Paloma Faith needs a caveat up front. The English singer has been a fixture of the UK charts for well over a decade, with multiple platinum albums, a string of hits at home, and a flamboyant pop persona. In Britain she is anything but a one-hit wonder.
But on global streaming, one song has pulled far ahead of the rest. "Only Love Can Hurt Like This", a soaring 2014 ballad written by Diane Warren, found an enormous international audience, later boosted by a viral resurgence, and it now sits near 1 billion plays, far beyond her other work outside the UK.
Her many British hits trail well behind on global streams, leaving the gap wide. Dividing the hit by her next biggest genuinely different track gives a ratio above 8, past our 5.0 line.
So by our strict, numbers-only measure, Paloma Faith registers as a certified one-hit wonder. We flag it as the reputation-versus-streams case it is: a major UK star whose catalogue is far deeper than the global numbers suggest, but whose one international ballad has, on streams, outrun everything else.