You're listening ad-free on Amazon Music.

Welcome back to Hit Parade, a podcast of Pop Chart History from Slate magazine, about the hits from

coast to coast.

I'm Chris Malanfi, chart analyst, pop critic, and writer of Slate Magazine about the hits from coast to coast. I'm Chris Malanfi, chart analyst,

pop critic, and writer of Slate's Why Is This Song Number One series? On our last episode,

we talked about the much debated concept of the one-hit wonder, and I laid out all of the factors that go into determining what makes certain artists qualify for and escape that ignominious term. Now I'm going to present my three

rules for one-hit wonderdom. I first came up with my one-hit wonder rules eight years ago, when I was the online chart

columnist for New York newspaper The Village Voice.

Back then, what prompted me to write about the concept was this song, a top 10 hit in September of 2012.

That's Good Time, a duet between

Adam Young, a Minnesota artist who goes by the name Owl City, and the then-new Canadian

pop star Carly Ray Jepson.

This is not the most well-remembered hit for either artist. Three years earlier,

Owl City had his first and only major solo hit, the 2009 number one smash Fireflies.

Because I get a thousand hugs from 10,000 lightning bugs

As they tried to teach me how to dance

And three months before Good Time, Carly Ray Jepson had scored a number one blockbuster of her own.

The 2012 Song of the Summer, Call Me Maybe.

These are both higher charting and much better remembered hits than Good Time.

However, the forgettable 2012 duet was statistically

important for both Carly Ray Jepson and Owl City. In an installment of his Yahoo Music

column that week in September 2012, long-time chart columnist Paul Grein wrote, quote,

...