One-Hit Wonder - TV Tropes

"So many lovely melodies...
So many messages to convey...
But they don't care about any of these...
Play that one damn song
is what they all say."

• Elvin Bishop is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, but as a solo artist, he is known almost entirely for his 1976 hit "Fooled Around and Fell in Love", which reached #3 on the Hot 100. While Bishop wrote the lyrics and played lead guitar on the recording, he believed his gritty voice wasn't a good match for the song. Instead, the lead vocals were handled by future Jefferson Starship singer Mickey Thomas.
• J.J. Cale had only one top 40 hit in the US, with 1972's "Crazy Mama". Overall, he's better known for writing the Eric Clapton classics "Cocaine" and "After Midnight", and his original version of "Cocaine" was a #1 hit in New Zealand, of all places.
• Delbert McClinton is a true rarity, as he managed to be a one-hit wonder on three different charts with three different songs. First, he hit #8 on the pop charts in 1980 with the blues-rock song "Givin' It Up for Your Love". Then he got to #13 on Mainstream Rock Tracks in 1992 with "Every Time I Roll the Dice"^note . Then he got to #4 on the country charts in 1993 as a duet partner on Tanya Tucker's "Tell Me About It". He remained a fairly popular artist regardless, having written Emmylou Harris's 1978 hit "Two More Bottles of Wine" in addition to winning a handful of Grammys.
• Alannah Myles is mainly known for her late-1989 Elvis Presley tribute song "Black Velvet", a #1 smash on the Hot 100 that was also a Top 10 hit in many other countries. Myles charted several more times in her native Canada (including 1992's "Song Instead of a Kiss", which topped the RPM charts), but never saw the US charts again after "Black Velvet". Atlantic Records simultaneously released a soundalike version by Robin Lee to the Country Music format, which proved to be her only hit there; however, Lee has had somewhat more success as a songwriter.
• Boston band Treat Her Right scored a #15 hit on the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart in 1988 with "I Think She Likes Me". It was the group's only chart entry. They're better known nowadays as the first major group led by singer Mark Sandman, who later became much better known as the frontman for the acclaimed alt-rock trio Morphine.
• Blues-rock singer Beth Hart scored a #88 Hot 100 hit in 1999 with "LA Song (Out of This Town)". The song also made the top 10 on the Adult Top 40 chart and was a #1 hit in New Zealand. Although that was it for Hart as a singles artist, she has maintained a following in western Europe, with several of her albums charting well in Germany, Switzerland, and the Netherlands.

• Lauren Daigle is a mainstay on the Christian music charts. But to mainstream audiences, she is only known for "You Say" which peaked at #29 on the Hot 100 and went 6x Platinum.
• Jars of Clay, a Christian alt-folk band, had a massive crossover hit with "Flood" in 1996, reaching #37 on the pop charts and #12 on the Modern Rock chart, with their appearance on the latter chart being the first time the Modern Rock and Christian charts ever housed the same song at the same time. It's also been the only song of theirs to ever gain any sort of mainstream support.
• P.O.D.'s "Youth of the Nation," a song inspired by the Columbine and Santana High School shootings, was their only hit on mainstream charts, reaching #28 on the Hot 100 in 2001. They narrowly missed having another Top 40 hit with their song "Alive" that same year: It peaked at #41. Although "Nation" was their only Top 40 hit, they're now remembered outside of the rock radio format as a Two-Hit Wonder for both it and "Alive".
• Sixpence None the Richer reached #2 with their 1998 hit "Kiss Me" thanks to its appearance in She's All That. Their next single, a cover of The La's "There She Goes", peaked at #32 on the Hot 100, but it managed to go Top-10 on the AC charts. The band had one more noteworthy adult contemporary hit, "Breathe Your Name" in 2002, but it did not cross over to the pop charts. All their other followup singles flopped and are completely forgotten today.
• dc Talk were one of the biggest names in Christian music in the late '80s and early '90s and won four Grammy awards over the course of their career. But only one of their songs ever crossed over to the non-religious charts: "Just Between You and Me", a Top 30 hit on both the Billboard Hot 100 and the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart in 1996. While their most-well known song "Jesus Freak" had airplay on secular alternative radio (due to it's obvious Grunge influence), it didn't chart on the alternative charts at all, but was a top 10 hit... in the Billboard Bubbling Under Hot 100 Singles chart.
• Christian new wave singer Leslie Phillips had a ton of Christian chart hits in the mid-'80s, but by the end of the decade, she had transitioned into a secular Alternative Rock career by signing to Virgin Records and changing her stage name to Sam Phillips (her childhood nickname). Despite critical acclaim for several of her secular albums (she is also the composer for Gilmore Girls), she only scored one chart single on the Billboard Alternative chart: "Holding On To The Earth", which made it to #22 in 1989.
• Zafra is a completely obscure Italian group founded in the '70s which specialized in ethnic music, folk and religious songs. However, pretty much every pre-schooler and young boy in Italy knows the song "I due liocorni" ("The Two Unicorns") which became a classic for kids in kindergartens, scout camps, summer camps and so on, so much so that it's considered some kind of traditional folk classic while in fact it was written in 1978. It's never credited to the original composers and the religious undertones (it's about the animals that Noah brought on the Ark) are downplayed. The song was also translated in several languages and, while not really popular outside of Italy, it's still several hundred times more known than anything else Zafra did.
• Ocean is known almost exclusively for their 1970 gospel-pop song "Put Your Hand in the Hand". They had a few more minor hits in their native Canada, but nothing else left much of an impact there either.
• The Kris Kristofferson composition "One Day at a Time" made a one-hit wonder out of four different artists within six years. First was Marilyn Sellars, whose 1974 version went top 40 on the Hot 100 and top 20 on the Hot Country Songs charts. A cover version by Irish singer Gloria (last name Smyth) one year later topped the Irish singles charts as part of a record-breaking 90-week run that stands to this day; simultaneously, Lena Martell had a #1 hit in the UK with her own version but never saw the charts again. Finally in 1980, Cristy Lane went to the top of the country music charts and #5 in New Zealand with her version.
• Skillet are a huge name in both the Heavy Metal and Christian Rock communities, however, their only Hot 100 entry was "Awake and Alive", peaking at the chart's starting no. 100. Compare that to their Signature Song "Monster", which topped the Bubbling Under Hot 100 Singles chart.
• American Christian singer Krystal Meyers, who was essentially marketed as a Christian version of Avril Lavigne, complete with similar album art, had a huge hit in Japan with "The Way to Begin" in 2005. After two more albums, which produced further hits on the US Christian charts, but no more crossover hits, she faded into complete obscurity.
• MercyMe are one of the most popular Christian Rock bands of all time. In 2003, they had an unexpected huge crossover hit with "I Can Only Imagine", which reached #71 on the Hot 100, #27 on the Adult Top 40, #33 on the Mainstream Top 40 and #5 on the AC charts. They didn't manage another crossover hit in the US afterwards, and they soon went back to catering to their traditional Christian audience.
• The American Christian pop group Jump5, who were essentially marketed as a Christian version of teen dance-pop groups like S Club 7 and Steps, complete with similar album art, managed a #19 hit on the Billboard Christian CHR charts and a #22 hit on the Christian AC charts in 2004 with "Wonderful". While they were a regular of Disney projects in the early-to-mid-2000s, including singing the Lilo & Stitch franchise's Signature Song "Aloha, E Komo Mai", "Wonderful" was their sole chart entry.

