hit, but a dance club hit and a Billboard top 40 hit in America, where it reached number 29. It did even better in Canada, reaching as high as number 18. The song was then re released in 1989 and that summer it reached number 26 in America. It's since been in a series of movies, a couple of TV shows, and has been covered several times by a surprising number of metal and industrial bands. This is Real Life and the original version. So that's 1994 of Send Me an Angel, Australia's real life with a song that was a one hit wonder twice. That's weird. The original version in 1984 and a slightly remixed version from 1989. 54.9 million Spotify plays and 35 million YouTube views as of February 2026. That's a total of 89 million, which is good for a one hit wonder power ranking of 5.05. Number 28 of 50 on this list is a Talking Heads offshoot project. In 1981, drummer Chris France and his bass playing wife Tina Weymouth wanted to explore dance music. This led them to writing a song based on a groove from a 1980 dance track called More Bounce to the Ounce from Zap, a funk band from Ohio. To avoid messing with Talking Head success, it was originally released only outside of North America, but when it sold 100,000 copies as an import, Sire Records, the Talking Heads label decided to release it domestically and it became a top 40 hit, reaching number 31. Alt rock radio also played it, but where the song really generated income was from samples and interpolations, the biggest of which was in the Mariah Carey song Fantasy that was a number one hit for eight weeks in the US and a number one hit in about a dozen countries around the world. Because the Tom Tom Club sample was the basis of that hit, Chris and Tina got songwriting credits on this Mariah Carey song. Yes, and because the album from whence it came sold 20 million copies, they made more money from this song than all the money they made with Talking Heads. Let's go back to the original 78.4 million Spotify plays and 40.8 million YouTube views. That's 119.2 million. Good for a power ranking of 5.57. Tom Tom Club and Genius of love number 28 on this list of the 50 biggest alt rock one hit wonders of the last 50 years. Here we go with number 27. American hi Fi was born in Boston in 1998 and was fronted by singer Stacy Jones. Stacy was a refugee from Veruca Salt, where he was their drummer. If you know a band called Letters to Cleo, he was associated with them too. American hi Fi still exists, but they've never been able to equal the success of their debut single, which arrived just before Christmas in 2000 and was produced by Canadian Bob Rock. It was never a true top 40 hit in America. It stalled at number 41, but it did reach 39 in Canada and 31 in the UK and it was top five when it came to alt rock radio. There were two more singles that achieved a little attention, but nothing that we need to talk about. But this one song has been very, very good to them. 108.6 million Spotify plays and 13.3 million views on YouTube. That's a total of 121.9 million. So that gives us a power rating of 5.61 out of 10. And the song is Flavor of the Week. Her boyfriend he don't know any boundaries Tombstone Nintendo I wish that I could make her sing American hi fi with number 27 on this list of the 50 biggest alt rock one hit wonders of the last 50 years. Like I said, the band is still together and leader Stacey Jones is spending most of his time working as a producer. His credits include bands like Plain White Tees and he has served as musical director for Miley Cyrus, Five Seconds of Summer and the Chainsmokers. Call it a career change. In just a sec. We'll get to number 26 on this list, which is a former ska band from Scotland who had a very un ska hit.
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Let's continue with our countdown of the biggest alt rock one hit wonders since 1976. We're up to number 26 now and it comes from Fiction Factory. They started as a ska band but turned into a smooth new wave band by the time they released their debut album in 1984. It was called Throw the Warped Wheel Out. The first single didn't do much, but the second single, yeah, that one caught fire. They called it an anti love song. Number six in the UK, selling 200,000 copies. It was also a top ten hit in Switzerland and Germany. In North America it was a hit with new waivers and on the few commercial alt rock stations in existence back then. But just as things got rolling, three of the five members quit. A second album called Another Story was released in 1985, but it was a complete flop and by 1987 the band was gone. Of the band's six singles, this is the only one that made any kind of impact. And it lives on 92.8 million Spotify plays and 29.5 million views on YouTube for a total of 122.2 million. This is good for a one hit wonder power ranking of 5.62 out of 10. It's Fiction Factory and Feels Like Heaven, Fiction Factory and Feels Like Heaven. I've ranked that as number 26 on the top 50 of the biggest alt rock one hit wonders of all time. Next up at number 25 is one of those many alt rock one hit wonders we got in the late 1990s. Tony's came out of Fort Worth, Texas in 1989. They started by releasing some indie cassettes and one EP before they were signed by Interscope Records. Their debut, a record called Rubberneck was released in August 1994 and over the next 18 months it was a steady seller, eventually going platinum. It was a great time for the band. Lots of radio airplay. Well for this one song, along with tours with the Chili Peppers, White Zombie, Bush and others, they were especially huge in their native Texas. But when it came time to record a sophomore album, things did not go well. They called it Feeler and when they presented it to interscope in late 1997, it was rejected. Ouch. Two years later they tried again, releasing salvaged songs and new ones under the title Hell Below Stars Above. This time Interscope relented, but put pretty much zero money into promotion and marketing. This was demoralizing and the bass player quit and the group fell apart. There was a reunion in 2006 which continues to today, but they have never been able to recreate what they achieved in the mid-90s. So let's go back to that one hit, there's a lake near Fort Worth where legend has it that a cult went to set themselves on fire in order to send themselves to a higher plane of existence of some sort. Which kind of casts a weird pall on an otherwise cool song, doesn't it? Toadies and Possum Kingdom, their only hit despite years of trying. It was a genuine American top 40 hit, reaching, well, number 40, but that still counts. It was also a major rock track in both Canada and the US. As of February 2026, it has had 120.4 million plays on Spotify and 30.2 million views on YouTube. That's a total of 150.7 million, and Walter the mathematician assigns it a one hit wonder power rating of 5.99 out of 10. The next track at number 24 is about as pure a one hit wonder as you can guess. Let me give you some facts about it. It's a brilliant track that reached number one on the Billboard charts in the US. It was number three in Canada, number three in the UK, and top 40 in a dozen other countries around the world. It was also top 10 on various rock and dance charts. The album was top 10 in the US where it sold more than a million copies. The UK saw sales of 100,000, same with Canada. There are several samples that we can hear throughout the recording, but the most prominent is someone going, oh, and yes, that is comedian Andrew Dice Clay, who cleared the sample for free. The band is EMF, and from the fall of 1990, this is the unbelievable one hit wonder called Unbelievable.
