The 50 Best One-Hit Wonders of the 2000s

“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, sing-song 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.  

If any band was proof that a sweet-sounding power ballad could take you far in the ‘00s, it was the Oklahoma band Hinder, whose cheating-heart chronicle “Lips of An Angel” got all the way up to Number 3 on the Hot 100 in October 2006. Vocalist Austin Winkler offers sweet assurances during a late-night call from an ex—a concept that would land a lot better if they didn’t include the couplet “Well, my girl’s in the next room/ Sometimes I wish she was you.” The lighter-raising chorus washes away some of the bad vibes, but it’s hard to not wonder how an answer song from the woman on the other side of the wall would have fared. 

This boastful, minimal crunk cut big ups a brightly painted ride that‘s “cream on the inside, clean on the outside,” and tricked out to the max. Not only does Dorrough’s ride have video screens in the dashboard (for watching Saved By the Bell, of course) and a wooden steering wheel — it has a massive stereo built for making the street shake as he blasts this song, which reached Number 27 on the Hot 100 in September 2009. Its many remixes and reworks included East Coast and West Coast remixes as well as a freestyle by Lil Wayne on No Ceilings.      

Led by belter Marti Dodson, whose brawny vocal possessed an Alanis Morrissette-like burr, Columbus rockers Saving Jane debuted with this chugging pop-rock cut about a young woman’s inferiority complex being magnified by a seemingly perfect classmate. (Prom queen, cheerleader, Miss America, top-bunk-claimer. What can’t this seeming superwoman do?) Dodson’s sturdy vocal gives away the long game a bit — the Girl Next Door might be the apple of her schoolmates’ eye, but she probably can’t sell a line like “Everybody loves her/But I just wanna hit her” as convincingly as Marti.

The debut single from Shreveport, Louisiana-born MC Hurricane Chris is a serpentine, static-filled salute to having a great time in the club. Its hands-up chorus is countered by its excitable verses, where Chris crows about the song on at the club being his song. His runaway-train delivery on the verses makes him sound like he’s trying to get all of his prideful thoughts out before the crowd starts hollering “A Bay Bay” one more time, and it gives the track, which topped out at Number 7 on the Hot 100 in June 2007, a live-wire edge. 

YouTube’s launch in 2005 led to a resurgence of the dance craze, and Harlem DJ Webstar capitalized with a track celebrating a dance that had been hot in his neighborhood. With the help of a fire-spitting 14-year-old who went by Young B — a.k.a. Bianca Bonnie — “Chicken Noodle Soup” got hot on the streets, then online, and eventually crossed over to the pop world, peaking at Number 45 on the Hot 100. “It was infectious, this organically lit thing that you couldn’t explain,” Bianca told Billboard in 2019, after BTS MC J-Hope and pop upstart Becky G released a “Chicken Noodle Soup”-sampling duet. “It was created in Harlem, and now it’s a worldwide thing.”

The stylish Atlanta duo of Taylah P. and Kelci were cousins with parents in the music business who began collaborating on their own songs as teenagers. After being signed by Michael “Mr. Collipark” Crooms — who’d also shepherded Ying Yang Twins and Soulja Boy — they released their sublime debut single, a minimalist hip-pop crush story that shows off their grab bag of influences and easy chemistry. (Skip the Soulja Boy remix, which neuters the girlish charm of the original.) “Delirious” reached Number 10 on the Billboard Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart in 2009, but Vistoso Bosses’ debut album, Confetti, was shelved amid late-2000s record-biz tumult.

The alt-hip-hop collective Flobots’ first hit broke the old-fashioned way: Fans in the band’s hometown of Denver called in requests for it en masse, and once it got airtime, the requests only increased, and it eventually peaked at Number 37 on the Hot 100 in 2008. A politically tinged ode to creativity in the wake of possible mass destruction — vocalist Jonny 5 told Rolling Stone in 2008 that he wrote the song “in the thick of the Iraq War” — it has an easy, slightly ramshackle charm that drives home its message of using one’s imagination for good, instead of amassing power for its own sake. 

A “Meeting In The Ladies Room” for the crunk&B era, the debut single from Houston belter Brooke Valentine — which made it to Nunber 23 on the Hot 100 in 2005 — is menacing and clamorous, with Valentine eager to “throw them bows” at anyone who might cross her. With OutKast’s Big Boi and worldwide crunk ambassador Lil Jon backing her up, and squelchy synths laid down by Lil Jon bolstering her confidence, Valentine makes it plain that she’s itching to scrap.  