• Sweet People is the easy listening project of Swiss pianist Alain Morisod, whose only major hit was 1979's "Et les oiseaux chantaient", a recording of bird songs backed by a gentle synthesizer, strings and drums. The tranquil piece made it to #4 in the UK, #5 in Belgium and #4 in the Netherlands. Morisod continued to record under the Sweet People name into the 2010s, but never had another significant chart hit.
• Mason Williams was a talented comedy writer who wrote many of the most memorable sketches on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour and was briefly the head writer for Saturday Night Live. He was also a talented classical guitarist, and he showcased those skills on his lone hit in 1968, "Classical Gas".
• Gheorghe Zamfir is the most famous pan flautist in the world, but despite his fame only had one major hit with "Doina De Jale", a traditional funeral song in his native Romania. His recording reached #4 in the UK in 1976 after it was used as the theme song to the BBC religious programme The Light of Experience. Despite that one hit, Zamfir remained a successful album act in the UK for decades afterwards. He was also notably featured as a soloist in the score for Picnic at Hanging Rock.

• David Foster had several hits as a producer and songwriter, winning 16 Grammys, but only one solo song reached the Top 40: the instrumental "Love Theme from St. Elmo's Fire" in 1985 at #15. Foster found more success on the adult contemporary charts in his native Canada.
• James Horner was one of the most highly regarded and best-known film composers of the 1980s, '90s, and 2000s. Excerpts from film scores rarely make the pop charts, but Titanic became such a phenomenon in 1997 and 1998 that Horner managed to do just that: His composition "Southampton" became a minor American radio hit in early 1998, making it to #22 on the adult contemporary chart, #39 on the Mainstream Top 40 chart and appearing on the chart that American Top 40 was using at the time. Horner never made the pop charts again after this.
• Austrian musician Anton Karas had an enormous hit in 1950 with the "Harry Lime Theme" from the film noir The Third Man, a single release of which reached #1 in the US and became the first record to sell half a million copies. His other compositions are almost completely unknown outside a few devoted zither players.
• In 1977, the year in which A New Hope kicked off the Star Wars mania that lingers to this day, composer John Williams' iconic "Star Wars (Main Theme)" was issued as a single. As performed by the London Symphony Orchestra, the single version got to #10 on the Hot 100. The LSO charted a second time with the main Superman: The Movie theme, but it only got to #81. The LSO remains one of the world's most respected symphony orchestras and still regularly record film scores, but they haven't touched the pop charts as a billed artist since the 1970s.
• Greek composer Vangelis topped the Hot 100 in 1981 with the theme from Chariots of Fire. He had two more chart entries alongside Jon Anderson, whose band Yes is not a one-hit wonder.
• Hans Zimmer is an Oscar-winning film composer and a pioneer of electronic music. While he's had several hit albums with his film score soundtracks, he's only had one major chart single as a lead artist. "Spider-Pig", an offbeat 1-minute long choral piece he composed with arranger Michael A. Levine (uncredited on the single) for The Simpsons Movie, made it to #23 in the UK and #8 in New Zealand, and is the shortest song to ever make the Top 40 in either country. He's had a few low charting hits on the UK charts with some other film score excerpts, but none have come anywhere close to the Top 40.

• Mozambican singer, dancer and entertainer Afric Simone has been active since the 1960s, but is mostly only known for his 1975 funk/soul single "Ramaya". A rare example of a song sung in an African language being a hit all around Europe, even reaching #1 in Italy.
• Cookin' On 3 Burners, a small Australian funk group, had their only chart action when "This Girl" was remixed by Kungs (also a one-hit wonder outside of a few European countries) and became a massive worldwide hit in 2016.
• Eddy Grant: If you know any of his songs, it's likely "Electric Avenue", which was a #2 hit in the US and UK in 1982. His only other American Top 40 entry was the theme song to the movie Romancing the Stone in 1984, which faded into obscurity afterward. However, he had more hits internationally.
  • Before he went solo, Grant was the guitarist for the 1960s band The Equals, who were one of the few mixed-race British rock bands of the era. The band had several hits in the UK, but just one in the US: "Baby Come Back", which made it to #32 in 1968. Another one of their songs, "Police on My Back", is better remembered for the 1980 cover version by The Clash.
• E.U. were one of the leading bands in Washington D.C.'s go-go funk scene of the 1980s, but only had one national hit despite their regional following. Their song "Da Butt" reached #35 on the Hot 100 and topped the R&B chart in 1988 after being featured in Spike Lee's film School Daze. The band would have two more top ten hits on the R&B chart but never made the Hot 100 again.
• Technically, The Ides of March are a one-hit wonder with their 1970 hit "Vehicle" (#2), but in Chicago, they had other hits on local radio ("You Wouldn't Listen", "Superman", "L.A. Goodbye"). The Ides of March's lead singer and main songwriter (Jim Peterik) later joined Survivor.
• Kentucky-based electro-funk group Midnight Star had several hits on the R&B charts, but their sole #1 "Operator", proved to be their only pop crossover at #18. Another tune, "Freak-A-Zoid", has also had some staying power, but it made it no further than #66 on the Hot 100. After the group disbanded, members and brothers Reginald and Vincent Calloway formed a duo of their own called Calloway. The group had a massive #2 pop hit with "I Wanna Be Rich", but their momentum dried up not long afterwards and they turned to production work.
• Jean Knight had a #2 hit in 1971 with "Mr. Big Stuff" but none of her other singles took off. However, her 1985 cover of Rockin' Sidney's "My Toot-Toot" (see the Country subpage) was a big hit in South Africa.

