A one-hit wonder is any entity that achieves mainstream popularity, often for only one piece of work, and becomes known among the general public solely for that momentary success. The term is most commonly used in regard to music performers with only one hit single that overshadows their other work. Some artists dubbed "one-hit wonders" in a particular country had achieved success in other countries. Music artists with subsequent popular albums and hit listings are not properly considered a one-hit wonder, although artists with multiple hits have sometimes been erroneously labelled as "one-hit wonders" if one particular hit has become much more well-remembered years or decades later than their other hits. One-hit wonders usually see their popularity decreasing after their hit listing, and most often never return to hit listings with other songs or albums.
30-812: Ultratop is an organization which generates and publishes the official record charts in Belgium . Ultratop is a non-profit organization , created in 1995 on the initiative of the Belgian Entertainment Association (BEA), the Belgian member organization of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry . Two parallel sets of charts are concurrently produced and published; one is on behalf of Belgium's mainly Dutch-speaking Flanders region, and
60-486: A U.S. one-hit wonder as an "artist that cracks the top 40 on the Billboard Hot 100 and never makes it back to that position." This formal definition can include acts with greater success outside their lone pop hit and who are not typically considered one-hit wonders, while at the same time excluding acts who have multiple hits which have been overshadowed by one signature song , or those performers who never hit
90-424: A climber, as if releases ahead of it decline in sales sufficiently, they may slip below it. By the same metric, not all week-to-week sales increases result in a climber, if other releases improve by a sufficient amount to keep it from climbing. The term highest climber is used to denote the release making the biggest leap upwards in the chart that week. There is generally not an equivalent phrase for tracks going down
120-471: A music/entertainment chart or the performance of a release thereon. A new entry is a title which is making its début in that chart. It is applied to all charts, for instance a track which is outside the Top 40 but which later climbs into that level of the chart is considered to be a 'new entry' to the Top 40 that week. In most official charts, tracks have to have been on sale for a period of time in order to enter
150-454: A runaway seller. Most charts that are used to determine extant mainstream popularity rely on measurable data. Record chart performance is inherently relative, as they rank songs, albums, and records in comparison to each other at the same time, as opposed to music recording sales certification methods, which are measured in absolute numbers. Comparing the chart positions of songs at different times thus does not provide an accurate comparison of
180-402: A song's overall impact. The nature of most charts, particularly weekly charts, also favors songs that sell very well for a brief period; thus, a song that is only briefly popular may chart higher than a song that sells more copies in the long range, but more slowly. As a result, a band's biggest hit single may not be its best-selling single. There are several commonly used terms when referring to
210-509: A variety of sources. The Ultratop 50 chart is compiled in Dutch and presented on the Belgian radio station MNM . It also used to air on the now defunct TMF Flanders , and has not been shown on television since. The Walloon Ultratop chart began in 1995 as the Ultratop 40 , ranking the forty best-selling singles in the mainly French-speaking region of Belgium. The predecessor prior to Ultratop
240-424: Is a materially different recording or is significantly repackaged (such as Michael Jackson's "Thriller 25"), where the release would normally be considered separate and thus a "new" entry. A climber is a release which is going higher in the chart week-on-week. Because chart positions are generally relative to each other on a week-to-week basis, a release does not necessarily have to increase sales week-to-week to be
270-434: Is the market observer of the charts. The chart broadcasts on Radio Contact on Saturdays from 12:00 to 14:00. The combined number of Ultratop chart listeners on the various radio or TV stations exceeds two million every week. To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the charts in 2005, a jubilee book was published. It covers all 15,282 singles from 5,882 artists thus far. Ultratop 50 has existed since 31 March 1995. Prior to 1995,