Glossy and bouncy, the debut single from St. Louis soul upstart Toya is giddy and infectious, capturing the feeling of an across-the-dancefloor flirtation, complete with a sprinkling of synth-chime glitter. Toya was a teenager when she was discovered by Nelly’s manager Tony Davis in 2000, and she was touted as representing “the softer side of St. Louis” when she broke. “I really don’t know what it means, but I kinda like it,” she told Riverfront Times in 2001—and listeners did too, propelling “I Do!!” to Number 16 on the Hot 100 that December. 

The ethos of nu-metal, the amalgam of grunge, metal, and rap that took over the rock world in the late Nineties, is outlined succinctly in the chorus of California rockers’ Trapt’s lone Top 40 hit: “Back off, I’ll take you on.” Lead vocalist Chris Taylor Brown bellows that line as choppy guitars and pummeling drums propel this thundering, petulant rocker, making “Headstrong” — which peaked at Number 16 on the Hot 100 in November 2003 — feel like not so much a song as a threat. Brown has continued waving this particular flag in the decades since, culminating in perhaps-unsurprising rants against “cancel culture” after he gets called out for mouthing off online.  

An Australian guitar prodigy who had jammed with Carlos Santana when she was just 18, Orianthi was primed for global stardom when she was hand-picked to serve as Michael Jackson’s lead guitarist for his ill-fated This Is It concerts. Jackson’s death in June 2009 scuttled those shows and Orianthi went solo, with “According To You” announcing her pop arrival that fall. A spunky kiss-off to an ex from someone who’s found greener pastures, it exists squarely in the post-“Since U Been Gone” universe, although the scorching guitar threaded throughout gives it a spandex-and-hairspray shine.

Hailing from West Texas, Los Lonely Boys — the trio of Henry, Jojo, and Ringo Garza — played an amalgam of Texas blues, soul, and Tejano music that they referred to as “Texican rock n’ roll” when they broke in the early 2000s. “Heaven,” which appeared on their self-titled debut album, was divinely inspired: “I got on my knees and started crying and started praying,” Henry told Rolling Stone in 2004. “And the good Lord told me to start writing it down, dude.” God proved to be a pretty decent A&R guy: The song’s sun-dappled guitars and soaring harmonies, paired with wistful bilingual lyrics that dreamed for “a better place than this place I’m living,” helped it top the AC charts, and it reached Number 16 on the Hot 100 in August 2004.

Bronx-born singer Kat DeLuna’s high-energy debut single fused the beats of late-‘00s dance pop and the spirit of Dominican carnaval with the help of future Lady Gaga producer RedOne. “He talked to me about Morocco, and I told him I was Dominican, and we were just this worldwide team…We started playing around and producing on the spot, and can you believe it, but the beat for ‘Whine Up’ just came about right there,” she told Remezcla in 2017. The sweaty, party-ready “Whine Up,” which featured Jamaican dancehall master Elephant Man, peaked at Number 29 on the Hot 100 in July 2007 and charted around the world, which made DeLuna proud. “To me, it wasn’t just a song. I really thought of it as a movement for people — something that was very international,” she said.

Stockholm rockers Caesars’ rave-up “Jerk It Out” initially came out in 2002, when the band was known as Caesars Palace. Three years later, they’d cleaned up their copyright-flouting name by lopping off its back half, and “Jerk It Out” was given a platform even bigger than the radio: It was featured in an ad for the iPod Shuffle, the more compact version of Apple’s signature MP3 player. That led to “Jerk It Out,” an organ-laced garage-rock nugget, popping up all over — it might have only reached No. 70 in April 2005, but its omnipresence in ads, trailers, video-game soundtracks, and films made it one of the decades’ most “Oh, yeah, that song”-ready hits.    

Channeling the spittle-flecked post-breakup ire of a Staten Island bruiser into about four minutes of catharsis, Eamon’s taunting “Fuck It (I Don’t Want You Back)” tested radio stations’ readiness to comply with the FCC’s rules on profanity and thrilled listeners looking for an outlet to express their own rage. Despite (or perhaps because of) its copious swearing, “Fuck It” peaked at Number 16 on the Hot 100 in February 2004, inspired an answer single in the following month, and led to Eamon teaming with fellow Staten Islander Ghostface Killah on the slightly more grateful (if less successful) “I Love Them Ho’s (Ho-Wop).”    

Formed by the siblings of two Hannah Montana stars — Miley Cyrus’ brother Trace and Mitchel Musso’s brother Mason — in the mid-2000s, the emo-pop band Metro Station released its self-titled debut in 2007, shortly after being signed off MySpace. The album’s third single, the lusty yet compact synth-pop-punk cut “Shake It,” proved to be the charm — its sticky, simple chorus made it a reliable party-starter, and its New Wave-y leanings gave it a retro-nouveau vibe that propelled it to Number 10 on the Hot 100 in June 2008. 