• Not counting "Maru Maru Mori Mori!", the only Mana Ashida song to become a hit was "Sutekina Nichiyobi ~Gyu Gyu Good Day!~", which hit #4. Her other songs ranked much lower on Japan's Billboard charts.
• In most regions outside of Japan, Kohmi Hirose is solely known for the song "Promise" thanks to a Memetic Mutation involving her fast-delivered lyrics in the chorus in which inspired a fad dance thanks to a Nico Nico Douga video which demonstrates a funny glitch in GoldenEye (1997). Outside of her solo works, she's also known for composing some music for Cardcaptor Sakura.
• Vocaloid
  • Ika mixes this with Short-Lived, Big Impact. he had only made three Vocaloid songs before he left Nico Nico Douga in late 2007 due to being plagued by copyright concerns. However, his first song, "Miku Miku ni Shite Ageru♪", is not only his most popular work,^note  but was also the first VOCALOID song to hit 1 million views, one of the earliest songs to establish her as a character, and being responsible for skyrocketing Miku's, and, to a greater extent, VOCALOID's popularity as a whole. Ika himself hasn't been active in the VOCALOID community since 2013, but he retained an active presence on both Youtube and Twitter(X).
  • Yasuo-P's only major hit is "Electric Angel", which, while mostly overshadowed by the Kagamine cover by Giga-P, has amassed over a million views. Otherwise, only a few of his songs made it to the Hall of Fame before his retirement in the 2010's, though they're quite obscure.
  • "Meltdown" by Iroha is his best known song, being one of the most popular songs to involve Kagamine Rin, appearing in a lot of games, been covered by many, and is currently in the Hall of Myths. However, he didn't make a lot of songs that became major hits, and the closest to a major hit he has (aside from "Meltdown") is "Moon", but even then, that song isn't very well-known.
  • T-POCKET is best known for his song "1925", and not only does it have over 5 million views on all official uploads combined, but it is also featured in a couple video games. While he still makes songs, albeit sporadically, none of his following works have that same impact and therefore extremely obscure.
  • YM is far better known known for his 2011 song "Ten-Faced", which achieved over 3 million views on Nico Nico Douga and even has a novel adaptation. He has made other works, and very few has over 100,000 views, but those didn't have the same amount of success as "Ten-Faced" did.
  • While Hinata Electric Works does have a few songs that have over 100,000 views on Nico Nico Douga, "Buriki no Dance" is considered their only major hit, having appeared in multiple video games and has accumulated over millions of views.

• 2NE1 is a very popular Girl Group in Korea, and K-Pop fans in the west, but are only known for "I Am the Best" outside their audience due to its use in western media (namely for being included in Dance Central 3, an episode of So You Think You Can Dance, and the commercial for Microsoft's Surface Pro 3.)
• Wonder Girls became the first-ever South Korean artist to chart on the Billboard Hot 100 when their song "Nobody" made it to #76 in 2009. Although they were incredibly successful in Korea, and popular with Western K-pop fans before and after its release, it remains their only entry on any American singles chart.

• During his lifetime, Scott Joplin's one and only hit was his 1899 breakthrough "Maple Leaf Rag", though he continued to write and publish rags until his death in 1917, always marketed as being "from the composer of the Maple Leaf Rag". (He also attempted to branch out into more "serious" music by writing a couple of operas, but these were even bigger failures than his follow-up rags.) In retrospect, thanks to his music being featured in The Sting and the subsequent ragtime revival of The '70s, a much larger library of his work has become remembered by modern audiences, including one of his lesser works, "The Entertainer", even supplanting the "Maple Leaf Rag" in the popular consciousness. (His operas remain niche works, but have been staged and are appreciated for their ambition at a time when Joplin's race was an impediment to being taken seriously as a "legitimate" artist.)
• In 1974, composer Marvin Hamlisch took a cover of Joplin's "The Entertainer" - from his score for the aforementioned The Sting - to #3 on the Hot 100 and the top of the Adult Contemporary Chart. Although Hamlisch is an American music icon, being the rare example of a PEGOT (winning an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony in addition to his 1975 Pulitzer Prize), he never again made the pop charts.

• Boulder, Colorado-based group The Astronauts had only one charted hit with "Baja", which reached #94 for one week in July 1963. None of their other singles charted and only the first of their nine albums charted (Surfin' with the Astronauts, which featured "Baja", at #61).
• "Pipeline" by The Chantays. This surf-rock classic won them the #4 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 and an appearance on The Lawrence Welk Show (of all shows!), but none of their follow-ups charted.
• The Frogmen had their only hit with "Underwater", a proto-surf instrumental which reached #44 in 1961. It was the biggest hit Candix Records ever had; the release that label is better known for these days, The Beach Boys' debut "Surfin'", only reached #75 in early 1962, and it and "Underwater" were the only nationally charting hits of the short-lived label.
• The Rivieras are known almost solely for the widely covered "California Sun", which was a cover of Joe Jones (see the R&B page).
• The Rumblers had one minor hit in 1963 with "Boss", which peaked at #87 in February 1963. All of their other releases failed to chart.
• The Rip Chords are pretty much known only for "Hey Little Cobra", a #4 hit in February 1964 which featured Bruce Johnston and Terry Melcher as uncredited vocalists. A couple of non-surf singles which didn't feature Johnston and Melcher had previously charted, but most of the attention the group gets nowadays outside of "Cobra" is for their other surf and hot-rod songs featuring the duo, which also recorded as "Bruce and Terry".
• "Wipe Out" by The Surfaris, which managed to chart twice on the Billboard Hot 100: #2 in August 1963 and #16 in July 1966 (narrowly missing a third visit to the chart with a peak of #110 in August 1970). The follow-up, "Point Panic", did chart at #49, but that one is largely forgotten outside the surf rock fanbase.
• The Trashmen, a surf rock band from Minneapolis, had two top 40 hits, the #4 "Surfin' Bird" and the #30 "Bird Dance Beat", but today are remembered only for the former, especially due to its constant usage in Family Guy, and to a lesser extent, it's useage in Full Metal Jacket decades earlier. Younger audiences have forgotten that it was even a hit rather than a Seth MacFarlane original or an obscure song he dug up. In comparision, "Bird Dance Beat" is pretty much completely forgotten.

• "Zoot Suit Riot" by Cherry Poppin' Daddies, released in 1998. It's their best-known song, having peaked at #32 on the U.S. Billboard Top 40 Mainstream, and hit the top 20 of the Modern Rock and Adult Top 40 charts. It just barely missed the top 40 of the Hot 100, however.
  • This song is an interesting example because first and foremost, the Cherry Poppin' Daddies were a ska band. They did occasionally wander into swing and jazz on their albums here and there, but "Zoot Suit Riot" is probably among their most swing influenced songs. It originally appeared as a new song on Zoot Suit Riot, a compilation of all the swing-oriented songs that had appeared on their other albums. When the song became a hit, so did the album, and now they're identified as apart of the Swing Revival fad forevermore.
• The Squirrel Nut Zippers were a similar case. Their musical style was more diverse than just "swing revival", but their one hit, the top 20 rock hit "Hell", ended up associating them with the genre.
• Italian Nu-Jazz duo Gabin had a hit in 2002 with their single "Doo Uap, Doo Uap, Doo Uap". They still exist and a couple of their songs were used in films such as Fantastic Four, but none of their other songs gained the same acclaim and recognition.

