70s One Hit Wonders: 147 Verified, One Chart Hit Each

By Charlie · Published September 27, 2026

This site has confirmed 147 genuine 70s one hit wonders.

A one hit wonder here means an act with exactly one US Top 40 hit on the Billboard Hot 100.

That's their whole career, not just the 70s.

368 acts looked like candidates from this site's own chart data alone.

Only 147 survived a full career chart check.

The biggest of them, Terry Jacks' "Seasons in the Sun," was a number one hit.

Every confirmed act is in the sortable table below, and most of them can be played right from it.

How the 147 confirmed 70s one hit wonders break down by the year of their one hit.

Chart: Music of the 70s, from this site's weekly and year-end Billboard data.

The Short Answer: 147 Confirmed, From 368 Candidates

A real 70s one hit wonder is an act whose only Top 40 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 happened once.

Once in their whole career, not just the 70s.

That's a stricter bar than it sounds.

Plenty of acts remembered as "one hit wonders" quietly had a second song limp into the bottom of the Top 40 years later.

That second song disqualifies them under this definition.

Here's how this list was narrowed down:

• 368 acts appear exactly once in this site's own Billboard year-end Hot 100 data for 1970 to 1979.
• 162 of those are also independently listed on Wikipedia's "List of one hit wonders in the United States," 1970s section.
• Each of those 162 was checked against their full Billboard Hot 100 chart history, any year, not just the 70s.
• 147 came back clean. 15 had a second Top 40 hit and were dropped.

That process is what separates this page's 147 confirmed 70s one hit wonders from a casual list.

The full breakdown of what got dropped, and why, is further down this page.

A Hit Doesn't Have to Be Small

People tend to picture a one hit wonder as a novelty song that barely scraped the chart.

That's not always true.

Terry Jacks' "Seasons in the Sun" spent three weeks at number one in March 1974.

Debby Boone's "You Light Up My Life" spent ten weeks at number one in 1977.

That's the longest run of the entire decade.

Both are 70s one hit wonders by this definition.

Having exactly one hit says nothing about how big that hit was.

The Highest-Charting 70s One Hit Wonders

Ranked by year-end position on the Billboard Hot 100.

This is the best chart showing any confirmed one hit wonder had that year.

Terry Jacks Beat the Field

No confirmed one hit wonder charted higher, in any year, than Terry Jacks did in 1974.

"Seasons in the Sun" is a translated, English-language reworking of a 1961 Jacques Brel song.

The original is about a dying man saying goodbye.

It's also the only number one hit Jacks ever had, in any country, under any name.

The full story of the song is on the Seasons in the Sun Songs page.

Debby Boone in 1979, two years after her only Hot 100 hit.

"You Light Up My Life" held number one longer than any other song of the decade.

Image credit: Warner Bros./Curb Records, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

One Hit Wonders That Reached Number One

A one hit wonder and a number one hit are not opposites.

24 of the 147 confirmed acts on this list reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100.

That was their one and only Top 40 hit.

That's about one in six.

• Shocking Blue, "Venus" (1970)
• Vicki Lawrence, "The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia" (1973)
• Stories, "Brother Louie" (1973)
• Terry Jacks, "Seasons in the Sun" (1974)
• Blue Swede, "Hooked on a Feeling" (1974)
• George McCrae, "Rock Your Baby" (1974)
• Paper Lace, "The Night Chicago Died" (1974)
• Minnie Riperton, "Lovin' You" (1975)
• Carl Douglas, "Kung Fu Fighting" (1975)
• Billy Swan, "I Can Help" (1975)
• Wild Cherry, "Play That Funky Music" (1976)
• Walter Murphy & The Big Apple Band, "A Fifth of Beethoven" (1976)
• Starland Vocal Band, "Afternoon Delight" (1976)
• John Sebastian, "Welcome Back" (1976)
• Rick Dees & His Cast of Idiots, "Disco Duck" (1976)
• Thelma Houston, "Don't Leave Me This Way" (1977)
• Alan O'Day, "Undercover Angel" (1977)
• David Soul, "Don't Give Up on Us" (1977)
• Meco, "Star Wars Theme/Cantina Band" (1977)
• Debby Boone, "You Light Up My Life" (1978)
• Exile, "Kiss You All Over" (1978)
• Nick Gilder, "Hot Child in the City" (1978)
• Anita Ward, "Ring My Bell" (1979)
• Amii Stewart, "Knock on Wood" (1979)

1974 and 1976 tie for the most, with four number one 70s one hit wonders apiece.

