From The Jaynetts to Nicki French to the Shop Boyz, Hot 100 history is full of one-hit wonders whose lone chart stop was to the runner-up spot.
The Shop Boyz pose for a photo backstage during MTV’s Total Request Live at the MTV Times Square Studios on August 14, 2007 in New York City.
Scott Gries/Getty Images
Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Missy Elliott, Dua Lipa, Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Isley Brothers — these are just a handful of the iconic artists who know the pain of getting as close as one possibly can to the apex of the Billboard Hot 100 without ever quite securing that top spot. But while those pop and rock greats have yet to discover the joy of a No. 1 Hot 100 hit, they at least have the comfort of being intimately familiar with the rest of the chart, each visiting it double-digit times over the course of their esteemed careers. (See the list of our staff’s 100 favorite No. 2 hits here, featuring all of these classic hitmakers, and 15 fun facts about those hits here.)
Some artists were not so fortunate. Over the nearly-70-year history of the Hot 100, over a dozen artists have gotten all the way to the No. 2 spot on the chart with their first-ever entry — and then never made a return visit. These artists may have gone on to do additional great things in their lives and careers, but as far as the Hot 100 goes, they are true one-hit wonders, singers and rappers and bands who cracked the code a single time and then couldn’t quite repeat the combination. (And unlike Hot 100-topping true one-hit wonders like Zager & Evans, Crazy Town and Daniel Powter, they also had to settle for the silver with their single entry.)
However, the difficulty these artists had returning to the Hot 100 shows what an accomplishment it is to make it onto the chart at all, even with just a single entry — particularly one that comes just a spot short from going as high as it can possibly go. Today, we salute 12 artists whose sole representation on the Hot 100 comes with a No. 2 hit, presented in chronological order.
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The Jaynetts
No. 2 Hit: “Sally, Go ‘Round the Rouses”
Peak Date: 9/28/63 (two weeks)
Blocked By: Bobby Vinton, “Blue Velvet”
Girl group The Jaynetts was hastily assembled to record “Sally Go ‘Round the Roses,” which had been commissioned by Abner Spector — A&R rep for legendary Chicago blues, rock and soul label Chess Records — and co-written by Zell Sanders, owner of Chess subsidiary J&S, and Lona Stevens, Spector’s wife. The unusual single, with its ambiguous lyrics and hazy, reverb-flooded atmosphere, intrigued listeners, becoming both a pop hit and an enduring cult favorite. But the reverse-engineered Jaynetts failed to achieve similar allure with follow-ups, and disbanded in 1965.
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The Crazy World of Arthur Brown
No. 2 Hit: “Fire”
Peak Date: 10/19/68 (one week)
Blocked By: The Beatles, “Hey Jude”
Arthur Brown had earned his eponymous band a cult following for his flamboyant costuming and wild on-stage antics, but hadn’t scored a hit of his own — even with earlier group The Foundations, whom he left before they hit the top 20 with “Baby, Now That I Found You” and “Build Me Up Buttercup” — until 1968’s “Fire.” The incendiary soul-rock rave-up, with its unforgettably howled “I AM THE GOD OF HELLFIRE!… AND I BRING YOU….” intro, became an unlikely smash in late ’68, but the group quickly moved in even artier and more challenging directions, and never again achieved pop success. (Brown did set the precedent for theatrical rock groups that would achieve more extensive success in the ’70s, however, like KISS and Alice Cooper.)
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Fat City
No. 2 Hit: “Take Me Home, Country Roads” (by John Denver with Fat City)
Peak Date: 8/28/71
Blocked By: Bee Gees, “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart”
Fat City was the folk-rock duo of married couple Taffy Nivert and Bill Danoff, who were opening for a then-pre-stardom John Denver at a Washington, D.C. show in late 1970. After the show, the three were jamming at the duo’s apartment, and they played Denver a song they were planning on selling to country legend Johnny Cash: “Take Me Home, Country Roads.” Denver instead insisted on having it himself, helped flesh it out with the duo, and invited them to sing backup on the eventual record, giving them a feature credit on the release — which ended up being his breakthrough hit.