• Sailor Moon remains Naoko Takeuchi's only successful manga series. While some of her other work has gained followings, most of that is limited to the Sailor Moon fandom, and she has yet to have any other title match the success of Sailor Moon. The closest any of her other series came to being a hit was The Cherry Project, which only lasted three volumes.
• Yasumi Yoshizawa debuted as a professional manga cartoonist with Dokonjou Gaeru in 1970. To date that's his only successful series, spawning two anime series and a ton of merchandising in Japan. Since ending it he created dozens of other mangas but none of them are well-known.
• Masashi Kishimoto will always be known as "the man who created Naruto". He's working on other material since he finally finished the series after fifteen years, but it's unlikely it'll be anywhere close to Naruto's level, seeing as how it's one of the most successful manga/anime series of all time. While he had hoped his next work after Naruto, Samurai 8: The Tale of Hachimaru, would run for ten volumes or more, it was cancelled after only ten months of serialization due to poor sales.
• Sakae Esuno hasn't had much success in the manga and anime world aside from the hit that Future Diary was. His next manga The Big Order had a short 10-episode anime adaptation, which faced negative reviews even in Japan. Since then, his work has been limited to three subsequent mangas, the last of which was canceled in 2018 after just 19 chapters.
• Mizuki Kawashita is only known as the creator of Strawberry 100% and all her other works are completely obscure. It can't be helped by the fact some of these works got canceled prematurely, like Ane Doki.
• Nobuhiro Watsuki was able to find success in Rurouni Kenshin, and only that. The series went on for 6 years, received an anime, and some movies, and the characters are always used in Weekly Shonen Jump crossovers. He has attempted to write other series, like Gun Blaze West and Buso Renkin, but they never received enough acceptance to go on for more than two years. Watsuki has since become aware of this and now just writes the occasional Rurouni Kenshin spin-off 1- or 2-chapter story.
• Eiichiro Oda believes he'll be known only for One Piece. And with it being in the Guinness World Records for the most copies published of the same comic book series by a single author, he's extremely likely to be correct in this assumption. Oda has openly said that once he finishes One Piece, he plans on doing only short stories for the rest of his life, and will never attempt another long series again.
• To this day, Yu-Gi-Oh! remains the only successful manga created by Kazuki Takahashi. His other works are very obscure one-shots or didn't last more than two volumes.
• Captain Tsubasa is this for Yōichi Takahashi, inspiring four anime series and several games, and it is still extremely popular in Latin America and Europe. His other creation, named Hungry Heart: Wild Striker did not have the same impact and its manga version barely lasted 6 volumes, in comparison with the thirty-seven volumes of Captain Tsubasa.
• Gantz is the only really successful manga created by Hiroya Oku to date, having received an anime adaptation, three films, a spin-off series, and some light novels, while his other works are either obscure and/or short-lived. Although this may change, as his current manga, Inuyashiki, is starting to get some fame.
• Berserk is not only the Magnum Opus of Kentaro Miura, but it is also his only successful creation. His other manga Gigantomakhia did not have the same amount of impact and recognition, and was considered an average work in comparison with Berserk.
• Makoto Raiku seems to have difficulty in following up his first major hit, Zatch Bell!. Both of his series after that, Animal Land and Vector Ball, are nowhere near as popular or successful. Vector Ball was even canceled after only a year.
• No other manga by Hirohiko Araki has even one percent of the fame of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, which is also longer than the rest of his works put together.

• None of the cartoons created by the Chinese animation studio Creative Power Entertaining have seen particularly large success even within their native country... with the sole exception of Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf, which has since become the fourth longest-running animated television show in the world by episode count (over 2,000 episodes and still going).

• Maurice de Bevere aka Morris only ever did Lucky Luke. And boy was it lucrative for him.
• In 1938 Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster created one of the most popular and iconic characters ever made: Superman. Their next creation named Funnyman (1948) is a completely obscure work that only comic book historians would be able to recognize and eventually faded into complete oblivion. They also created several other characters before Superman that are likewise forgotten. Siegel, without Schuster, co-created The Spectre, who is still around, but never reached anywhere near the heights of Superman.
• Similarly, Bob Kane and Bill Finger's 1939 creation, Batman remains their only widely known creation.
• William Moulton Marsden (aka Charles Marsden) created Wonder Woman. That was his only major work in comics, as he became better known for inventing the lie detector.
• Like the Siegel and Shuster example, Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird are known for creating the worldwide famous Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise. None of their other comics managed to get the same amount of success.
• Tintin was the most famous creation done by Hergé, and it's one of the most iconic and influential European comics ever made. On the other hand, his other comics, such as Quick and Flupke and Jo, Zette and Jocko are obscure outside of Europe.
• Pepo created other characters apart from Condorito, but all of them are mostly forgotten by now. Condorito, on the other side, remains one of the most popular comic series in Latin America outliving its creator a long time after his death.
• While Art Spiegelman is a well-known figure in the comics industry, mainstream audiences will remember him solely for Maus

• Gene Roddenberry's only real "hit" was Star Trek: The Original Series. His other shows either were short-lived (The Lieutenant, which lasted a single season) or never got past the pilot stage (Genesis II/Planet Earth, Questor Tapes and "Assignment: Earth", which was both a Star Trek episode and a back-door pilot for a spin-off series). Some of Gene's ideas and story notes were eventually adapted by others with mixed results (Earth: Final Conflict and Andromeda). (Roddenberry is also credited as the creator of Star Trek: The Next Generation, though this is more to do with him having to sign off on Paramount continuing the franchise on television, although he was the showrunner for its first two seasons.)
• Mitch Hurwitz was the creator of Arrested Development, which is considered one of the great comedies of the 2000s (even after its divisive revival). His other projects? Two poorly received series (Sit Down, Shut Up and Running Wilde) and one slightly better-reviewed series (The Ellen Show) that didn't survive their first seasons.
• Marta Kauffmann, David Crane, and Kevin S. Bright made television history with the massively successful sitcom Friends. Unfortunately, their other sitcoms — Joey, Jesse, and Veronica's Closet — weren't as successful, critically acclaimed, or fondly remembered.
• Rick Rosner created CHiPs, which had a popular six-season run. Rosner was previously successful in daytime television (talk shows and game shows), but his two other stabs at prime time drama, 240-Robert and Lottery!, ran just 16 and 17 episodes, respectively.
• Nancy Zerg, a Jeopardy! contestant who, in her debut, defeated the show's best player ever, Ken Jennings, and thus ended his 74-game winning streak, which remains the show's longest. She lost in her very next appearance.
• Remote Control host Ken Ober seemed poised for a high-profile career as a TV personality after that Cult Classic game show ended in 1990, but surprisingly struggled afterwards. He hosted three other game shows after Remote Control ended, but none of them panned out...only one made it to a second season, and even then, that season saw Ober replaced by a new host. Outside of that, he did a few commercials and small acting roles, including appearances in several Blues Traveler videos. Ober eventually moved into writing and production before dying from heart disease at age 52 in 2009.
• Eric Bercovici produced and wrote the sprawling teleplay for the 1980 miniseries adaptation of Shogun. While he was a busy writer, his credits before and after Shōgun are just individual episodes of various TV shows, a few lesser-known miniseries scripts, and a handful of lower-profile feature films (including Change of Habit and The Culpepper Cattle Co.).

