8 One-Hit Wonders — and Whatever Happened to Them

That fuzzed-out guitar riff and the hand-claps still turn up in movies and commercials constantly. Greenbaum, a nice Jewish kid from Massachusetts, wrote a gospel-flavored song about meeting your maker after watching a country singer on TV, and it climbed to No. 3.

He never came close again, and he was fine with that. He bought a dairy goat farm in California and mostly stepped away from music. Now in his 80s and living near Santa Rosa, he still collects a healthy check every time the song lands in a film — which is often. As he’s put it, that one record means he never has to work.

It was the first video MTV ever aired, on August 1, 1981 — which is a little on-the-nose, since the whole song is about technology shoving the old ways aside. In the States it was a novelty and then it was gone.

Here’s the twist nobody remembers: the two Buggles didn’t fade at all. Trevor Horn became one of the most in-demand record producers on the planet, shaping hits for Yes, Seal, and plenty more. His bandmate Geoff Downes joined the supergroup Asia. The guys who wrote a song about the future went out and built a big chunk of it.

That icy little synth hook is one of the most recognizable sounds of the whole decade. It was actually a cover of an obscure 1960s soul number, and in America it was Soft Cell’s one and only trip into the Top 40.

Only in America, mind you — back home in Britain they racked up hit after hit. Singer Marc Almond built a long and respected solo career and is still performing. His partner, the synth wizard Dave Ball, kept the duo alive on and off for decades; he died in London in the fall of 2025, at 66, just weeks after a festival gig.

Cheerleader outfit, the pom-poms, “Oh Mickey, you’re so fine” — you can hear the whole chant right now, can’t you. It went to No. 1, and it’s the only song Toni Basil ever put in the Top 40.

Which badly undersells her, because singing was never really her job. Basil is a legendary choreographer. She worked on the movie American Graffiti, staged David Bowie’s enormous Glass Spider tour, and helped bring street dance to the mainstream. Now in her 80s, she’s still dancing — and yes, still posting videos of herself doing it.

The overalls, the fiddles, that mad build where the whole thing slows down and then explodes again — it knocked Michael Jackson off the top of the American chart, which is a sentence worth sitting with for a second.

In Britain, Dexys already had a No. 1 before it and a real following; frontman Kevin Rowland was a genuine artist, not a fluke. He’s had some rough stretches over the years but came through them, and the band still tours. Rowland has admitted the song is a bit of a millstone — though he’s grateful for what it’s paid the bills over the years.

Here’s a strange one: a Cold War protest song, sung entirely in German, about balloons setting off a war scare — and it went to No. 2 in America. The English rewrite, “99 Red Balloons,” was floating around too, but it was the German version people latched onto.

Nena — that’s her stage name; she was born Gabriele Kerner — never had another American hit and didn’t need one. In Germany she’s been a star for 40 years, with a long run of albums and a big comeback in the 2000s. She finally played her first U.S. shows decades later, to rooms full of people who still knew every word of the chorus.

For one endless summer you could not attend a wedding, a ballgame, or a backyard party without doing the arm dance. The remix sat at No. 1 for 14 weeks and became one of the biggest singles of the decade.

The two men behind it were no kids chasing a trend. Antonio Romero and Rafael Ruiz were a veteran Spanish flamenco-pop duo who’d been performing together since they were teenagers in the 1960s. They’re still close, still recording, and they’ve never seemed the least bit embarrassed by the song that made them famous the world over.

The last true stadium-anthem novelty of its kind — a chant you’ve heard at every sporting event since, whether you wanted to or not. It won a Grammy, of all things, and it’s the only thing most Americans could name by the Baha Men.

They were a real, working Bahamian band long before the dogs got out, and they’re still at it back home in the islands — touring, recording, and turning up at festivals. There’s a lovely detail here: after all these years, they reportedly have to fake their way through the fast rap section, because nobody in the group can remember all the words anymore.