- There were plenty of one-hit wonders over the course of the past 10 years.
- Some of those songs — including Gotye and Kimbra's "Somebody That I Used to Know" and Icona Pop's "I Love It" deserved the attention they received.
- But other tracks, like Omi's "Cheerleader" and Ylvis' "The Fox (What Does the Fox Say?)" shouldn't have become as popular as they were.
- Insider rounded up the 10 best and 10 worst one-hit wonders of the decade.
- Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.
"I Love It" by Icona Pop featuring Charli XCX was an absolute banger.
While Charli XCX would go on to have hits like 2014's "Boom Clap" and appear on other big songs like Iggy Azalea's "Fancy," her Swedish collaborators, Icona Pop, didn't keep up the same momentum after dropping this epic electropop breakup bop in May 2012.
But the song itself rightfully deserved its four-time platinum RIAA certification and No. 7 peak on the Billboard Hot 100 because, as Amy Phillips wrote for Pitchfork, the track "isn't just a glorious dance floor f--- you to an ex-boyfriend. It's also a celebration of the liberating power of female friendship and 2012's answer to 'Since U Been Gone.'"
"Safe and Sound" by Capital Cities was a breakout hit for a reason.
While the indie pop duo haven't released another song that charted anywhere near as high as "Safe and Sound" (which peaked at No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart), it's easy to see why this 2011 synth-pop track had such an immense reach.
Sonically, the track is "propelled by New Wave-y '80s synth sounds paired with state of the art, 21st-century EDM beats," Adam R. Holz wrote for Plugged In, adding, "Lyrically, it's as buoyantly upbeat as the catchy beats backing the words."
"Somebody That I Used to Know" by Gotye and Kimbra might be the most quintessential one-hit wonder of the 2010s.
Belgian-Australian singer-songwriter Gotye has become synonymous with this mid-tempo art pop single. The song was beloved by critics, and even went on to win two Grammy awards for best pop duo/group performance and record of the year in 2013.
"It's built around a quartet of elements: sampled acoustic guitar, a xylophone hook, a murmured vocal and a wobbly electronic sound that freshman dudes will pluck out on acoustic guitars and dress up with a mimed lack of confidence ('You can be addicted to a certain kind of sadness') for half a decade, at least," Jacob Ganz wrote for NPR in September 2012.
"Feel It Still" earned Portugal. The Man a Grammy award in 2018.
The Alaskan alternative rock band found mainstream success when the lead single for their eighth studio album, "Woodstock," became the group's first entry on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, peaking at No. 4.
The track, which won the Grammy for best pop duo/group performance, is "a shimmying throwback built from borrowed pieces of the Marvelettes' 'Please Mr. Postman,' with more than a little inspiration from Pharrell's 'Happy,'" Evan Rytlewski wrote for Pitchfork.
"Fight Song" by Rachel Platten fought its way up the Billboard Hot 100 chart — and rightfully so.
Rachel Platten may not have delivered on her promise of having "a lot of fight left in me," when her album "Wildfire" was met with mixed reviews in 2016, but her debut single did "make an explosion" on the chart. It peaked at No. 6 and sold over 6 million copies in the United States.
The song's success can be attributed both to Platten's strong vocals, and her "captivating" lyrics, according to Digital Journal's Markos Papadatos.
"Platten's vocals are crisp and impressive, where the listener can recall such songstresses as Taylor Swift and Tristan Prettyman. Her lyrics are powerful and they paint a vivid picture in the minds of her listeners," Papadatos wrote in 2015.
Even The Neighbourhood thinks "Sweater Weather" is possibly "the best song we'd ever written."
While frontman Jesse Rutherford said he "didn't think it was going to be the best song we'd ever write," the lead single from the alternative pop band's 2013 debut studio album, "I Love You," remains their most memorable work to date.
"It was a bummer summer jam that balanced the attraction of beautifully doomed California stereotypes with an anti-California message that the rest of the country could get behind," Ian Cohen wrote about the track for Pitchfork.
"Gangnam Style" by PSY foreshadowed the success of K-pop in the United States.
In 2012, "Gangnam Style" went viral seemingly overnight, but its impact is more important than the fact that it surpassed Justin Bieber's "Baby" music video as the most viewed on YouTube in November 2012. (It has since been eclipsed by Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee's "Despacito" and six other videos.)
The song gave the Western world a glimpse into K-pop as a genre — one that has found massive success in the United States over the past few years, thanks to groups like BTS and EXO.
"Barbra Streisand" by Duck Sauce is a fun dance track that even earned a Grammy nomination.
As far as one-off dance tracks go, "Barbra Streisand" is a solid one. Not only did critics love it, but it even received a Grammy nomination for best dance recording in 2011.
"'Barbra Streisand' actually kinda suits the track, a sassy no-messin' disco-house dazzler which tips its trilby in the direction of Studio 54 circa 1979," Nick Levine wrote of the song for Digital Spy, adding, "Lack of lyrics notwithstanding, it's deliriously catchy [and] endlessly danceable."
"Let Her Go" by Passenger feels warm and intimate from start to finish.
While toying with the idea that you "only know you love her when you let her go" isn't groundbreaking in any way, "Let Her Go" at least grapples with the concept beautifully, thanks to an emotional vocal performance and a soft arrangement.
"The track itself is a slice of gentle folk-pop whose joy lies in its simplicity," Robert Copsey wrote for Digital Spy. Meanwhile, Live About's Bill Lamb said it "sounds like classic 1970s singer-songwriter pop, perhaps most notably the work of Cat Stevens."
Lamb added, "For younger pop fans it will feel like an intimate surprise sandwiched between heavily produced uptempo dance-pop on the radio. The warm sound will charm most listeners."
