Best One Hit Wonder - Final Four

We made it to the Final Four!  And despite the many upsets, two 1-seeds survived and will square off for a chance at the championship.  Take On Me has been one of the most dominant songs in the bracket and ended the Cinderella run of 15-seed Stacy’s Mom.  Baby Got Back has been the other dominant song and took out Tubthumping with relative ease to make it here.  It will be interesting to see where the votes go in this matchup.  

In the other matchup, there is one song that was probably a good sleeper pick from the beginning and one song that I think is a bit of a surprise to see in the Final Four.  Come On Eileen has been a popular song for going on 40 years now, and despite being a 5-seed, I think it’s safe to say that it was a favorite heading into the bracket.  It even took out some other heavyweights in Ice, Ice, Baby and the Macarena to make it here.  I am shocked, however, that I’m Gonna Be is here.  Every week I thought it would lose, and it just kept winning, culminating with a narrow two vote victory over Jump Around to make it to the Final Four.  Does it have what it takes to knock out Come On Eileen?  We’ll find out.

I included the music videos this week in case you need a refresher on these songs before voting.  Enjoy and keep the votes coming!

Best One Hit Wonder Bracket - Elite Eight

This was probably the least suspenseful round of voting, as most matchups were decided by 15 votes or more.  But the results left two 1-seeds out and a 15 seed with a chance to reach the Final Four.  I’m pretty sure this year’s bracket has had the most upsets of any other bracket I’ve done.  Only 2 of the top eight seeds remain and 5 of the remaining 6 songs are a 4-seed or lower.  And in the battle for decade superiority, the 90s have clearly taken the lead with 5 of the remaining songs.  But despite all of this, there are some classics battling for the chance to go to the Final Four.  I’m curious to see how things play out (Get it? Play, because it’s music.  Ok, enough with the bad puns.)

We’ll see if this round has any closer results than the last round, so be sure to cast your votes and share with friends!

Best One Hit Wonder Bracket - Sweet Sixteen

Well, my personal favorite has been eliminated, so if there were ever a question that the bracket was rigged, you should know now that it is not.  I really thought Return of the Mack would go a lot deeper, but I guess most of you don’t revere 90s R&B quite like I do.  I'm also sad to see What is Love get eliminated. The Roxbury guys are one of my favorite SNL skits and I just can't help dance when that song comes on. In any case, the upsets continued in this round as two 15 seeds, a 13 seed, and a 10 seed all advanced.  And once again there were very few close results, with only three matchups decided by 5 votes or less.  This round's biggest blowout belonged to Tubthumping, which knocked down Do You Love Me by 30 votes.

And, now, here we are with 16 songs left.  While the 90s hold the majority of the songs left, I’m excited to see what happens next.  Keep voting for your favorites, and keep rocking out!

Best One Hit Wonder Bracket - Second Round

Just like that the second round is upon us, with 9 double digit seeds advancing, including THREE 15 seeds!  I expected some upsets, but this is wild.  And we are guaranteed at least three double digit seeds to advance to the Sweet Sixteen.  That’s what I call some fun chaos.  

Despite the many upsets, there weren’t really that many close matchups.  Only 5 matchups were decided by 5 votes or less, although three were decided by just one vote.  Everything else was pretty much a runaway, with Baby Got Back having the largest margin of victory.  And some upsets that I expected, or maybe just hoped for, like Just a Friend taking out Tainted Love and Rapper’s Delight besting Mambo No. 5, didn’t materialize.  But that sets up some interesting matchups in the second round as there are lots of songs that won blowouts in the first round facing off against one another.  After this round, I think we’ll get a much clearer picture of who the favorites are.  

So cast your votes, share with friends, and blast those jams!

Best One Hit Wonder March Madness Bracket Reveal and First Round

We’re back with another fun pop culture March Madness bracket!  This year we take our first venture into the world of music and try to determine the best one hit wonder of all time.  I’m already expecting lots of differing opinions on this one as I know musical tastes are wide and varied.  Nevertheless, I did my best to narrow down the large list of all time one hit wonders to a top 64 for purposes of this bracket.  I started with a list of over 200 songs, which made data collection quite painstaking.  I thought about expanding the bracket to 128 this year, but thought that might set a bad precedent that I wouldn’t be able to replicate in future years.  

In order to narrow the list I compiled data on Billboard chart performance, music magazine lists on one hit wonders, and YouTube views.  From there, I ranked each song based on its performance on the various data sets and came up with an average rank which I used to start the seeding process.  Once I had initial seeds, I wanted to make sure the final list had songs that were still culturally relevant and that a majority of people would recognize.  And while the 80s and 90s are heavily represented on the list, I tried to make sure all eras of music were represented.  Therefore, I made some executive decisions to move some songs in and some songs out of the final bracket.  I can’t wait to hear which songs you all think are missing from the list.

I hope you all have fun with this year’s bracket and dance along with the music as you cast your votes.  You can vote below as well as see the entire bracket.  I have also included a Spotify playlist so you can listen to the songs in the bracket.