Pop songs that functioned explicitly as morality plays were few and far between by the time this New Jersey trio released “What Would You Do?” in 2001, which made it stick out in the crowded post-Y2K pop landscape. The Wyclef Jean-produced track tells the story of a run-in with a stripper on hard times, and it can get a bit didactic — “Girl, you ain’t the only one with a baby/ That’s no excuse to be livin’ all crazy,” one verse exclaims. But its pleading chorus gave it radio-ready appeal, and it peaked at Number 8 on the Hot 100 in May 2001.    

Atlanta’s 2000s grip on the hip-hop scene continued with this deliriously fun crunk track from the DJ and hypeman Unk, whose boisterous rap stylings added a playful spark to the chaotic synths and relentless beat he’d laid down. “Walk It Out” started as an Atlanta club smash in early 2006, then spread to the rest of the country’s radio stations later that year. In January 2007, a remix featuring Jim Jones, André 3000, and Big Boi came out — the last time Big Boi and Andre 3000 of OutKast appeared on the same song — and a few weeks later “Walk It Out” reached its high point of Number 10 on the Hot 100.

The blog-rock boom of the mid-to-late-‘00s had a number of crossovers with the offline world, but the catchiest definitely came from Stockholm outfit Peter Bjorn And John. Their dreamy 2006 track “Young Folks” deployed an insistent whistled melody as a means of crowbarring itself into any unsuspecting listener’s brain — not in a bad way, mind you, but in an instantly unforgettable one. Peter Bjorn And John’s quirky take on Swedish twee didn’t reach the Hot 100, but it did open the 2007 pilot of Gossip Girl—which, in the chaotic pop landscape of the late ‘00s, was a victory almost up there with chart recognition.   

The debut single from Don Ho’s daughter didn’t take too many cues from the Hawaiian music standard-bearer — Hoku’s 2000 contribution to the Snow Day soundtrack, which reached Number 27 on the Hot 100 in April 2000, was an upbeat if bittersweet dance-pop cut about a boyfriend with a wandering eye. It reaches euphoria on the bridge, where Hoku’s voice sails into its upper register as she flips the chorus line “you never loved me anyway” into a more self-affirming “I never loved you anyway,” and seals its empowered deal near the end, when she belts “go ahead and find what you neeeed!” as a final shove out the door.

Flipping the riff of Weezer’s “Say It Ain’t So” and the boom-bap beat of MC Lyte’s “!0% Dis” into a lilting reggae-adjacent groove, the debut single from Pennsylvania MC Asher Roth celebrates the cheap pizza and endless partying that comes with his higher education. His incredulous delivery nails the always-wowed vibe of the typical campus stoner guy, and it pushed “I Love College” to blog fame (and made Roth a Spring Break star) in 2009. “I Love College” peaked at Number 12 on the Hot 100 that year, and Roth is still releasing music — although whether he’s the pride of his alma mater West Chester University, or a PR crisis, remains up for debate. 

The Atlanta sister act Cherish topped out at Number 12 on the Hot 100 with “Do It To It,” a Sean Paul-assisted serpentine ode to clubbing that shows off their silky blood harmonies. Cherish’s insistent instructions — “Bounce wit’ it, drop wit’ it, lean wit’ it, rock wit’ it, snap wit’ it” — are delivered in a gently firm cadence that will have even the most devoted sofa-dwellers moving along with its sweeping beat. 

A decade after “Smells Like Teen Spirit” broke and years after the alt-rock gold rush had passed, some music journalists were still on the hunt for the next Nirvana, and this Sydney act was tapped with that distinction in the run-up to their 2002 debut Highly Evolved. That album’s snarling cut “Get Free,” which didn’t reach the Hot 100 but did get airplay on American rock radio and MTV, lived up to that assessment: frontman Craig Nicholls’ strangled voice sounds dipped in a Cobainian lye, while his bandmates’ sonic assault makes every second of the song’s 2:07 running time land like a bomb.

Kandi Burruss had enjoyed pop fame as a member of the ‘90s R&B vocal group Xscape, and her songwriting credits for Destiny’s Child, P!nk, and TLC showed how her talents carried over into her post-Xscape years. “Don’t Think I’m Not,” her revved-up 2000 solo single, delighted in getting even with an ex—not through anything nefarious, but through having a full and happy life on her own. It topped out at Number 24 in October 2000 and was her only song to chart there, but Burruss kept thriving all the way to being cast on The Real Housewives of Atlanta in 2009. 