• A strange case: Gerald Mayo was very infamous, for many reasons, in the early 1970s. You should see the number of news articles printed about him at the time; it was huge. Nowadays, he is only known for something he was not famous for in the 1970s: suing Satan.
• Jim Gaffigan still feels obligated to do his "Hot Pockets" bit for fans despite it being one of his earliest bits.
• John Anderson was an obscure member of the House of Representatives when he mounted an independent Presidential campaign in 1980. Dissatisfaction from some voters over the choice between the unpopular Jimmy Carter and the staunchly right-wing Ronald Reagan gave Anderson 6% of the final vote, but rather than becoming a major national political figure, he spent the rest of his life being remembered as "the guy who ran against Carter and Reagan".
• Joe Donnelly was a Democratic congressman from Indiana who represented the conservative blue-collar wing, which was dying off at the time. In 2012 he decided to run for Senate against longtime Republican incumbent Richard Lugar in what many saw as a "sacrificial lamb" campaign rather than a serious challenge, as Indiana was a red state and Lugar was well-liked across the isle. However, he wasn't particularly popular with those in his own party, and he was ousted by the very conservative Tea Party champion Richard Mourdock in the primaries. This caused some headaches with the Indiana GOP, which culminated in a statement in which he said that rape victims should not get abortions because babies were a gift from God. Mourdock's campaign crashed and Donnelly scored the upset win. The win was, by all counts, a total fluke, and the next time the seat was up, Donnelly lost by five points to state legislator Mike Braun.
• This typically happens in "wave elections" when one party does really well and wins seats that heavily lean towards the other political party. During the 2010 senate cycle, Republicans channeled anger at President Obama to pick up two Senate seats in very liberal states. Scott Brown won a special election to replace the late Ted Kennedy, taking advantage of its irregular timing in January and relatively low turnout to win. Meanwhile, Mark Kirk picked up the Illinois senate seat that was once held by Obama himself by defeating a weak Democratic challenger. Both went on to lose badly the next time the seats were up, both in presidential years. Brown was defeated by Elizabeth Warren in Massachusetts and Kirk was ousted by Tammy Duckworth in Illinois. Brown tried to make a comeback Senate bid in neighboring New Hampshire, considerably redder territory in a year favoring the GOP, but ultimately fell short.
• After Donald Trump was elected president of the United States in 2016, he tapped Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions to be his attorney general. This opened up Sessions' long-time senate seat in the very conservative state, which Republicans were expected to hold on with ease. Governor Robert Bentley appointed Luther Strange to replace Sessions. Problem was, Bentley was under investigation at the time for trying to cover up an extramarital affair. This led to a lot of discontent towards Strange even from fellow Republicans, leaving an opening for the state's notoriously reactionary former Chief Justice Roy Moore to run as a challenger and beat Strange in the primary despite Trump's opposition. However, Moore was an extremely toxic candidate whose campaign collapsed in the final stretch after it was revealed he had relationships with underage girls when he was in his 30s. In a shocking upset, Democrat Doug Jones, a renowned civil rights attorney who led the prosecution of the suspects in the Birmingham church bombing of 1963, edged out Moore to win the seat. In 2020, several Republicans, including Roy Moore and even Jeff Sessions himself (who left the attorney general position on very bad terms with Trump), put their hat in the ring to challenge Jones, but ultimately former Auburn football coach Tommy Tuberville was chosen. Jones lost by over 20 points, even losing Tuscaloosa County, home of Auburn arch-rivals the University of Alabama.
• In 2018, a "blue wave" year, Democrats won seats in the traditionally Republican suburbs of Charleston (South Carolina), Oklahoma City, Salt Lake City, Staten Island, upstate New York, and Republican-leaning rural areas of New Mexico, Maine, and Iowa. Donald Trump won all of these seats in 2016 by sizable margins, so Democrats winning any of them in 2018 was shocking (though some were by razor-thin margins—the Utah Democrat, Ben McAdams, won by 694 votes out of almost 300,000 cast). Holding on to them in a presidential election cycle was another story, though, as Democrats likely needed a blowout defeat of Trump to repeat that success, and although all polls indicated that was what was going to happen, Trump still carried those seats again with little trouble, and, with the exception of the seat in Maine, all of the House Democrats in question were sent back home after just one term (although once again, some still by razor-thin margins—the upstate New York Democrat Anthony Brindisi only lost his bid for a second term — to the same Republican he had ousted two years prior, no less (Claudia Tenney) — by a little over 100 votes).
• Herbert Hoover ran for President in 1928 without ever having held elected office before, won, then The Great Depression happened and he got blown out in his re-election bid in 1932 and never ran for another office again.
• Eugene McCarthy served five terms in the US House and two terms in the Senate, but outside of his home state of Minnesota, he's entirely remembered for not winning the 1968 Democratic presidential primary in New Hampshire, but coming within eight percentage points of Lyndon Johnson and holding Johnson under 50%, both very weak outcomes for an incumbent president, and the first serious sign of fracture in the party over the The Vietnam War. This set off a whole bunch of dominos that shook up American politics. After that, Robert F. Kennedy launched his own antiwar focused campaign, Johnson announced that he wouldn't seek re-election, then the race got thrown into chaos after Kennedy got assassinated, with the Democratic convention seeing tumultuous fights on the floor and violent protests outside the building, George Wallace's independent campaign skimmed a lot of support from conservative Southern Democrats, and finally Republican Richard Nixon eked out a win in November. The rest of McCarthy's career, with a few more fruitless presidential campaigns and activist work, got little attention; it doesn't help that another senator named McCarthy has a more prominent and controversial political legacy.
• Hannibal Burress is a pretty popular stand-up comedian while also being the guy from the "Why are you booing me? I'm right." meme, but if ask most people what they know him for, it'll be exposing the crimes of Bill Cosby with a routine he did in 2014.

