Soul Asylum were a hard-touring American rock band from Minneapolis who spent the better part of a decade as critically respected underdogs before one song made them famous everywhere. "Runaway Train", released in 1993, was a wistful, mid-tempo rock ballad whose video, featuring real missing children, became a cultural event and helped reunite some of them with their families.
The song won a Grammy and turned the band into mainstream stars, but nothing else they released came close to its reach, and over time it became the one Soul Asylum song most people can name.
On streaming, "Runaway Train" sits near 393 million plays, while their next most-streamed track, "Somebody to Shove", trails at around 17 million. That sends the ratio above 22, far past our 5.0 line.
So by our strict measure Soul Asylum register as a certified one-hit wonder, with a caveat worth noting. This was a serious, long-serving band with a substantial catalogue and a devoted early following. It is only that one extraordinary song, lifted further by an unforgettable video, ran so far ahead of the rest of their work that, on the numbers, it now stands almost alone.