Snow Patrol need a caveat up front. The Northern Irish and Scottish rock band have had a long, successful career, headlining festivals and scoring a run of hits through the 2000s. To their fans they are anything but a one-hit wonder.
But one song has outgrown all the others. "Chasing Cars", from their 2006 album Eyes Open and propelled to ubiquity by a famous Grey's Anatomy sync, became one of the defining slow-burn anthems of its decade. It now sits near 1.8 billion plays.
The rest of the catalogue is real, with "Run" and "Open Your Eyes" both pulling well over a hundred million streams. Even so, dividing "Chasing Cars" by their second biggest track gives a ratio of about 8.5, past our 5.0 line.
So by our strict, numbers-only measure, Snow Patrol register as a certified one-hit wonder. We flag it as the reputation-versus-numbers case it is: a genuine multi-hit, arena-headlining band whose single most enormous ballad has pulled far enough ahead, on streams alone, to tip the maths. A well-placed television sync can echo through the numbers for decades.