• James Elroy Flecker produced a fair volume of poetry in his thirty years, some of which is quoted by the likes of Agatha Christie and Neil Gaiman, but these days he is almost entirely remembered for a few incredibly quotable lines from his verse drama Hassan: The Story of Hassan of Baghdad and How he Came to Make the Golden Journey to Samarkand. ("For lust of knowing what should not be known…") If Flecker had not died young, of course, his reputation might run wider.
• William Ernest Henley's literary reputation rests almost entirely on his single poem "Invictus."
• Joyce Kilmer, remembered almost exclusively for the poem "Trees".
• Ernest Thayer is only known for "Casey at the Bat".
• Popularly accredited to Mary Elizabeth Frye as her only known poem, "Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep" was actually originally written by another one-hit wonder poet named Clare Harner, and it was published at a memorial service in 1934 under the name "Immortality". An unusual example of two individuals known for one work - one as the original author, and the other as the popular source.
• Clement Clarke Moore was a prolific writer of poetry, prose and scholarly works, but 'Twas the Night Before Christmas is all he's remembered for.
• "High Flight" by John Gillespie Magee, though he was killed in a military aviation accident before the poem became famous.
• John McCrae is remembered only for "In Flanders Fields".
• Poems that eventually become national anthems seem prone to this.
  • "The Star-Spangled Banner" author Francis Scott Key was a lawyer who wrote poems strictly on an amateur basis.
  • "Hymn to Liberty" was the only poem Dionysios Solomos ever managed to finish (though, at 158 verses in the complete version, it's almost a career's-worth of verse in and of itself). An extremely truncated version was adopted as the Greek national anthem in 1865, seven years after Solomos' death.

Games worked on by multiple one-hit wonder designers

• Neither of the two Apples to Apples designers Mark Alan Osterhaus and Matthew Kirby had another hit.
• Mysterium is the only thing Oleksandr Nevskiy and Oleg Sidorenko are known for.
• Neither Albert Lamorisse nor Michael I. Levin had any hits beyond the highly successful Risk.
• Sheriff Of Nottingham was a big success, but neither of its designers André Zatz and Sérgio Halaban had any other hits.

Individual designers

• Splendor is a popular game, but nothing else Marc André has deisgned has caught on.
• Kerry Breitenstein's Zombies!!! is the only thing he's known for.
• Isaac Childres. Despite Gloomhaven being one of the most popular games of all time, his other work has failed to catch on.
• In 2003, Paul Czege of The Forge had published My Life with Master, which instantly became one of the hallmarks of the North American indie Tabletop RPG scene. He has not published (commercially) any other game since, instead releasing his later experimental designs for free on the net, which failed to garner nearly as much attention as his original breakthrough hit, MLWM.
• Jacob Fryxelius's only major hit is Terraforming Mars.
• Gord! (Gordon Hamilton) was behind the successful Santorini, but the rest of his output is obscure.
• Luca Iennaco's only major hit is Kingsburg.
• The only major hit Kristin Looney of Looney Labs worked on is the Fluxx series. All of her other work ended up languishing in obscurity.
• Elizabeth J. Magie made a few games, but is only remembered for The Landlord's Game, the precursor to Monopoly.
• Finnish board game designer Kari Mannerla created several games early in his life. While his first attempts didn't get much attention, the 1951 release Star of Africa became a big hit in Finland and several of its neighbouring countries, and remains popular as of the 2020s. It ended up being his only major success, as his subsequent efforts (including a Mission-Pack Sequel to Star of Africa and a card game inspired by it) failed to catch on.
• Gabriele Mari is only known for Letters From Whitechapel
• Merle Robbins had a big hit with Uno, but never saw much success with anything else.
• Juan Rodriguez is only known for The Grizzled.
• Leslie Scott designed several games in the 1980's and 1990's. Jenga became a big hit, while everything else was quickly forgotten.
• Masao Suganuma is only known for Machi Koro.
• Rodney Thompson is only known for Lords Of Waterdeep.
• Designer Klaus-Jürgen Wrede is only known for Carcassonne.
• The abstract strategy game Hive was well received and popular. However, the other releases by its designer John Yianni have completely failed to catch on.
• Konami is a company that has made scores of successful video games, but as far as card games go, they own Yu-Gi-Oh.

• It is very common for any random YouTube account to have one of their videos go viral and get millions of views, and never see that success again. This is usually because, for many of these people, they aren't interested in having an actual career, and only occasionally post random videos, one of which just so happens to meet the algorithm.
• The channel FanMadeStuff got millions of views on their (since-unlisted) Epic Rap Battles of History fan video "Guy Fawkes vs. The Joker". However, they got next to no following out of it, with almost all of their other videos having around 20,000 views at best. The only exception is the behind-the-scenes video for their fanmade ERB, and even that one didn't come close to the ERB's success/notoriety.
• HDCYT uploaded an extremely viral video in 2007, titled Charlie bit my finger - again !. The video is about, as the title would suggest, a baby named Charlie biting his slightly older brother in the finger. For reasons completely unknown, it amassed over 800,000,000 views. This formerly made it the most viewed video of all time, and for a while after that the most viewed non-music video of all time. While Charlie bit my finger - The Accident wasn't a slouch either, getting over 45,000,000 views, it's obviously nowhere near as successful as the original. Since even breaking the 100 million mark is a feat normally reserved for music videos by popular artists, don't expect them (or anyone else for that matter) to achieve that kind of success again.
• Melbourne, Australia transit system operator Metro Trains' "Dumb Ways to Die" PSA was a massive viral hit and has amassed over 325 million views on YouTube. The song from the video, written and recorded by members of indie/alternative bands Tinpan Orange and The Cat Empire, even reached #9 on the singles charts in Belgium (of all places), as well as peaking at #38 on the UK Indie charts and #94 in the Netherlands. However, the sequel videos and further installments in the Dumb Ways to Die series got next to no attention at all on the internet.
• Team Fortress 2 streamer scarlet_xo is pretty much known only for playing the Female Narrator in Turning a Sphere Outside In and nothing else, to the point that her comment section is practically flooded with Huggbees fans referencing the video and calling her his sister.
• Before getting out of the streaming game, Youtube Red/Premium did manage a single popular show: Cobra Kai. However since it was the only popular show, they ended up selling it to Netflix rather than continue making original content.

