The 5 Best One-Hit Wonders Of Soft Rock Music

It's a hard truth about soft rock — the genre produced many acts that only ever got one song into the Top 40. Sure, these smooth operators who took the edge off of rock 'n' roll to make some of the most romantic, relaxing, and just plain cool music of the 1970s and 1980s are one-hit wonders, but their songs were an integral part of history.

Soft rock is easy to identify but tough to define. It bears the rhythms, structure, and instrumentation of rock, but without the abrasiveness or agitation normally found therein. Soft rock soothes, relaxes, and seduces, and solidifying in the 1970s, sent its best examples to romantic playlists, dentist office speakers, and "listen at work" radio stations. Those soft rock classics are the bangers you hear all the time at the grocery store, and they're heavily influenced by Fleetwood Mac, Toto, Steely Dan, the Carpenters, and the Eagles.

Those bands and others made long careers out of softly rocking the grown-up rock fans of the late 20th century. Others who followed their lead with music just as gentle, polished, impeccably engineered, and mature didn't fare as well, making it to the upper reaches of the Hot 100 just once.

After making the rounds of Southern California talent show contests as a teenager, Joey Scarbury got a gig as a touring backup singer in the 1970s for Loretta Lynn. He started his recording career with TV theme song composer Mike Post as his producer, and when the latter got a gig co-writing music for an hour-long dramedy about a bumbling superhero called "The Greatest American Hero," he put the theme song together with Scarbury in mind.

Not too fast and not too slow, powered by emotive synthesizers and an enthusiastic string section, "Greatest American Hero," subtitled "Believe It or Not" after the hooky phrase that kicks off the chorus, sets up the premise of the 1981 to 1983 series. It also let Scarbury absolutely wail, singing from the point of view of the superhero character, his wonder and amazement palpable. A TV theme song that became a huge pop hit, "Greatest American Hero (Believe It or Not)" made it to the No. 2 spot in 1981 and was the 11th biggest single of the year. "America's Greatest Hero," an album of songs Scarbury also performed for use on "The Greatest American Hero" followed, but it yielded no more tunes as enchanting or as popular as the theme. Scarbury never released another LP and he never hit the Top 40 again.

The 1948 Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall film "Key Largo" was the kind of classic rerun for decades on late-night television, and it inspired "Key Largo," Bertie Higgins' gold-certified single from 1982. Higgins invokes the movie in the melancholy lyrics that recall a past romance that can never transpire again. The emotional ache, along with Higgins' gravelly, world-weary vocals, and an insistent piano part almost played in a minor key, are all archetypes of early 1980s soft rock, and they make "Key Largo" so emblematic of its era and its genre.

Once a peripheral member of the music industry, having played in the band the Roemans and backing up bubblegum pop star Tommy Roe, Higgins started his solo career with the small-label-released "Just Another Day in Paradise" LP, making "Key Largo" an unlikely hit in the first place. Capturing the wistful memories of his boomer brethren, Higgins took the song to a No. 8 spot on the pop chart, and Billboard placed it at No. 17 on its year-end singles list. No subsequent songs repeated the feat, and after another album in 1984, Higgins ceased recording for 10 years, solidifying his status as a one-hit wonder.

Hard rock thrills; soft rock inspires. And if only through their sole American Top 40 entry, Scottish band Pilot is a definitive soft rock act. In 1974, Pilot released a self-titled album which contained the dreamy, searching, and atmospheric single "Magic." Powered equally by Billy Lyall's synthesizer and David Paton's soaring vocals, "Magic" is a gentle love song with just a little bit of punch. Pilot doesn't go overboard with the guitars, bass, or drums, but they're just noticeable enough to help classify the spacey "Magic" as lightly psychedelic.

"Magic" rose to No. 5 in 1975, and a couple more Pilot singles barely registered on the Hot 100. The '70s incarnation of Pilot eventually broke apart, with guitarist Ian Bairnson and Paton going on to influence future soft rock as session musicians working with the likes of Kate Bush and the Alan Parsons Project. In 2018 "Magic" became a banger rock song that got a second life in commercials when its lyrics were rewritten slightly to promote the widely-prescribed diabetes and obesity drug Ozempic.

In the 1970s, there was a fine line between impeccably precise country-rock and crisp and shiny pop for adults, and when those boundaries blurred, a lot of great soft rock was created in that middle area. Such was the case with "Wham Bam (Shang-A-Lang)" by Silver. Counting among its members Tom Petty associate Tom Leadon and eventual Grateful Dead keyboardist Brent Mydland, Silver took country-rock to an interesting and widely appealing place with its 1976 single. 

The electric guitars present aggressively, but with a pronounced twang on the song that never alternates the tempo — it's not fast enough to be a rocker and it's too speedy for slow dancing. That modified guitar showing-off and a comfort with the middle of the road make "Wham Bam (Shang-A-Lang)" an ideal soft rock song, as do the screeching violins and the gushing and broad lyrics about how love is great and also overwhelming.

"Wham Bam (Shang-A-Lang)" made it to No. 16 in the fall of 1976. That song is the only one that Silver ever landed on the Hot 100, although it later fell at No. 70 on Billboard's year-in-review chart.

For someone who was very well connected in the bustling music industry scene of the 1970s, Walter Egan didn't get to enjoy a lot of success when he was the one in the spotlight. Egan played in Jackson Browne's backing band, country-rock legend Gram Parsons used the Egan-written "Hearts on Fire" on his classic "Grievous Angel" album, and he got Lindsey Buckingham of Fleetwood Mac to help produce his second album, 1978's "Not Shy." But he could really only ever get one song on the radio, and it was a single from that LP, "Magnet and Steel."

A template of soft rock in that it combined shredding and agile electric guitar work with restrained everything else, medium tempo, and cooing, not-imposing vocals about a complicated romance — compared to the natural and mutual pull of a magnet and metal — "Magnet and Steel" was tough enough for the rock fans but tame enough to conquer pop radio. Indeed, it peaked at No. 8 on Billboard's Hot 100 and came in at No. 40 on the year-end list. "Magnet and Steel" remains Egan's only hit single, and while it would eventually enter the classic rock pantheon, the musician ultimately walked away from music for many years. It's hard to hit the Top 40 when one works as a substitute teacher.