One-hit wonders were abundant in the 1990s. And more than a few of them have fallen through the cracks over the years. In fact, some one-hit wonders out there might be totally foreign to you, even if you grew up listening to the radio in the 1990s.
A couple of the following songs I've listened to in bits and pieces. However, I never listened to them all the way through. Until today, that is. And I'm honestly surprised that I've never heard them in their entirety, especially when I was a kid in the 1990s. You might just feel the same way. Let's take a look!
How have I never heard this song before?! It's amazing! "Drinking In LA" by Bran Van 3000 was released in 1997 and has such a solid multi-genre late-90s sound to it, and I can totally see why it was such a hit for the Canadian alt-dance group. While Bran Van 3000 enjoyed a few hits in their native Canada, "Drinking In L.A." was their only major hit in Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, and the UK. Oddly enough, the less successful "Astounded" from 2001 was their only song to chart in the US. Maybe that's why I've never heard "Drinking In L.A." until now!
How about some good ol' electronic music? The late 1990s were a really good time for electronica, though the early 2000s would really dominate the genre in a big way. Still, we had some solid gems, one of which was the 1998 song "King Of My Castle" by Wamdue Project, a.k.a. producer Chris Brann. This uniquely Freudian house track ended up being Wamdue Project's only major charting hit, and I'm a little surprised that I've never heard of it before.
Nothing gets more late-90s than UK garage. "Sweet Like Chocolate" by Shanks & Bigfoot was a hefty hit that year; and not just in the UK, where it topped multiple charts. This jam made it to the Top 40 in a wealth of European countries, from Germany to Ireland to Sweden. It also did quite well in Canada.
Sadly, this entry on our list of one-hit wonders from the 90s you've probably never heard of was more or less Shanks & Bigfoot's only major hit. They enjoyed a couple of additional hits in the UK. However, "Sweet Like Chocolate" was their only song to do particularly well on an international level. I'm going to be bumping this one for a while.