• Clay animator Jimmy Picker made Sundae in New York, which won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 1983, but only has a handful of other credits in a career that began in 1977, with his only other well-known work being the famous "singing hamburger" daydream sequence in Better Off Dead.
• Thurop Van Orman created The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack, which is admittedly recognized less for its own merits as a children's black comedy series, but rather for being one of the first industry jobs for several artists who went on to create several award-winning productions of their own, such as Gravity Falls and Adventure Time. Regardless, Van Orman himself, while continuing to write, direct, and even act as showrunner for other animated series and movies in the years afterward, would never have another project reach similar levels of industry influence.
• Dragon Tales is the only cartoon that Ron Rodecker ever created; he never attempted to create any future animated projects afterward and was primarily an artist.
• While Stephen Hillenburg did some minor work for other shows and some short films, SpongeBob SquarePants is the only television cartoon he ever created himself and remains his most successful work to date. While he would attempt to create other animated works after leaving the role of showrunner in 2004, most of them all ended up in Development Hell and the few that did get finished (like the 2014 animated short, Hollywood Blvd, USA) have failed to garner anywhere near the success that SpongeBob has received.
• John Kricfalusi had done tons of minor work for several cartoons, but he struck gold with The Ren & Stimpy Show with its Deranged Animation and violent slapstick making it one of the most influential cartoons of the 90s. However, Kricfalusi's perfectionism, dictator-like leadership, and constant arguing with the executives at Nickelodeon got him fired from his own show. He then spent the next few years getting by with animation odd jobs, such as a web series, music videos, and working on his (infamously narcissistic) blog, with the two other shows he was showrunner for, The Ripping Friends and Ren & Stimpy "Adult Party Cartoon" both dying quick deaths. Any chance of a comeback has since evaporated due to the constant delays and utter disaster of his pet project Cans Without Labels and his sexually predatory behavior causing him to semi-retire from the animation industry. Nowadays, Kricfalusi is known only for Ren & Stimpy and for being incredibly hard to work with.

• The Saavedra position in chess, one of the most famous endgame studies, was named after Spanish priest Rev. Fernando Saavedra, who discovered a winning underpromotion in a position thought to be a draw. A weak amateur, this discovery is all that he is known for.
• Short-lived film studio Vestron Pictures only managed to create one entirely self-produced hit: Dirty Dancing. Primarily a home video distributor before the success of that film, their attempts to become more involved in the financing of their films never bore fruit, and they declared bankruptcy in 1991.
• Film producer Kevin McClory, through a series of complicated rights issues and legal battles, ended up being the owner of the film and television rights for the James Bond novel Thunderball. Thanks to that, he can claim to have produced Thunderball, the most financially-successful James Bond film of the 20th century. Thunderball remains McClory's big claim to fame... in-part because its success convinced him that the film rights would be his own personal cash cow, and so he spent the rest of his life trying to remake the film over-and-over. Never Say Never Again was the only thing to come of his attempts, and was mildly successful, though certainly massively overshadowed by its source material.
• Several cases of a short-lived magazine that happened to have one important and notable article:
  • Scanlan's Monthly was a countercultural literary journal that lasted just eight volumes over less than a year (March 1970 to January 1971). Its main point of notoriety was the Hunter S. Thompson article "The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved", which shot its author to fame and became the Trope Codifier for Gonzo Journalism, while the magazine it was printed in is little-known outside of zine history circles.
  • Datebook magazine was a lower-circulation teen magazine (with a music focus) that only lasted a few years in The '60s, but earned an odd place in history when it republished a series of London Evening Standard interviews with The Beatles in its September 1966 issue, which included John Lennon's notorious Bigger Than Jesus declaration. It touched off a firestorm of controversy in the Deep South after promotional copies were sent to radio stations, complete with record burnings, and Lennon eventually had to give a press conference to clarify what he meant by the statement.
  • Cheetah was a magazine that launched almost the exact same time as Rolling Stone and tried to fill the exact same niche, reporting on Rock music, politics and culture, but it failed to find an audience and barely lasted half a year (October 1967 to May 1968). Its main point of notoriety is "Goodbye Surfing, Hello God!", a profile of Brian Wilson written by Jules Siegel that chronicled Wilson's life as he worked on the ill-fated SMiLE album, and has been extensively used as a primary source by almost all books written about Wilson and The Beach Boys in their treatment of the project's tumultuous history.

• Wish from Spellbound! Magical Princess Lil'Pri only has one song he sings in-show, while the titular Power Trio gets four.
• Space☆Dandy and his band Dropkix are best remembered for "Lonely Nights" — played repetitively for two hours at one gig — and disbanding immediately after their big break. However, this performance unknowingly stopped an all-out war.
• In Comic Girls, Ririka Hanazono, the dorm matron for four aspiring manga artists, is a non-musical example. She once published a manga volume when she was young, one that Kaos discovered was surprisingly popular. Despite that, Ririka couldn't find the motivation to do another and gave up, believing that it's more fulfilling to draw for fun than to do it professionally.

• Tanner Clark, Amelia's Cool Aunt from Amelia Rules!, is a former rock singer, who gave out one highly acclaimed album, before leaving a promising career for undisclosed personal reasons. Don't call her a One-Hit Wonder, though.

  CAN YOU BELIEVE HER?? I'll give HER one hit, and she'll WONDER where her TEETH went!

• Baby Jane Hudson's song "I've Written a Letter to Daddy" in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?.
• The Wonders in That Thing You Do!, for whom their one hit is the titular song. The irony of the band's name is pointed out by their own manager after the band fails to produce a second hit. In real life, the song (written and performed by Candy Butchers frontman Mike Viola and Fountains of Wayne bassist Adam Schlesinger) made the real Hot 100, but ironically, it peaked at #41.
• The protagonist of About a Boy is a 36-year-old bachelor who lives off the royalties of a hit Christmas song composed by his father.
  • The book of the same name from which the film was adapted goes to great lengths to show just how absurd a situation this put the protagonist and his father in: the protagonist gets angry and depressed every time he hears the song being sung by buskers, and his father, absolutely desperate to be taken seriously as a musician, once writes an entire musical in the course of one day.
• In the first Bridget Jones movie, Bridget's friend Tom is a former One-Hit Wonder pop singer from the '80s.
• In yet another Hugh Grant movie, the main character in Music and Lyrics is a former member of a successful British pop group who had just one hit as a solo artist.
• The main character of Semi-Pro is a former one-hit wonder who used the money from his song "Love Me Sexy" to buy an ABA team.

• The murder victim in The Silkworm was a writer whose first book was a great success with the critics, but nothing he wrote afterward came even close to match it, critically or commercially. He still expects everyone to treat him like a literary luminary, though.
• The Kim Newman story "One Hit Wanda" is about an Everly Brothers-style duo who, having offended their muse, found the song they wrote for her to be a curse. It was insanely popular, but it was the only song anyone wanted to hear and, eventually, the only song they were capable of playing.
• In the Marilyn Sachs YA novel Almost Fifteen, protagonist Imogen's parents don't really work; her father is a dilettante photographer and her mother is a perennial college student. They live off of the royalties of The Friendship Cookbook, the only creation of Imogen's great-grandmother.

