transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:00] What do the following authors have in common? JD. Salinger, Emily Bronte, and Oscar Wilde. I'll tell you, they're famous for writing just one novel. JD. Salinger, Catcher in the Rye, Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights, and Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray. Home runs, classics, enduring favorites, million sellers every year, lasting fame. But in each case, there were no follow ups. They were all one and done. JD. Salinger became a recluse. Emily Bronte died shortly after Wuthering Heights came out. And Oscar Wilde moved back to writing plays. So, as novelists go, they are all One Hit Wonders. When it comes to music, One Hit Wonders are an endless source of amusement. How can someone become internationally famous for decades when they only have one song that anybody cares about? These are special cases where lightning is captured exactly once. And no matter how many more songs these artists wrote, they would never ever achieve that extreme level of fame again. A single song overshadows every other effort. Let's apply this to the history of Alt‑Rock. What songs and what artists qualify? It took a bunch of research, but I think I managed to crack it using a combination of statistics. And we're now up to episode four of five, for now, in this mission. It's the 50 All‑Time Biggest Alt‑Rock One‑Hit Wonders of the last 50 years.

Speaker 2:
[01:33] This is the Ongoing History of New Music podcast with Alan Cross.

Speaker 1:
[01:40] Hi again, I'm Alan Cross. As anniversaries go, the 50th is a big one, half a century, and 50 years gives us enough time, perspective, and data to evaluate what exactly happened over those decades. It's also a great time for a little nostalgia. As I said here, it's 2026. If you were a kid 50 years ago, the biggest toys were Stretch Armstrong and the very first incarnation of Slime. 50 years ago, the biggest shows were Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley, and MASH. And when it came to movies, it was a remake of King Kong, we had The Omen, and we had Rocky. 1976 was also the year of the punk rock explosion. The spark that spawned 50 years of Alt‑Rock so far. Now, there are a variety of ways that we can commemorate this anniversary. And for whatever the reason, the first thing that popped into my head was the top 50 Alt‑Rock One‑Hit Wonders from these last 50 years. I mean, it kind of sounded like fun. So here was my methodology. Using Alt‑Rock radio charts, stretching back five decades, I compiled a rough list of artists with just one big song. Then I looked up the number of Spotify plays and YouTube videos for each of them. Then I added the two numbers together and the top 50 made the list. And finally, I had Walter the mathematician rank things using a logarithmic scale, which assigned each song a power ranking regarding its one‑hit wonderness. One being the lowest and 10 being the perfect Alt‑Rock One‑Hit Wonder. We have now reached number 20. And if I'm honest, I did not expect this song to chart so high, but here we are. It's a one‑hit wonder that's a cover of a one‑hit wonder. The original was released by Norman Greenbaum right around Christmas 1969. Although Norman was Jewish, he accepted a challenge to write a gospel song. The first version was arranged for a jug band. Then he tried it as a folk song, then a blues song, and finally a healthy dollop of psych was added. And that was the magic formula. After the holidays, it slowly crept up the billboard charts until it peaked at number three, and it stayed in that spot for 15 weeks. In Canada, it hit number one. Same thing in the UK, Australia, and half a dozen other countries. At least two million copies of the single were sold. And then after that, nothing. Norman released more music, but everything was a flop. Ten years after his big hit, he was working as a sous chef. The song itself, however, has been immortal. It's been in movies like Apollo 13, Ocean's Eleven, Wayne's World, and Guardians of the Galaxy. It was in a serial commercial for Kellogg's and another one for Nike. I read somewhere that at one point, it was the second most requested song at funerals. And when Gonzo writer Hunter S. Thompson died, he was cremated and his ashes were shot out of a cannon to the sounds of this song. Norman made some really good money for a long time before he sold the publishing rights. And today the song is owned by Concord Music, one of those big companies that are buying up catalogs. That's the first half of the story. In 1986, the song was resurrected by a weirdo English band called Doctor and the Medics. They were something of a cult act in the UK until they covered this Norman Greenbaum song. And they took it all the way to number one in Canada on the mainstream top 40 charts. In the US., it only got to number 69 on the Hot 100. But it was also embraced by Alt Rock Radio and has since become something of a retro staple. In case you haven't figured it out yet, the song is Spirit in the Sky. And here's Doctor and the Medics with their version. Doctor and the Medics with their One Hit Wonder of A One Hit Wonder, Spirit in the Sky from 1986. Like I said, I was shocked to see how high this one ranked on the list of All Time One Hit