Spin the Random 70s Song Generator a few times and there's a real chance one of these lands.

Year by Year: When the One Hits Landed

Counting each confirmed one hit wonder by the year their single first charted.

1970 Had More Than Any Other Year

22 confirmed 70s one hit wonders had their single hit in 1970 alone.

That's more than any other year of the decade.

Part of that is a data-shape effect.

A one hit wonder from early in the decade has had less time to sneak a second Top 40 hit in before 1980.

An act from 1979 has barely had any time at all.

It also lines up with how AM radio worked in 1970.

The format was singles-driven, genre-crossing, and open to one-off studio projects that never toured or recorded again.

1977 Had the Fewest

Only 8 confirmed 70s one hit wonders trace back to 1977, the fewest of any year.

The Top Songs of 1977 page covers the complete year-end countdown for that year.

Acts We Checked and Dropped

Not every act with a reputation as a one hit wonder survived this site's check.

15 acts appeared on Wikipedia's one-hit-wonder list, and had only one entry in this site's own year-end data.

But each one turned out to have a second Top 40 hit once their full chart history was checked.

They're listed here instead of silently left off, since that's the more useful and more honest way to handle a close call.

My Sharona Is the Famous Case

The Knack's "My Sharona" is one of the most-cited 70s one hit wonders in pop culture.

It even shows up in a 2011 Rolling Stone readers' poll of the genre.

But The Knack's own follow-up single, "Good Girls Don't," reached number 11 on the Billboard Hot 100.

That was just a few months later, in late 1979.

Two Top 40 hits, back to back, from the same act.

By the definition this page uses, that rules them out, no matter how one-hit their reputation is.

Every Confirmed 70s One Hit Wonder, Sortable

All 147 acts, in the order their one hit first reached the year-end Hot 100.

Tap a column heading to sort by song, act, year or year-end rank.

Song titles in gold link to a full story on this site.

Press Play on any row to watch that song right here, in a player that opens under it.

Looking for a specific mood instead of a specific act?

The Mood Song Matcher works from this site's own tag data, not chart rank.

How This List Was Built

Every figure on this page traces back to this site's own Billboard year-end Hot 100 file.

That file holds one record per song per year, 1970 to 1979.

Step One: Find the Candidates

368 acts appear exactly once across the full ten years of that file.

That's a starting pool, not a finished list.

Appearing once in one site's own year-end data isn't proof an act never had another Top 40 hit somewhere else, some other year.

Step Two: Cross-Check an Independent Source

Each candidate was checked against Wikipedia's List of one hit wonders in the United States, 1970s section.

That list requires at least two outside citations per entry.

162 acts cleared both checks: one appearance in this site's own data, and independent confirmation elsewhere.

Step Three: Verify the Whole Career

The 162 survivors were then checked one by one against their full Billboard Hot 100 chart history.

That meant each act's own Wikipedia discography and, where needed, direct Billboard Hot 100 chart data.

Any other single reaching positions 1 through 40, in any year, disqualified the act.

15 were dropped this way.

147 were confirmed.

Chart positions on other charts don't count toward or against Top 40 status here.

That includes R&B, Country, Adult Contemporary, Cash Box, and any chart outside the US. Only the Billboard Hot 100 does.

The full approach to sourcing and fact-checking is on the site's methodology page.

This page joins the site's other chart-built page, 70s Number One Hits.

Together they're part of a growing, sourced chart archive.

Curious what a totally random pick from the decade sounds like?

Try the Random 70s Song Generator, pulled from the same chart data as this page.

Or head to Music of the 70s for the full site.

It covers every genre, artist and year the site has built so far.

Related Posts

Songs

70s Number One Hits

Every Billboard number one of the decade, sourced from the same chart data as this page.

Read post

Songs

Best Songs of the 70s

The decade's greatest records, ranked with the chart data behind each pick.

Read post

Years

Top Songs of 1974

The year-end countdown for the year Terry Jacks and three other 70s one hit wonders topped the chart.

Read post