300-628: The NME also recognised the following hits in their one-hit wonders feature from 2014: From the BBC in March 2017 (based on a combination of chart position and sales): From the BBC Radio 2 show One Hit Wonders with OJ Borg which started on 2 November 2020... (in alphabetical order): The Official Charts Company's list of the biggest one-hit wonder releases of the 2010s, is based on sales and streams. Like
330-596: The BRT Top 30 ) and which was broadcast by VRT , also known as BRT. After Ultratop started publishing the official charts in 1995, Radio 2 started publishing and broadcasting the Ultratop charts. The charts archived on the Ultratop website from before when Ultratop started compiling the charts in 1995 are taken from the book Het Belgisch hitboek: 45 jaar hits in Vlaanderen: 1954-1999 by Robert Collin which in turn uses
SECTION 10
#1732793027080360-617: The Ultratop 200 Albums chart. Published in French, it covers weekly albums sales in Belgium's French-speaking Wallonia region. The Ultratop charts published include: In addition to the main Ultratop 50, another weekly singles chart known as Ultratip or Ultratip Bubbling Under was published until it was discontinued on 29 May 2021. Also referred to as the Tipparade , it was an indicator chart of songs that had not or had not yet reached
390-449: The Hot 100). A "Top 40" is used by radio to shorten playlists. A re-entry is a track which has previously entered a chart and fallen off of that chart, and then later re-appears in it; it may come about if a release is reissued or if there is a re-surge of interest in the track. Generally, any repeat entry of a track into a chart is considered a re-entry, unless the later version of the track
420-805: The NME chart, including Melody Maker and Record Retailer . According to Joel Whitburn , the American trade publication Billboard introduced the Hot 100 on August 4, 1958. It was the first chart in the US to "fully integrate the hottest-selling and most-played pop singles." From 1958 until 1991, Billboard compiled the chart from playlists reported by radio stations, and surveys of retail sales outlets. Before 1958, several charts were published, including "Best Sellers in Stores", "Most Played by Jockeys" (later revived under
450-485: The UK's Top 40 (as compiled by Gallup ) once only in their careers and does not include acts which feature members from other successful bands from the 1980s. The top ten is as follows: In 2020, Absolute Radio 90s compiled a list of 'the 20 greatest one-hit wonders of the 1990s' as part of their 10th birthday celebrations; the list was as follows (listed in alphabetical order by artist): In addition to these one-hit wonders,
480-502: The Ultratop 50, comparable to the US Bubbling Under Hot 100 chart. Since 2016 for singles, and since July 2017 for albums, the Ultratop charts also include streaming. The exact number of streams that are counted as a single or an album is undisclosed. In order to avoid inflation of album sales through raising the number of tracks, only the twelve most streamed tracks are counted. To avoid the effect of one-hit wonders ,
510-404: The chart ever. If an act appears in some other form (for example, a solo act that appears with a band or with other act), then they are taken separately. One-hit wonder In The Billboard Book of One-Hit Wonders, music journalist Wayne Jancik defines a one-hit wonder as "an act that has won a position on [the] national, pop, Top 40 record chart just once." Billboard magazine defines
540-545: The chart had to be physically available as a single . A chart hit is a recording, identified by its inclusion in a chart that uses sales or other criteria to rank popular releases, that ranks highly in popularity compared to other songs in the same timeframe. Chart-topper and related terms (like number one , No. 1 hit , top of the charts , chart hit , and so forth) are widely used in common conversation and in marketing, and are loosely defined. Because of its value in promoting recording artists and releases, both directly to
570-467: The chart; however, in some retailers' charts, new releases are included in charts as 'new entries' without a sales history in order to make them more visible to purchasers. In the UK, the official published chart is a Top 100, although a new entry can take place between positions 101–200 (also true of the Billboard Hot 100, which has a " Bubbling Under " addendum for new songs that have not yet made
600-605: The chart; the term "faller" is occasionally used, but not as widely as 'climber'. A one-hit wonder is an act that appears on the chart just once, or has one song that peaks exceptionally higher, or charts for exceptionally longer than other chart entries by the act. The term true one-hit wonder was the term given by the Guinness Book of British Hit Singles & Albums (and also the Billboard book Top Pop Singles ) for an act that has one top 40 hit and nothing else on