• Drive Shaft, Charlie's band in Lost, who hit it big with "You All Everybody". In one deleted scene, Shannon remarks about having "their one song" stuck in one's head.
• The Zit Remedy/The Zits - Joey, Snake and Wheels' band on Degrassi Junior High/Degrassi High - was a one-hit wonder not only in the fact that "Everybody Wants Something" was their only hit, but it was their only song. It's a fact that still gets them mercilessly teased even as adults.
• On The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Ashley ends up being a one-hit wonder. Her actress, Tatyana Ali, herself became a One Hit Wonder after the show ended.
• Marcus Little of The Suite Life on Deck turns up at Seven Seas High, having faded into obscurity after his career as Lil' Little peaked with his sole hit "Retainer Baby".
• "Superstar Machine" by "Li'l Davey Cross" in Mr. Show. It charts at number one, becomes club music, gets parodied by a Weird Al-lookalike, and ends up as "hold" music on the phone.
• The 1999 comedy-drama Hunting Venus centered on a fictional New Romantic band from the early 1980s, The Venus Hunters, who were getting together for a reunion gig despite the fact they only ever had one hit. Lead singer Martin Clunes finds a problem... they've forgotten the words and how to play the music. Nobody can find a copy of the single. And their charismatic guitarist Neil Morrisey has had a sex-change operation...
• Jessica Jones: According to a blurb in the official music video for Trish Walker's hit pop song "I Want Your Cray Cray", the movie Snatch and Grab was Trish's only box office success.
• In My Name Is Earl, Tim Stack plays a washed-up version of himself, coasting on his starring role in Series/Son of the Beach.
• During the "Don't Stop the Music" arc of Ghost Writer, Leif, the electrician for Lenni's music video, was revealed to be a teen popstar in the 70s with a hit called "Girl". It's implied that his success didn't continue because he tried to follow the same formula and refused to branch out.
• In the season 2 finale of Only Murders in the Building, Tina Fey refers to Nickelback as a one-hit wonder when she compares them to her podcast. When they had ten Top 40 hits, and a few #1 hits on rock radio.

• Chris Gaines, Breakup Breakout member of an '80s one-hit wonder band. Played by Real Life artist wonder Garth Brooks.
  • Ironically, his only pop hit was in this persona.
• The song "King of Rock 'n' Roll" by Prefab Sprout was about a 50's rocker who is forced to sing his one stupid novelty hit over and over to crowds who only want to hear that one song. In a sad bit of irony, "The King of Rock 'n' Roll" became Prefab Sprout's biggest hit in the UK (they had six other Top 40 singles, but none of them troubled the Top 20), because people only cared about the goofy chorus and nothing more.

• In Dead Island, one of the player characters is Sam B, a rapper famous for his one hit, "Who Do You Voodoo, Bitch?". The fact that his one hit is a Horrorcore track he wrote as a joke after years of trying to gain momentum as a serious, politically conscious rapper, and that no one shows any interest in anything he's produced apart from "Who Do You Voodoo, Bitch?", has left him extremely bitter.
• Bugsnax: Wiggle Wigglebottom has "Do the Wiggle" as her defining hit, with everything before and after it so far being entirely ignored; she came to the island you're in for inspiration, so she can finally top it. She finds the whole situation particularly frustrating because she actually cared about writing everything else, while "Do the Wiggle" was improvised on the spot after arriving at the studio late and so sleep-deprived she barely even remembers writing it.
• Life is Strange: Double Exposure: Lucas Colmenero's debut novel, Wilder Beasts Than These, catapulted him into literary and academic stardom, but he has so far been unable to match its success with any of his subsequent work, causing him to be fairly bitter. Turns out there was a good reason for this: Wilder Beasts Than These was plagiarized from his student Maya Okada's manuscript for A Million Miles Beneath My Feet, which led to her being Driven to Suicide.
• Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time: The Grizz was a simple street hood tagging walls with his graffitti that ended up becoming popular in the art community as "Neo-Paleolithic Urban Expressionism." After a while, the Grizz's rise to stardom ended as soon as it began when everyone realised his art wasn't an astetic choice, but just plain bad. Losing his 15 Minutes of Fame drove the Grizz to become an art thief and work for Le Paradox in his time travel scheme.

• In Shining Song Starnova, the titular idol unit becomes this during Natsuki's route. They can't replicate the success of their first CD album release, and the fact that they can't settle on an image and don't get embroiled in scandals causes the public to gradually lose interest in them, with a corresponding decline in sales figures. Despite their best efforts, the group can't get out of this slump and Starnova is ultimately forced to disband, though its members go on to have successful individual careers afterward.

• Phineas and the Ferbtones in Phineas and Ferb, for "Gitchee Gitchee Goo". Intentionally, because who would want to do that every day?

  "Follow-up single?! Who do you think we are, some two-bit hacks who will keep writing you songs simply because you pay us obscene amounts of cash?! Phineas and the Ferb-Tones are strictly a one-hit wonder. Good day to you, sir!"

  • Also, their mother Linda apparently was a one-hit wonder in the '80s with "I'm Lindana and I Wanna Have Fun". Her explanation of this trope was used by the boys as a how-to checklist.
• In My Life as a Teenage Robot, Brad sings a "one-hit wonder" song called "Minky Momo". Not kidding.
• Foxxy Love of Drawn Together was formerly a one-hit wonder with her band The Foxxy 5, with the song "La La Labia".
• Kaeloo: In one episode from Season 2, Kaeloo, Quack Quack, Mr. Cat, Eugly and Pretty form their own rock band and make up a song that becomes very popular. The group winds up quitting the music business because, at their second concert, where they were going to play the same song, the fans cheer so loudly that they (and Stumpy, who was backstage) all go deaf.
• In "The Simpsons", When the town anthem for Springfield is revealed to be a generic stock song the old mayor passed off as an original and Pharell Williams is exiled from the town, Bart and Lisa create a new anthem beloved by the town. Later when Homer joins a group that enables obesity, the kids try to make them and Homer come to their senses with another song, but are unable to come up with anything.

• Todd in the Shadows has a side series called "One Hit Wonderland", where he gives retrospectives on artists known for only one hit: their careers before and after the hit, the context of their hit, and whether or not he thinks they deserved better.
• Everclear isn't one, but they did have a song called "One Hit Wonder" about such an artist. The song was partly autobiographical about the band's feelings after "Santa Monica" hit it big.
• In the video for Short Skirt/Long Jacket, by group Cake, the last person to be interviewed in the video describes the group as a One-Hit Wonder (which they weren't; In fact, they had already had several, much bigger hits than that song).
• Mike Posner's "I Took A Pill In Ibiza" is a song about him being a One Hit Wonder. He actually had a couple of hits, but "Cooler Than Me" is the only one people remembered from him... until, ironically, the Seeb remix of "Ibiza" became an even bigger hit.

  I'm just a singer who already blew his shot
  I get along with old timers
  Cause my name's a reminder of a pop song people forgot

• Nizzahon Magic's "MTG Top 10: JANKIEST Decks to Top 8 a ProTour or Grand Prix" is a subjective list, but it has one key criterion: the featured decks must be one-hit wonders, i.e. they only got one Premier Event Top 8 and were never relevant again. The one exception is the #10 deck, which is a Two-Hit Wonder instead.