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You're unbelievable.
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EMF was a massive song from the early 90s, and despite the band being the subject of a bidding war when they were first signed, they were incapable of developing any other hit single of any sort. There were three more singles from their debut album Shubert Dip. One was called I Believe, and it did achieve kind of sorta hit status in a few places, but almost no one remembers it. There was a second album called Stigma in 1992 which disappeared pretty quickly. Same thing with a release from 1995 called Cha Cha Cha. There was a breakup in 1996, a reunion in 2001, a breakup in 2002, a reunion in 2007, a breakup in 2009, then a reunion in 2012. That one has stuck, resulting in two albums which did not chart anywhere. However, do not feel bad for singer Ian Dench. He wrote the duet Beautiful Liar, the duet between Beyonce and Shakira, which was a massive worldwide hit. He's written three more hits for Beyonce, tracks for the Prodigy, Florence and the Machine and others, including one or two songs for Broadway productions. And for a while he was a VP of A and R at Epic Records in New York. And Ian continues to make money from unbelievable as of February 2026, it has had 140.6 million Spotify plays and 15.9 million YouTube views. That's a total of 161.7 million, which gives it a one hit wonder rating of 6.06 out of 10. Three more to go for this edition of the countdown, and the next one is another solitary hit that at least got the singer involved in Hollywood. Well, for a little while anyway.
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This is episode three of a study of the biggest one hit wonders in the 50 year history of alt rock. And at number 23 is a song that continues to endure on radio and online since its release in 1996. Space Hog came out of New York. Although the four guys in the band were all British, they were pretty theatrical. The two brothers, Royston and Anthony Langdon looked like something out of David Bowie's Spiders From Mars band, and the drummer had this big gong behind him that he routinely set on fire. Their record deal came with sire records in 1994 and they released a debut album called resident alien in October 1996. That's a good title given their love of Ziggy Era Bowie and their immigration status. It was recorded mostly in a barn in upstate New York. It was a big hit gold record in the us, a platinum one in Canada, and they did this on the back of six singles from the album. Okay, only really one of them. It was an actual top 40 hit in Canada reaching 33, and in the US it was number 32, and in the UK number two, but that was that. I've got some stats on the obligatory where are they now? Story in just a second, but first though, here's Spacehog, and In the meantime. Space Hog, and In the meantime from 1996, and that's essentially all we ever heard from them. There was a follow up record in 1998 called the Chinese Album. It came and went with barely a ripple. And it was even worse for a 2001 album entitled the Hogassee. And that was it until a reunion in 2006 which has resulted in one further album in 2013 that nobody paid attention to. Most of the band has disappeared. Anthony Langan, the guitarist found himself in a Joaquin Phoenix documentary called I'm Still Here, but he ended up in a lawsuit for allegedly sexually harassing the cinematographer Royston Langdon. The singer and bass player had a shot at being the singer in Velvet Revolver, but the job went to Scott Weiland, and for five years he was married to actress Liv Tyler, the daughter of Aerosmith Steven Tyler. She's been in three Lord of the Rings movies, a couple of Marvel films and a few TV shows, and they have a son together. As for the numbers behind in the meantime, it has 142 million Spotify plays and 19.5 million views on YouTube for a total of 161.7 million. Walter the mathematician's one hit wonder rating is 6.11 out of 10. Every once in a while when I was compiling this list, I came upon a song that surprised me with its continuing popularity. And this is one of those times. The band is better than Ezra. Now you might want to know who is Ezra? The band is never said, but there is a whiskey sold in Louisiana called Ezra, so that's a possibility. And I do know that their fans refer to themselves as Ezra Lites. They were formed in New Orleans in 1988. There was a debut indie album in 1990 and another one in 1993, and then they were swept up in all the signings that happened during the alternative boom in the early and mid-90s. It was the second indie record, which was called Deluxe, that did it for them. Better than Ezra. It was picked up by Electra Records, who re released Deluxe with some big promotion and marketing. Within seven weeks it reached number 35 on the American album charts on its way to selling a million copies. And in Canada it sold a very respectable 50,000. The band is still together, but not once in the subsequent seven albums has Better Than Ezra been able to release a song as good as Good. It