630-409: The commercial success of individual songs. A common format of radio and television programs is to run down a music chart. The first record chart was founded in 1952 by Percy Dickins, who was working at New Musical Express at the time. Dickins would telephone roughly twenty UK record stores and ask what their best-selling records were that week. Several similar charts followed after the success of
SECTION 20
#1732793027080660-413: The consumer, and by encouraging exposure on radio, TV, and other media, chart positioning has long been a subject of scrutiny and controversy. Chart compilation methodology and data sources vary, ranging from "buzz charts" (based on opinions of various experts and tastemakers ), to charts that reflect empirical data such as retail sales. Therefore, a chart-topper may be anything from an "insiders' pick" to
690-583: The name Hot 100 Airplay ), and "Most Played in Juke Boxes", and, in later collations of chart hits, the record's highest placing in any of those charts was usually reported. On November 30, 1991, Billboard introduced a new method of determining the Hot 100: "by a combination of actual radio airplay monitored electronically by Nielsen Broadcast Data Systems (BDS), additional playlists from small-market stations, and actual point-of-sale information provided by Nielsen SoundScan ." Until 1998, any songs placed on
720-457: The number of downloads , and the amount of streaming activity. Some charts are specific to a particular musical genre and most to a particular geographical location. The most common period covered by a chart is one week with the chart being printed or broadcast at the end of this time. Summary charts for years and decades are then calculated from their component weekly charts. Component charts have become an increasingly important way to measure
750-479: The official IFPI Belgium charts which covered both the French speaking part of Belgium (Wallonia) and the Dutch speaking part of Belgium (Flanders) were compiled based on shipments from distributors to retailers and not on sales from retailers to customers. However, this chart coexisted with a weekly Flemish chart that was based on actual sales from retailers to customers known as the Radio 2 Top 30 (previously known as
780-837: The other catering to the nation's mainly French-speaking region of Wallonia . The music charts produced by Ultratop organization are separated along regional-language boundaries, an unusual division that is justified by the cultural differences in Belgium . So it is that the mainly Dutch-speaking Flanders region has one set of charts of record activity there, while the mainly French-speaking Wallonia region has another set to measure popularity in those provinces. The charts are broadcast on several Belgian radio stations, and on TV stations TMF in Flanders and Plug RTL in Wallonia. Ultratop creates charts based on record sales of around 500 retail outlets and legal digital downloads. Currently GfK
810-589: The top 40, but had exactly one song achieve mainstream popularity in some other fashion (that is, a " turntable hit " or a song that was ineligible for the top-40 charts). In 2006, the Australian series 20 to 1 aired the episode "20 to 1: One Hit Wonders", a list of songs that had been the only one by that artist to have success in Australia. In September 2006, New Zealand 's terrestrial music channel, C4 , aired an episode dedicated to "One Hit Wonders" on
840-401: The two most streamed tracks are counted at the average of the next ten tracks. Record chart A record chart , in the music industry , also called a music chart , is a ranking of recorded music according to certain criteria during a given period. Many different criteria are used in worldwide charts, often in combination. These include record sales , the amount of radio airplay ,
870-409: The weekly theme-based chart show, UChoose40 , where the chart was ranked entirely by viewer's votes from the website. The top ten songs were ranked as follows: The Guinness Book of British Hit Singles contains a list of ‘one hit wonders’ from 1979 to 2001 which comprises acts with their only Top 75 charting record being a number one hit. Classic Pop magazine's list only includes acts who made
900-441: Was a nationwide (unified) Belgian chart which began to be compiled in 1961. On 4 September 2010, the Ultratop 40 was renamed Ultratop 50 as well, after the ranking list increased from a total of 40 to 50 songs. Compiled in Dutch, it covers weekly albums sales in Belgium's Dutch-speaking Flanders region. Originally brought out as the Ultratop 50 Albums chart, it was expanded to become the Ultratop 100 Albums chart, and eventually
#79920