Wonders. But here are the numbers, 170 million Spotify plays and 32 million YouTube views. That's a total of 205.1 million. And Walter the Mathematician gives it a One Hit Wonder Power Ranking of 6.5 out of 10. Good for Precision Number 20 on this chart. Here's another weird one for number 19. Gather around, children, and let me tell you of a time when chanting monks were the hottest thing in music. There were a number of these CDs, most featuring actual Benedictine monks chanting in Latin like it was the 11th century. At the time, this was the gothiest of goth. I bought a bunch of these CDs, still got them someplace. The biggest success in this arena was a German studio project called Enigma, run by Michael Setu, who was originally from Romania. Before he discovered chanting monks in the late 1980s, he was working in the same sort of headspace as Peter Gabriel. Together with a couple of collaborators, Setu created this track. He says, questions the sexual perversity of the Marquis de Sade, which explains the slight difference in spelling between the German version and the releases in other parts of the world. When it was released in October 1990, it became the fastest ever song to reach number one in Germany. The record company was absolutely stunned. They thought so little of the song that they did not put any money into marketing. But because of that radio play and popularity in clubs, it exploded. Outside of Germany, Alt Rock Radio jumped on the song first, and by the time the dust settled, it was a clear top ten hit on no fewer than 31 charts around the world, 20 of them at number one. Total sales? Somewhere around 3 million. There was a problem, however. The Chanting Monks were sampled from a 1977 album without permission, and this resulted in a 1994 lawsuit, which saw the Benedictine Order get some cash. Enigma and Sadness Part One from the fall of 1990, massive global hit. The only hit for Enigma? Well, no, there was a track called Return to Innocence in 1993 that did kinda okay, but it had nowhere near the longevity of that first single. It might sound a little dated in some environments, but it keeps creeping into movies and TV shows. 127.8 million Spotify plays and 95.6 million YouTube views. That gives us 223.5 million and a subsequent One‑Hit Wonder power rating of 6.69 out of 10. I can understand why some people will bristle at number 18 on this list, which is A Girl Like You from Edwin Collins, especially if you're a fan of British indie rock from the 1980s. That's when Edwin was in a band called Orange Juice and they did okay with a 1982 album entitled Rip It Up. The title track reached number 10 in the UK. Orange Juice broke up in 1985 with Edwin going solo a year later and things began badly with a few stiffs that weren't held by record company trouble. So Edwin took a break. He spent some time building a home studio and it was there that he recorded an album entitled Gorgeous George. One song from that album had the right stuff. A Girl Like You literally came out of nowhere, first on the album and then on the soundtrack of the movie Empire Records. Top ten on charts around the world, including the alt‑rock charts. And then nothing. But there's a good reason for that. We'll get to that in a moment. 168 million plays on Spotify as of February 2026, add in 82.1 million YouTube views, and you have 250 million cases of listening and viewing. The power ranking of this song is 6.89 out of 10. Edwin Collins in A Girl Like You, his only real solo hit through 10 albums, at least in North America. There have been a few other tracks that made the indie charts. Collins might have done much, much more, but in the middle of a radio interview in February 2005, he had a headache, which turned out to be a cerebral hemorrhage that left him with a need for long‑term physical therapy. For a while, the only words he could speak were yes, no, Grace Maxwell, that's his wife's name, and oddly, the possibilities are endless. Edwin has recovered substantially, although he still has extreme weakness on his right side. He wrote a book, participated in a documentary, and has returned to performing and recording. He's also known as a producer, and he's written several books for Birdwatchers. For number 17, we're going back to Germany. In 1983, Peter Schilling released an album entitled Error in the System. This was in the middle of the Techno-Pop phase of New Wave, and it featured his only international hit. He'd always been a Bowie fan, and was fascinated by the fate of Major Tom in Bowie's 1969 song, Space Oddity. The main character's fate is never resolved in that song, so we can only assume that he is still floating out in space while yearning to come home. The original was performed in German and reached number one on the charts in West Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Nine months later, it was released worldwide with English lyrics. Big new wave hit in Canada, where it reached number one on the singles charts. It also hit number 14 in the US and number two on the American dance chart, thanks to a really solid 12‑inch remix. The song was also embraced by Alt Rock Radio in both Canada and the US. But after that, absolutely nothing outside of German speaking countries, despite many albums that extended through 