Fat City continued to record in relative obscurity afterwards, until the duo joined forces with another male-female couple in Jon Carroll and Margot Chapman, forming the quartet Starland Vocal Band — who did Fat City one better by reaching the Hot 100’s top spot in 1976 with the sweetly dirty ballad “Afternoon Delight.”
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Eric Weissberg & Steve Mandell
No. 2 Hit: “Dueling Banjos”
Peak Date: 2/24/73 (four weeks)
Blocked By: Roberta Flack, “Killing Me Softly With His Song”
In strong running for the least-likely No. 2 hit of the 1970s was this instrumental, courtesy of bluegrass banjoists Eric Weissberg and Steve Mandell, a cover of a genre standard composed in 1954 by Arthur “Guitar Boogie” Smith. While the song was hardly an obvious fit in the era of soft rock, power pop and funk, it came with a massive pop culture tie-in, having been extensively featured in the gritty, 1972 blockbuster action-drama Deliverance. As unpredictable as the song’s chart success was, it was just as unsurprising that the duo behind it could not near its level of crossover popularity again, as Weissberg and Mandel did not chart on the Hot 100 again, either separately or together.
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Clint Holmes
No. 2 Hit: “Playground in My Mind”
Peak Date: 6/16/73 (one week)
Blocked By: Paul McCartney and Wings, “My Love”
Another one of the more unusual smash hits of the ’70s, “Playground in My Mind” featured the British-born, New York-raised Army vet Clint Holmes escaping the drudgery of the adult world to the kiddie paradise in his head. (To drive the point home, seven-year-old Philip Vance — son of producer Paul Vance — is introduced as “Michael” in the song’s refrain, singing about buying candy and marrying his sweetheart.) Its overall novelty made it an unsurprising one-off on the charts, though Holmes did find later success as a TV announcer and Vegas entertainer.
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The Dixie Hummingbirds
No. 2 Hit: “Loves Me Like a Rock” (by Paul Simon with The Dixie Hummingbirds)
Peak Date: 10/6/73
Blocked By: Cher, “Half-Breed”
The Dixie Hummingbirds were a Philadelphia-based gospel group who achieved some commercial success in the pre-Hot 100-era ’50s. They were recruited by star singer-songwriter Paul Simon for a couple tracks on his 1973 album There Goes Rhymin’ Simon, including the single “Loves Me Like a Rock,” in which the group provides doo-wop-style backing vocals. The song was a huge hit, and the Hummingbirds themselves covered it on a single that reached the R&B charts, but despite touring with both Simon and fellow ’70s Grammys-dominating hitmaker Stevie Wonder, further pop success eluded the group.
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The Floaters
No. 2 Hit: “Float On”
Peak Date: 9/17/77 (two weeks)
Blocked By: Andy Gibb, “I Just Want to Be Your Everything” & The Emotions, “Best of My Love”
The big breakthrough hit for The Floaters — an R&B quintet from Detroit — was in many ways totally in step with its musical moment, with the sweet, lush production of Philly soul and just enough of a hint of disco in its slow shuffle. But “Float On” had an unusual lyrical hook — with each of the group’s members spending a verse introducing themselves in spoken word by their name and horoscope, then explaining what kind of girl they like and offering to take them “to love land” — that, while initially inviting, perhaps ended up typecasting the group a bit. Subsequent singles stalled, and the group disbanded in 1982.
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Carl Anderson & Gloria Loring
No. 2 Hit: “Friends & Lovers”
Peak Date: 9/27/86 (two weeks)
Blocked By: Huey Lewis & The News, “Stuck With You”
Another one-off with a pop culture tie-in, the love duet “Friends & Lovers” was performed by two singer-actors who had found themselves involved with soap opera Days of Our Lives in the mid-’80s. Loring was a regular on the show, playing the cabaret singer Liz Chandler, and in one 1985 episode, she and Anderson were seen recording “Friends & Lovers,” which subsequently became the love theme for the soap’s popular couple Kim and Shane. The song became a major crossover hit outside of the show — even though its official release wouldn’t come for another year — but failed to spark further pop success for either Loring or Anderson.
