Last week, I did a show dedicated to one-hit wonders. To me, a one-hit wonder is a band that only had one hit. Anyone disagree with that statement? No? Let's move on.
I discovered when you send a tweet that states Radiohead is a one-hit wonder, people will quickly disagree with you.
Time to drop some knowledge so we can put this behind us:
First of all, I am only going by the US charts. I live in the US. I hardly keep up with the US charts, let alone those of other countries. But according to the charts, Radiohead is a one-hit wonder in the United States.
If you go this Wikipedia page, you'll see two charts for the US. One is the Modern Rocks Tracks chart, which is a list of the Top 40 alternative songs played on radio stations each week. It is based solely on airplay, not sales. This chart was not used.
The chart used was the one labeled US, or the Billboard Hot 100 chart. This chart lists the top 100 songs in the United States each week based on airplay and sales. This is the only chart that matters.
If you look down that column, you'll see that Radiohead only had two Top 40 hits in the United States, Creep and Nude. Nude should not count as a Top 40 single. Why? Glad you asked.
When Radiohead released Nude as a single, they also held a remix contest. Radiohead made stems of the song available for download. You could download the bass part, the vocals, the guitar part, and so on. There were five separate downloads available that could be mixed together to form the song. However, these stems were counted towards sales for Radiohead's Nude. Does the drum track of Nude count as Nude? The sales figures for Nude were hugely inflated due to the remix contest. Therefore, Nude should not count as a Top 40 hit in the United States for Radiohead.
Therefore, Radiohead only had one Top 40 hit in the United States. Creep.
I know Radiohead have won tons of awards, sold tons of albums, are big in other countries, and are the darlings of music critics.
But they're a one-hit wonder in the United States.
Thoughts On One-Hit Wonders