was good. Better than Ezra from 1995 with Good, which, to be clear, was not their only hit. They did show up periodically after that, but you have to be a pretty big fan to remember any of their other singles. So is it unfair that they've been labeled a one hit wonder? Well, probably. But since when has the music business been fair? By the numbers, good has had 105.7 million Spotify plays and just over 65 million YouTube views. That gives them a total of 171 million and a one hit wonderness rating of 6.21 out of 10. Now, there is no disputing the one hit wonderness of this song from Harvey Danger. They were formed by a couple of journalism students out of Seattle who say that this name, Harvey Danger, was part of some graffiti on the wall at the University of Washington's newspaper office. The band itself was started as a joke, but then they became unexpected local heroes and started recording demos. This resulted in an indie album entitled where have all the Merrymakers Gone? And from Seattle it started to spread. One of those demo cassettes ended up at Slash Records, thanks to an intern at the label who really believed in the band and the kid was right. And Slash funded the release of a CD which spread from one radio station to another. Total cost to Harvey danger was about $3,000. The lead single became a big hit on the rock charts all over the world. It sold 500,000 copies in the US and why not? I mean, it's a great piece of power pop with some super clever lyrics. According to the band's drummer. It's a comment on what happened to the Seattle music scene as the result of the grunge era. The title was taken from a reference in an old Marx Brothers movie. And the spelling of Sitter was changed to reflect the titles of some hip hop songs. So Sitter became Sita. This is Harvey Danger and Flagpole Cita. So hard. Cause I've been around the world and found that only stupid people are breeding. Harvey Danger from 1998 with Flagpole Sita. 167 million Spotify plays and 12.3 million YouTube views. That's 179.5 million in total. And our one hit wonder rating is 6.3 out of 10. There were two more Harvey Danger albums in 2000 and 2005, but they were, well, let's just say unloved. They broke up in 2001, but were formed for five years between 2004 and 2009. Singer Sean Nelson has had a writing career with various publications and has hosted a couple of podcasts. Guitarist Mike Squires fell in with Duff McKagan of Guns N Roses in his band Loaded. He's also played in Ugly Kid Joe and with Joy Division and New Order bass player Peter Hook, and he's worked as a guitar teacher and drummer. John Roderick also got into podcasts. He co wrote some songs with people including Canadian Kathleen Edwards, and he's also become a member of the Seattle Music Commission and tried to run for city council in 2015, but he finished third. And there's more Remember a Twitter meme called Bean Dad? This was a post where a guy wouldn't let his 9 year old daughter eat a can of baked beans until she could figure out how to open the can herself use using an old fashioned can opener and it took her six hours. Twitter did not take kindly to this, saying that this was a form of child abuse and began attacking him as the Bean Dad. It got so bad that he received a visit from Seattle Protective Services, but they found out that everything was okay. Roderick's daughter was not being starved let's review this episode of the biggest alt rock one hit wonders of the last 50 years. At number 30, Dishwalla and counting blue cars at 29, send me an angel from Real Life. Then it was Genius of Love by Tom Tom Club at 28, a song that found a second life when it was sampled for a Mariah Carey song. Flavor of the Week by American hi fi is number 27. Then it was back to 1983 for Fiction Factory and Feels Like Heaven. At number 2625 was Possum Kingdom from the Toadies and then EMF with unbelievable at position 24. 23 was in the Meantime by Spacehog. We had Good from Better than Ezra at 22 and finally Harvey Danger and Flagpole Cita at at 21. If you've been following along, you're probably wondering if your picks made it into the top 20. And I will tell you that the next batch of songs includes one cover, an unofficial sequel to a song from the 1970s, some chanting monks and a song that sampled something from 1932. If you need to get caught up, go get the podcast from wherever you get your podcasts. Just search for ongoing history of new music and you'll find hundreds and hundreds of episodes that you can choose from. And you might as well look for my other podcast uncharted crime and mayhem in the music industry. It can be pretty serious as it looks at the intersection of true crime and music. There are dozens of episodes. There's my website ajournalofmusicalthings.com where you can subscribe to my daily newsletter and all the social media platforms. Email can go to AllenCross CA. See you next time for part four of the 50 biggest alt rock one hit wonders of the last 50 years. Technical Productions by Rob Johnston I'm Alan Cross hey there.
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