Perhaps the only way to respond to Yum Brands’ decision to house its many fast-food brands under the same roof was this surrealistic, loping track from the Brooklyn hip-hop collective Das Racist, which was initially released on MySpace in 2008. It didn’t reach the charts, but the way twin MCs Himanshu “Heems” Suri and Victor “Kool A.D.” Vazquez turned the phenomenon of looking at words for mind-warping periods of time into a heady, giddy pop experience created a viral smash that altered the musical landscape. 

While rock seemed to be getting leaner and meaner in the early ‘00s with the parallel ascents of nu-metal and post-Strokes/White Stripes garage-rock, the Los Angeles band the Calling veered in the opposite direction with their 2001 single “Wherever You Will Go,” a big-hearted, strummy ballad about love and mortality. Singer Alex Band’s gruff vocal drove home the song’s slow-build romanticism, which crests on a commitment-celebrating chorus tailor-made for weddings, anniversary parties, and other commemorations of long-standing bonds. “Wherever” reached Number 5 on the Hot 100 in March 2002, and it topped the Adult Top 40 for 23 weeks — a feat only bested by Santana’s Rob Thomas-assisted “Smooth,” and one that was tied by Taylor Swift’s “Cruel Summer” in the Eras Tour glow of 2024.  

Soca singer Kevin Lyttle initially recorded “Turn Me On” as a ballad, but in 2003 it was remixed into a quick-stepping dancehall track that reached Number 4 on the Hot 100 in August 2004. Lyttle’s honey-dipped voice adds a bit of cushion to his come-ons, while the old-school synths surrounding him add urgency to the proceedings.

Romeo “Lil Romeo” Miller’s father is No Limit Records founder Master P, and he signed to his dad’s label for his debut album. The No Limit heir had a lot of resources for his debut single, as evidenced by the way it flipped the Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back” into a celebration of Romeo himself. Putting his not-yet-teenaged voice front and center, the ebullient “My Baby,” which reached Number Three on the Billboard Hot 100 in June 2001, was the ultimate playground boast — not only because of its pricey sample, but because of the way he name-dropped his uncles Silkk the Shocker and C-Murder, shouted out his basketball skills, and spent much of the song dodging the romantic intentions of a determined young woman. 

Shawn Maurice Mims’ debut single reached Number One in March 2007, thanks to a snaking, minimalist backing track, well-deployed interpolations that tip a cap to the world outside of MiMS’ hometown of New York. and some of the most tautological boasts ever committed to wax. “I’m hot coz I’m fly/ You ain’t coz you’re not,” he declares in laid-back yet firm fashion — and who are we to argue with that type of ironclad logic?

“Cock rock” wasn’t just a genre for the British band the Darkness: It was a reason for being, as their 2003 rallying cry “I Believe In A Thing Called Love” proudly proclaimed. With its winking, horny lyrics, delivered by octave-leaping frontman Justin Hawkins, and its full-arsenal guitar solo, laid down by Justin’s brother Dan, “I Believe In A Thing Called Love” was goofy but not a goof. It wasn’t really the kind of thing that’d get on the radio in the 2000s, but it touched a retro-rock nerve and its late-Eighties revivalism remains potent to this day thanks to the Darkness’ chops and charm. 

A happy-sad ditty that combines upbeat strumming with copious apologies from a not-great boyfriend, the lone hit by the Long Island alt-rock band Nine Days rides a syllable-stuffed opening couplet, “This is the story of a girl/ who cried a river and drowned the whole world,” to jangle-pop paradise. Reaching Number 6 on the Hot 100 in July 2000, the hooky “Absolutely” has just enough brightly framed self-loathing for vocalist-guitarist John Hampson to seem like an okay guy in the end.     

While the girlband craze that took over the UK never quite materialized on the other side of the Atlantic, the TV series Popstars, which spawned the mega-selling vocal group Girls Aloud, did take root on The WB for two seasons. Its first season led to the 2001 formation of Eden’s Crush, and while in 2025 that quintet is probably most notable for its inclusion of Tony nominee Nicole Scherzinger, it did arrive on the wider pop scene with a banger. “Get Over Yourself,” which topped out at Number 8 on the Hot 100 in March 2001, is a feisty and petulant pop&B cut in the Destiny’s Child mold, with sparkling instrumentation framing glowering harmonizing about a controlling ex.   

A true time capsule of its moment, the Atlanta snap-hop group D4L’s ode to booty-shaking rode a bunch of ‘00s trends — Atlanta hip-hop, dance crazes, ringtone-ready music, and digital song sales — to the top of the Hot 100 for a single week at the beginning of 2006. Its minimalistic beat made it catchy despite itself, while its ridiculous lyrics (“I’m lookin’ for Mrs. Bubble Gum, I’m Mr. Chick-O-Stick,” etc) added even more playfulness to the mix.