2021. Most of what Peter Schilling has done is pretty space rock, with a lot of references to aliens and sci‑fi. As of February 2026, the English language version has 148 million Spotify plays and 139 million views on YouTube. It's one‑hit wonderness rank is 7.13 out of 10. It's Peter Schilling and Major Tom coming home. So whatever happened to Peter Schilling? He's still out there. He's touring in his 70s. He also has a series of children's books called Der Klein Major Tom that he actually did with the German Aerospace Center. This project and music associated with it has been used with various German space missions. When we get to number 16 in just a second, we not only have to go back to 1997, but also all the way back to 1932. This is part 4 of a 5, well, you'll see 6 part series on the biggest alt‑rock one‑hit wonders of all time. After extensive data analysis using radio charts, Spotify plays and YouTube views, it has been determined that number 16 is a weird crossover hit from White Town. White Town is a British producer named Jati Mishra. He was born in India but moved to England with his parents when he was very young. His first great musical loves were The Pixies and Primal Scream. He formed White Town in the late 80s, but eventually all the members peeled away, leaving Mishra with some synthesizers and a drum machine. In 1996, he came up with a song that appeared on an album called Abort, Retry, Fail, which was released on an indie label called Parasol Records. That's when it attracted the attention of EMI Records, who re-released it on an album entitled Women in Technology. If this sounds like some sort of old-timey song played off a 78 rpm record, you're not wrong. The muted trumpet bit is a sample taken from a 1932 song entitled My Woman by Lew Stone and his Monsignor band. Mishra first heard that song while watching a 1976 BBC series called Pennies from Heaven. The rest of the track was composed using some primitive MIDI software that he downloaded for free for his personal computer. Again, this is 1996. And that computer was an Atari ST which had a full one megabyte of memory. From there, everything was dumped onto a cheap multi‑track cassette recorder. Nothing sounded like this back then, and nothing looked like it either. The video was shot in black and white on 16 millimeter film. The song's life started at Alt Rock Radio, but then it spread to top 40 where it made the top five in about a dozen countries, including number two in Canada and number one in the UK. Let's have a listen. This is Whitetown and Your Woman. The only thing we ever really heard from Whitetown, that's Your Woman from 1997. There have been many albums since, at least six, along with a bunch of EPs, but never any other notable singles, not even Close. But Mishra, Whitetown, is philosophic about things. It's better to be a one‑hit wonder than a no‑hit wonder, he theorizes, and he's not wrong. To be a professional musician and to be entertaining people 20 years after my biggest hit, I feel like I'm the luckiest person alive just to have one song that connects with people. Most musicians dream their entire lives of having that. That's the attitude. Be grateful that you had any kind of success. Your Woman has had 233 million Spotify plays and 93 million views on YouTube. That's 326 million overall. And on Walter the Mathematician's logarithmic one‑hit wonder power scale, it's 7.36 out of 10, and like I said, number 16 overall. Song number 15 came at a time when alt‑rock was experiencing a huge amount of material released by strong women, some of whom were very, very angry. Alanis Morissette was the biggest of the bunch, but we also had Fiona Apple, Tori Amis, Courtney Love, PJ Harvey, and so many others. When this song first came into the radio station in 1997, we all thought it was a new song from Alanis Morissette, but no, it was from Meredith Brooks. She was from Oregon, not Ottawa. She had been working on a music career since the mid‑1970s, with very little success in both bands and as a solo artist. But in 1995, Capitol Records heard something in her that they really liked and signed her to a deal. The result was an album called Blurring the Edges. It went top 25. It got her an opening slot for the Rolling Stones. She performed as part of Sarah McLachlan's Lilith Fair, and this single was nominated for not one, but two Grammy Awards. Meredith Brooks and Bitch, her one and only hits. It began its journey on alt‑rock radio and eventually crossed over into the realm of top 40, charting in two dozen countries around the world. It was number two in both Canada and the US., and sales of the single were somewhere around two million. But despite many more albums and record deals, Meredith was never able to reproduce that kind of success or anything close to it. However, she still was able to make a living with music. There was a children's record, some mentoring of other artists, and most profitably, the song I'm a Mess by Bibi Rexha. That song was included on her debut album Expectations and borrowed heavily from Bitch. When it was released as a single, it charted around the world and sold somewhere around four million copies, and Meredith is listed as a co-writer. Nice little payday. And as of February 2026, it has had 295 million Spotify plays