Popular music experienced a massive upheaval during the ‘00s, when the high record sales of the Nineties crash-landed, record-store chains closed en masse, and tech companies started beckoning listeners away from their Walkmen and toward digital-music players. But chaos can bring unexpected moments of wonder, and the combination of online distribution (via song sales, YouTube streams, and MySpace presences), audience fragmentation, TV singing competitions, and the usual cultural evolutions — not to mention MTV, which had the pulse-measuring TRL on its schedule until the end of 2008 — led to a bunch of shooting stars becoming visible. Fifty of them, representing the best one-hit wonders of the decade, are listed below.  

The common definition of “one-hit wonder” can be a bit malleable, so it’s worth noting that some of the artists who’ve been given that title actually made it big with multiple tracks. The quasi-sapphic Russian duo t.A.T.u. had one of the best singles of the decade with “All The Things She Said,” which reached Number 20 on Billboard’s Hot 100 in March 2003; they followed it up with the speedy “Not Gonna Get Us,” which didn’t make the Hot 100 but was a smash in the clubs and on MTV. Mississippi MC Afroman’s chilled-out stoner chronicle “Because I Got High” was a Y2K smash, reaching Number 13, and while its followup “Crazy Rap” didn’t make that chart, it did reach the top 10 in the U.K. and elsewhere. (It’s since become a streaming sensation, and it was certified triple platinum in 2023.) Ontario rockers Finger Eleven’s 2007 cut “Paralyzer,” which amped up the jock-jam quotient of Franz Ferdinand’s “Take Me Out,” reached Number Six on the Hot 100; four years prior, their strummily sincere ballad “One Thing” hit Number 16. And so on. 

Here are the best 50 one-hit wonders of the 2000s, including neo-power ballads and slinky dancehall cuts, nu metal, dancehall, and crunk, proto-viral cult classics and from-nowhere chart-toppers.   

“Where is the moment we needed the most?” Canadian singer-songwriter Daniel Powter asks at the outset of his 2005 lament. But “Bad Day” is no wallow; yelling along with its insistent, singsong chorus can force a grin out of even the saddest sack. Co-produced by pop guru Mitchell Froom and written by Powter as a way to get its refrain’s melody out of his head, “Bad Day” spent five weeks at Number One on the Hot 100 in early 2006 — and it’ll probably be cheering people up against their will until the end of time.