Loring did have additional impact on Hot 100 history. She scored a minor hit on the chart the prior decade, with 1977’s No. 74-peaking “Brooklyn,” though that was released under the alias Cody Jameson. She also wrote the themes to the classic sitcoms Diff’rent Strokes and The Facts of Life — singing the latter for most of the show’s run — along with husband Alan Thicke, with whom she also had two children: one of whom was R&B hitmaker Robin Thicke, who topped the Hot 100 in 2013 with the T.I.- and Pharrell-featuring “Blurred Lines.”
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Nicki French
No. 2 Hit: “Total Eclipse of the Heart”
Peak Date: 6/24/95 (one week)
Blocked By: Bryan Adams, “Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman?”
A rare No. 2 redo of a No. 1 hit, Nicki French stormed the Hot 100 in the mid-’90s with a club-oriented cover of Bonnie Tyler’s classic “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” de-emphasizing the song’s theatrical bombast while maintaining its emotional intensity for dancefloor-release purposes. It was the first hit for the British-born French — who had spent much of the decade to that point doing session work — and while further covers of the Carpenters-popularized “For All We Know” and Pink Floyd’s “Is There Anybody Out There?” scraped the UK Official Charts, “Eclipse” was also her last hit in the U.S.
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J. Weav
No. 2 Hit: Chingy’s “One Call Away”
Peak Date: 3/13/04
Blocked By: Usher feat. Lil Jon & Ludacris, “Yeah!”
Chingy was on an absolute heater in early 2004, having just cracked the Hot 100’s top three with both his breakout smash “Right Thurr” (No. 2) and the star-studded “Holidae Inn” (with Ludacris and Snoop Dogg, No. 3) in 2003’s second half. “One Call Away” made him three for three that March, and this time he got hook assistance from a much less-familiar name: J. Weav, alias of Jason Weaver, the smooth R&B crooner best known to that point for his teenage acting work as young Michael Jackson in The Jacksons: An American Dream and as the voice of young Simba in The Lion King. While “One Call Away” brought him one spot away from the Hot 100’s apex in his first attempt, he never tried for the chart again — Weaver went back to acting, and hasn’t appeared on a new song release since 2004.
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Lea
No. 2 Hit: Lil Flip’s “Sunshine”
Peak Date: 8/28/04 (two weeks)
Blocked By: Terror Squad, “Lean Back”
The second hook singer to get their lone moment in the Billboard Hot 100 sun in 2004, Lea Quezada got a major moment on radio and MTV cooing the sweetly summery chorus to ascendant Houston rapper Lil Flip’s “Sunshine.” After the song’s success, Lea appeared poised for solo success, but instead seemed to disappear from the industry altogether — “a lot of label politics,” she summarized to VIBE — before resurfacing in 2011 as a signee to 50 Cent’s new G-Note label. But that reported deal never resulted in an album release, and Lea again slipped through the music world’s fingers.
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Shop Boyz
No. 2 Hit: “Party Like a Rockstar”
Peak Date: 6/9/07 (six weeks)
Blocked By: Rihanna feat. Jay-Z, “Umbrella”
It took one of the biggest pop songs — and two of the biggest pop stars — of the ’00s to keep the Shop Boyz off the top spot of the Hot 100 in 2007, as their “Party Like a Rockstar” was held at bay only by Rihanna and Jay-Z’s “Umbrella” for a solid month and a half. That’s how big a sensation the Atlanta-based trio’s breakout hit became, with its heavy riffing and namechecking of Ozzy Osbourne, Marilyn Manson and countless other headbanger touchstones making it a massive winner for both rock and rap audiences. But the song’s vibe might’ve been too difficult to recapture without pigeonholing the group entirely, and the group’s debut album Rockstar Mentality received poor reviews and failed to produce a successful follow-up.
