Camille Yarbrough is an American poet, activist, actress, and musician whose place on this list is a story of rediscovery. A respected cultural figure with a small but admired body of work, she recorded "Take Yo' Praise" for her 1975 album The Iron Pot Cooker, a soulful, spoken-and-sung piece that was little known for decades.
Then, in 1998, Fatboy Slim built his global smash "Praise You" around a sample of her vocal, sending listeners back to the original and turning "Take Yo' Praise" into her most-streamed track by a vast margin.
On streaming, "Take Yo' Praise" sits near 46 million plays, while her next most-streamed track trails at around one million. That sends the ratio above 37, far past our 5.0 line.
By our measure Camille Yarbrough is a certified one-hit wonder, with the caveat that she is a serious artist and activist rather than a pop act. It is simply that one soulful recording, lifted from obscurity by a famous sample decades later, has drawn the streaming crowd far ahead of the rest of her work. It is one of the most striking sampling stories in pop: a little-heard 1975 recording reborn as the heart of a worldwide hit, sending listeners back to the original two decades later.