Biggest One-Hit Wonders of All Time

The Irish singer who has courted controversy throughout her career notched her lone No. 1 hit, so far. “Nothing Compares 2 U,” a remake of a Prince song, reached the top position on April 21, 1990 and stayed there for four weeks. The song was on the Billboard Hot 100 chart for 21 weeks.

Canadian singer Alannah Myles’ lone No.1 song reached Billboard’s Hot 100 top spot on March 24, 1990. The song occupied that position for two weeks and was in the Billboard chart for 24 weeks. The song, which garnered a Grammy Award for Myles in 1991, was written by Canadian musicians David Tyson and Christopher Ward about Elvis Presley.

Raised in Harlem by a Venezuelan mother and a father from the Caribbean island of Antigua, Abbott is a prolific songwriter (Jennifer Warnes, Whitney Houston, and 50 Cent are among those who have recorded his work), but “Shake You Down” is his claim to fame as a performer.

A-ha was the first Norwegian group to have a No. 1 single in the U.S. The synth-pop song “Take On Me” topped Billboard’s Hot 100 for one week and spent 27 weeks on the chart. The band is remembered for its groundbreaking video for the song that combined live action with illustrations. The video was created by Steve Barron, who directed Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean.”

While disco had largely fallen out of favor as a popular music style by the 1980s, the disco/funk/R&B group Lipps Inc. managed to strike gold in 1980 with their disco hit “Funkytown.” Though they failed to reach that level of mainstream success again, they had a number of additional songs that performed well on the Dance Club charts.