and 54 million YouTube views, which is a total of 348.9 million, good for a One Hit Wonder power ranking of 7.48 out of 10. At number 14, it's another One Hit Wonder that just hasn't gone away since it was released in 1997. John Wozniak formed Marcy Playground in Minneapolis in 1994, taking the name from a playground at a school that John attended. John knocked around for a while with some Indie releases recorded in his bedroom. Then he moved to New York City where he met up with a couple of like‑minded guys and more writing and rehearsals continued until Capitol Records heard something that they liked. A self‑titled album came out in February 1996 and was introduced by a song called Poppies, which was greeted by overwhelming indifference. The second single entitled St. Joe and the School Bus fared a little better, but I got to tell you, if I'm honest, I don't remember that one at all. Then came the third single. It was kind of down tempo grunge. It was kind of psych and kind of sexy. And yes, it does have its roots in something a friend said when she walked in on John and his girlfriend while they were getting busy. The single worked. It first got traction at Alt Rock Radio, where it stayed at number one on the modern rock charts for 15 weeks before spreading to mainstream rock radio, and then top 40. It reached as high as number two on the mainstream singles charts in Canada and number eight in the US. It also did very well in several countries in Europe. There were other albums and singles over the next 20 years, but nothing ever topped this for Marcy Playground. Sex and Candy from Marcy Playground. 328.7 million plays on Spotify and just over 60 million views on YouTube. That's a total of 388.9 million. And Walter the Mathematician gives it a power ranking on our One Hit Wonder scale of 7.67 out of 10. Marcy Playground still exists, and you can find John Wozniak on LinkedIn where he lists his experience as, quote, rock star. He's currently living in Vancouver where he works as a producer and composer. He's the owner of Mushroom Studios and has done A&R work for Capitol Records. We'll move on to number 13 in a moment, and it's another song that had to be remixed before anyone paid attention. Oh, and the iPod commercial also helped. Moving to song number 13 on our list of the biggest alt‑rock one‑hit wonders of the last 50 years, it's The Caesars. They were formed in Stockholm in 1995, and went through a couple of name changes before becoming just The Caesars. It was under that name that they released an album entitled Paper Tigers in 2005. Great record, lots of critical buzz. And it contained a remix of a song that appeared on a previous record called Love for the Streets, when the band was still known as Caesars Palace. It was this new version that was selected by Apple for use in an iPod commercial, and that's how the song came to my attention. In fact, that spot was probably the catalyst for what followed. Alt‑Rock Radio loved it and started playing it. Then it became a top 25 hit on the Canadian singles charts, and it got all the win at number 8 in the UK. Overall sales of the single are somewhere around a million copies. And the song has never gone away. More TV commercials, half a dozen video games, TV shows like Ted Lasso. And this is why it's at number 13 on our list, with 381 million plays on Spotify and 28 million YouTube views. It's the Caesars and Jerk It Out. The Caesars and their only true hit, Jerk It Out, specifically the remix version from 2005, although it did first appear in 2002. It's one hit wonder power ranking, based on the numbers I told you about, is 7.76 out of 10. The last people who expected to have a genuine global hit were the people in England's Chumbawamba. Yes, we've come to that song. And here they are at number 12 on the list. Chumbawamba first came together in 1982, and for most of their career were into anarchy, communism, and general disdain for mainstream society. Marxism, class struggle, anti-fascism, feminism, communism, and civil disobedience were their thing, and they did not take to authority well. Their methods were super indie, super DIY with their own label. Over the years, their sound evolved to include everything from punk to folk to dance to techno. That led to a deal with a bigger indie label, and then shockingly, a deal with EMI in 1997. This is interesting in that Chumbawamba released an EP called FEMI back in 1988, and signing to a major label did not sit well with their anarcho-punk brethren, and it caused a pretty nasty backlash. But they pressed ahead and released their debut major label single in August 1997, which was an introduction to their eighth album, and they had no clue as to what was about to happen. Tubthumping was written in a pub in Leeds, and was supposed to be a rallying call for people to be resistant to whatever the world threw at them. It was supposed to be a serious song for the working class, but then the song exploded. It reached number two on the British singles charts, selling nearly a million copies in the UK alone. This caught the attention of Alt‑Rock Stations in North America, who edited to their playlists. Number one on that chart, too. Then number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in America, number one in Canada, number one in Australia, New Zealand, Italy, Ireland, Scotland, and top 10 in other territories. And thanks to a million different remixes, it even did well on the global dance charts. Three million copies of this album were sold in the US alone. 