There remains something infectious about "Like a G6" by Far East Movement featuring The Cataracs and DEV.
While there's nothing inventive about "Like a G6," this 2010 electropop hit "inadvertently defined a mood and era," according to Vice's Phil Witmer.
Whitmer also noted that, "listening to it now is to know what partying truly is." Even though we've left behind the endless party that was 2010, no one in 2019 will get mad at you for adding "Like a G6" to a workout or house-party playlist.
Rebecca Black's "Friday" received almost universally negative reviews from critics.
In hindsight, it was incredibly cruel how society collectively came together to hate on 13-year-old Black for this autotuned ode to weekend's eve — but that doesn't mean it doesn't deserve a spot on this list as one of the worst one-hit wonders of the 2010s.
From ridiculous lyrics like "Tomorrow is Saturday/And Sunday comes afterwards" to the overuse of autotune that warps Black's voice into something distinctively not-human, this song is so shockingly awful that it's almost hilarious how bad it managed to be — it's even become a bit of a cult classic in its own right, essentially making it "The Room" of music.
"The Fox (What Does the Fox Say?)" started off as a joke, but it's not funny how much we all had to listen to it.
Ylvis released the song with the intention for it to be bad, and weren't at all expecting it to go anywhere. But sure enough, it went viral overnight — forcing all of us to watch them sing random animal noises to a thumping beat on late night talk shows.
In an interview with the New York Times, the brothers behind the track, Vegard and Bard Ylvisaker, explained that they didn't even bother practicing the song before performing it on "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon" in 2013.
"We never rehearsed it, because it was never supposed to be a live thing," Bard said, with Vegard adding, "It's not like a story; it's just a bunch of animal sounds." At least they knew it was silly.
"Rude" by Magic! "should be considered a low point not only for 2014, but in the history of music."
This reggae-infused pop song is so terrible that the New York Post ran an article on July 22, 2014, with the headline, "Is 'Rude' by Magic! the worst No. 1 song ever?"
"'Rude' is just awful, a flaccid, boring slice of lightweight reggae that sounds like it was written to be heard in a dentist's waiting room," Hardeep Phull wrote for the Post.
Phull added: "The similarly banal lyrics concern a guy who seeks his girlfriend's dad's permission to marry her, only to be turned down. Pops did the right thing, because no self-respecting parent would want their child associating with the singer of a tepid reggae-fusion band. What would the neighbors say?"
"Too Close" by Alex Clare is too dubstep-heavy to withstand the test of time.
Pop music warmly embraced dubstep at the start of the decade, which is probably why this electronic rock song had appeal then. But by 2016, the music industry — especially in the United States — had largely moved on from the subgenre.
Listening to "Too Close" now only reinforces how far removed we are from enjoying this style of music — and reminds us why Clare didn't find much success beyond this track.
Baauer's "Harlem Shake" sounds like what a headache feels like.
Any song that inspires a widespread meme will eventually become grating, but "Harlem Shake" may have been annoying even before everyone on the internet started dancing to it for likes on YouTube.
This repetitive club track is only listenable for the first 30 seconds, at which point you begin to realize there's no substance beyond the mechanical bass line and synth riffs. As Jon Caramanica wrote for the New York Times, the song "felt more like a novelty than like part of a strategy."
"Best Day of My Life" by American Authors is a cheap Imagine Dragons imitation.
While "Best Day of My Life" maintains a breezy, upbeat tempo throughout that is just cheerful enough to convince you this isn't a bad song, when you put this 2013 track up against Imagine Dragons' hit from the year before, "It's Time," you realize just how unimaginative this ripoff really is.
"Tongue Tied" by Grouplove relies too heavily on synthesizers.
"'Tongue Tied' shows no restraint whatsoever," Robert Cooke wrote for Drowned in Sound. "Its bloated synth sounds like the soundtrack to an advert for some E number-riddled sweets written by Katy Perry, while the almost-rapping in the middle-eight sounds like a Pussycat Dolls pastiche."
"Cheerleader" by Omi lacks originality and depth.
Omi's reggae track went viral after Felix Jaehn put an EDM twist on it, and upon first listen, it's a pretty upbeat bop — but it quickly becomes apparent that it doesn't have much substance to it.
The track is centered around superficial lyrics that tell a story about a man who has been tempted to cheat on other women, but didn't because his girlfriend is his own personal cheerleader. While Slate's Chris Molanphy didn't mind the song overall, even he admitted the songwriting is "laughably retrograde... (I'd be a total player and step out on you, if you weren't so servile and totally hot!)"
Cali Swag District's "Teach Me How to Dougie" would be fun if it didn't refer to women exclusively as "bitches."
There's only so many times you can listen to the casually sexist line "All my bitches love me," before the infectious beat stops being enough to prevent a listener from rolling their eyes and skipping the song.
But beyond the lyrics, the song is, as the New York Times' Jon Carmonica wrote,"carpetbagging incarnate" thanks to the "Inglewood, California, rappers appropriating a Dallas dance move borrowed in part from a Harlem rapper-beatboxer."
"Billionaire" by Travie McCoy featuring Bruno Mars is disappointing in that it's about men who have tons of money... fantasizing about having even more money.
First of all, centering a song around wishing you were richer isn't novel in any way, but in 2019 when many people have become disillusioned with the idea of having a billion dollars, this song just feels completely out of touch — although, that's not entirely its fault considering it came out almost 10 years ago.
But also, it's just not that good of a song! As Mike Diver wrote for the BBC in 2010, the production is "horribly dated" (now even more so) and the lyrics are "both borish and boring." Even Bruno Mars, who made some of the biggest hits this decade, couldn't save this track.
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