How the One-Hit Wonders bracket works
Rank one hit wonders without dragging anything into rows. You get one matchup at a time — Tainted Love or Come On Eileen? Take On Me or Mambo No. 5? — and after 31 picks the bracket has a champion, with everything else placed by how far it got. Comparing two tracks is far easier than sorting 32 of them at once, which is why the finished list tends to survive a second look.
This bracket runs 5 rounds at the default 32-slot size (Round of 32, Sweet 16, Elite 8, Final Four, Championship), with every one of the 32 tracks in the field. Entrants are drawn at random each time, so an early upset in one run may never happen in the next. You can also play it at 8 or 16 slots for a shorter or longer run.
31 picks, 5 rounds
- Round of 3216 matchups
- Sweet 168 matchups
- Elite 84 matchups
- Final Four2 matchups
- Championship1 matchup
Roughly 2-4 minutes start to finish.
All 32 entrants
All 32 entrants are listed below, including Tainted Love, Come On Eileen, Take On Me and Mambo No. 5.
Tainted Love
Soft Cell - 1981
Come On Eileen
Dexys Midnight Runners - 1982
Take On Me
a-ha - 1985
Mambo No. 5
Lou Bega - 1999
Ice Ice Baby
Vanilla Ice - 1990
Who Let the Dogs Out
Baha Men - 2000
Macarena
Los del Rio - 1993
Tubthumping
Chumbawamba - 1997
Spirit in the Sky
Norman Greenbaum - 1969
Video Killed the Radio Star
The Buggles - 1979
I Ran (So Far Away)
A Flock of Seagulls - 1982
Somebody That I Used to Know
Gotye - 2011
Blue (Da Ba Dee)
Eiffel 65 - 1998
Steal My Sunshine
Len - 1999
Chasing Cars
Snow Patrol - 2006
Cha Cha Slide
DJ Casper - 2000
The Safety Dance
Men Without Hats - 1982
867-5309/Jenny
Tommy Tutone - 1981
Thong Song
Sisqo - 1999
Funkytown
Lipps Inc. - 1980
I Believe I Can Fly
R. Kelly - 1996
Witch Doctor
Cartoons - 1998
What Is Love
Haddaway - 1993
Gangnam Style
PSY - 2012
My Sharona
The Knack - 1979
Closing Time
Semisonic - 1998
Stacy's Mom
Fountains of Wayne - 2003
MMMBop
Hanson - 1997
Walking on Sunshine
Katrina and the Waves - 1985
I Like to Move It
Reel 2 Real - 1994
Tequila
The Champs - 1958
Harlem Shake
Baauer - 2013
Would rather group them than rank them? Open all 32 in the tier list maker and sort them into S, A, B, C, D and F tiers instead — same entrants, no matchups.
How everyone else ranked them
Aggregated from 5 completed One-Hit Wonders brackets. Win rate is the share of head-to-head matchups each entrant has won across every play.
- 1
Gangnam Style
12W - 3L · won 2 brackets
80%
win rate
- 2
What Is Love
11W - 3L · won 1 bracket
79%
win rate
- 3
Take On Me
14W - 4L · won 1 bracket
78%
win rate
- 4
Macarena
9W - 5L
64%
win rate
- 5
Who Let the Dogs Out
7W - 4L
64%
win rate
- 6
Funkytown
6W - 4L
60%
win rate
- 7
I Believe I Can Fly
7W - 5L
58%
win rate
- 8
Closing Time
5W - 4L · won 1 bracket
56%
win rate
- 9
Blue (Da Ba Dee)
5W - 4L
56%
win rate
- 10
My Sharona
6W - 5L
55%
win rate
Getting a ranking you actually agree with
- 1Go with the track you would rather hear right now — instant reaction beats a considered take.
- 2The default run puts all 32 tracks in the draw. Short on time? Drop to 16 slots — a quicker run over a random 16 of them.
- 3Watch for the track you keep beating reluctantly. That is usually the sign you should undo and reconsider the pick before it.
One-Hit Wonders bracket FAQ
How many tracks are in the One-Hit Wonders bracket?
The pool holds 32 tracks. A default run puts all of them in the draw and takes 31 picks across 5 rounds: Round of 32, Sweet 16, Elite 8, Final Four, Championship. Other field sizes are available too — 8, 16, 32 slots.
Which tracks are included?
Tainted Love, Come On Eileen, Take On Me, Mambo No. 5, Ice Ice Baby, Who Let the Dogs Out, Macarena, Tubthumping, Spirit in the Sky, Video Killed the Radio Star, I Ran (So Far Away) and Somebody That I Used to Know, plus 20 more. Every entrant is listed further down this page with its artwork.
How long does the rank one hit wonders take?
About 2-4 minutes — 31 choices at the default size, or 7 if you drop to a 8-slot bracket. There is no sign-up and nothing is stored until you reach the final.
Is this a one-hit wonders tier list or a ranking?
Both are here, and the bracket is closer to a tier list than it looks. It ends with a champion, a runner-up and then every other track grouped by the round it went out in — which is exactly a set of tiers, decided by 31 direct comparisons rather than by your first guess at a layout. What it deliberately does not do is claim a precise gap between two tracks that never met. If you would rather place the tracks into S through F rows yourself, the tier list maker loads all 32 of them at bracketranker.com/tier-list-maker.
Is there a community one-hit wonders ranking?
Every completed bracket feeds the One-Hit Wonders community results page, which aggregates win rates across all plays and tracks how often each of the 32 entrants takes the title. It updates continuously, so it moves as more people play.
Can I change which tracks are included?
Use the bracket maker: add your own tracks, name it, and share the link so other people play the same field. That is the route to take when this pool of 32 is missing something you would have picked, or when you want a version scoped to one era, label or franchise.