301 million Spotify plays and 114 million YouTube views. That's 415.2 million in total. The One Hit Wonder power ranking of this song is 7.79 out of 10. Tub Thumping took Chumbawombo from this obscure, anarchistic musical collective to worldwide stars. So how did they deal with that transition? Well, by trying to remain as punk as they could. They told fans to steal their CDs from big chain stores if they couldn't afford them. They turned down over a million dollars from Nike to use the song in a commercial campaign. And at a rally for striking workers when they played this song, one of the members poured a jug of water over the Deputy Prime Minister. Chumble Wamba eventually left EMI and went Indy again, but by 2012, they ran out of gas and broke up. The various members from over the years, and there were at least two dozen of them, have gone on to do other things. Meanwhile, this song has become part of pop culture, a meme that shows up every once in a while. And that's what we have for number 12. Our final song for this episode, number 11, is one of the purest feats of pop songwriting ever. And it comes from the only album this artist ever released. The Laws were a four‑piece band from Liverpool, led by the very enigmatic Lee Mavres. The roots of this band go back to 1983, and they struggled with different lineups until they finally got things together enough to record a self‑titled album in 1990. This was a struggle because Mavres had a sound in his head. He was an absolute perfectionist, and for whatever reason, he couldn't reproduce in the studio what he heard in his head. He was obsessed, too obsessed. Finally, the label ran out of patience after spending close to a million pounds recording this album and released what they had. This 1990 self‑titled album didn't sound like anything happening at the time, although there were comparisons to The Beatles and The Kinks. And looking back, it's a precursor to what would become Britpop in a couple of years. Mavers was really angry that this version of the album was made public. To him, it still wasn't right, it wasn't finished. When interviewed about the record, he disavowed it, even as critics all over the world gushed about it. And then he basically disappeared, bitter about what the music industry had done to him. For the next 15 years, he'd show up in public very, very occasionally. Tracking him down was like trying to find Bigfoot. A few journalists have managed to do that, but their conclusions were all the same. There would be no more music from the laws. Mayvers has done OK, though. The big song from the album, there were five singles, and this one was released and then re-released, earns him at least $100,000 a year. It's still played on radio, still used in TV and movies, and is still being covered. 494 million Spotify plays and 31 million YouTube views. That gives us a grand total of 525 million. On our scale of 1 to 10, that gives it a power ranking of 8.21. The Laws, and There She Goes, 1988 for the first single, 1994 its release as a single from the only album ever by the band. Lee Mavers is still largely MIA, and John Powers, the other main member of the band, went on to form the band CAST. Everyone else, and there were many former members of the Laws, have been toiling in obscurity. Let's run down what we just heard on episode four of the biggest alt‑rock one‑hit wonders of the last 50 years. Number 20, Spirit in the Sky from Doctor and the Medics, making it the only cover of another one‑hit wonder on this list. There's Enigma and Sadness, part one, that was 19. Then A Girl Like You from Edwin Collins at 18. 17 was Peter Schilling and Major Tom Coming Home. White Town and Your Woman was at 16. We found Meredith Brooks and Bitch at 15. Then Marcy Playground and Sex and Candy at 14. The Caesars, Jerk It Out at 13. Jumbo Wumba and Tub Thumping at 12. And The Laws at 11 with There She Goes. All right, what could possibly be in the top 10? To make it from here on in, songs had to have almost 600 million Spotify plays and YouTube views. There is one more cover to go. And I will tell you that the top three all have totals in the billions. We'll find out everything on chapter five of this project next time. Until then, get caught off on the series by downloading all the podcasts. They're free, wherever you can find the Ongoing History of New Music. In fact, take as many episodes as you want. There are hundreds to choose from and they're all, like I said, free. There's also my other podcast, Uncharted, Crime and Mayhem and the Music Industry. And that's where we look at where true crime meets music. There were dozens of those podcasts too. My website is ajournalofmusicalthings.com. It's updated every single day with music news, recommendations and opinion. Sign up for the free daily newsletter. And if you have any questions or comments, send them to me via email at alan and alancross.ca. What will be the top ten all‑time Alt‑Rock One‑Hit Wonders? We'll find out. That's next time. Technical Productions by Rob Johnston. I'm Alan Cross.