The Ataris are an American pop-punk band who reached their widest audience with a single, well-chosen cover. Their 2003 version of "The Boys of Summer", originally a Don Henley hit, sped the song up and gave it a punchy pop-punk edge, even swapping a "Deadhead sticker" for a "Black Flag sticker", and it became a sizeable hit on radio and MTV.
The band had a devoted following in the punk scene and their own catalogue of originals, but it was that cover that carried them to the mainstream, and nothing else came close.
On streaming, "The Boys of Summer" sits near 174 million plays, while their next most-streamed track trails at around 18 million. That sends the ratio above 9, past our 5.0 line.
By our measure The Ataris are a certified one-hit wonder, with the caveat that their breakthrough was a reworking of someone else's song. Theirs is a familiar early-2000s pop-punk story: a hard-touring band whose own material kept the fans happy, but whose one moment of mass recognition came through a clever, energetic cover that has stood far ahead of everything else on streams.