Bobby Hebb was an American soul and R&B singer-songwriter who gave the world one of its most enduring and widely covered standards. "Sunny", released in 1966 and written in the wake of profound personal grief, is a warm, hopeful soul song whose graceful melody has been recorded by hundreds of artists across every genre, making it a permanent fixture of the pop songbook.
Hebb was a serious, talented musician, but no other recording of his approached the universal reach of "Sunny", and it became both his masterpiece and his defining limit.
On streaming, "Sunny" sits near 189 million plays, while his next most-streamed track trails at around four million. That sends the ratio above 48, far past our 5.0 line.
By our measure Bobby Hebb is a certified one-hit wonder, with the caveat that his lone hit is a genuine standard recorded the world over. His catalogue, on the numbers, is essentially one luminous soul song, a track born from sorrow yet radiating optimism that has long outlived its moment and stands, by an enormous margin, far ahead of everything else he recorded.