Six One-Off Hits That Struck Magic
The stories behind some of your favorite earworms
It’s almost every songwriter’s dream: to strike pay dirt with a single creation. To land that one hit that bumps you to the next income bracket helps pay off a mortgage, or puts a kid or two through college. When opportunity knocks, it’s almost a no-brainer to go where the money is.
Almost, that is, because some artists don’t deign to trade in their songwriting gems for extra cash, no matter how plentiful. Bruce Springsteen famously turned down Chrysler’s offer of some $12 million to license “Born in the USA’’ for use in a car commercial. Led Zeppelin nixed soundtrack rights to “Dazed and Confused” for the 1993 film of the same title; Heatwave (songwriter Rod Temperton) refused to attach “Boogie Nights’’ to the eponymous 1997 movie.
Sometimes, the songwriter doesn’t control a song’s fate. When the Beatles’ “Revolution” backed a Nike commercial in 1996 — after Michael Jackson and EMI/Capitol acquired the Lennon/McCartney catalog — it triggered hand-wringing from fans and lawsuits from surviving Beatles. In her 33⅓-series book about Nick Drake’s Pink Moon, author Amanda Petrusich devoted a chapter to the ethical debate around resurrecting that album’s title tune with a Volkswagen Cabrio ad — a quarter-century after Drake’s death.
“For Nick Drake, the Cabrio commercial was more beneficial than exploitative,” Petrusich noted, “facilitating a second renaissance, bringing Drake’s name and sound to a considerably larger audience than he had ever entertained before.”
Bob Dylan, discussing his own decision to commercialize a song, reportedly brought up the “Pink Moon” ad and said: “Do you wish all those people didn’t discover Nick Drake?”
Dylan — whose work has appeared in more than a dozen commercials — has lots of company in ad-land, including the Rolling Stones (“Start Me Up” for Microsoft), Bob Seger (“Like a Rock” for Chevrolet), Lou Reed (“Walk on the Wild Side” for Honda), Madonna “Dress You Up” for GAP), Coldplay (“Viva la Vida” for Apple), and Heart (“Barracuda” for Hyundai).
Springsteen himself showed up (sans song) in a 2021 Jeep commercial.
But those artists are all rich and famous anyway. Below are a few that weren’t. They’re not exactly one-hit wonders — each enjoyed varying levels of success with different works — but they are lucky enough to have that one magic gem in their portfolios.
Magic
By Pilot
“Oh oh oh, Ozempic!”
When the Scottish band Pilot recorded “Magic” in 1974, it was an amiable earworm, three minutes of pop confection with efficient use of handclaps and wah-wah effects and impossibly high vocals by David Paton. He’s the main songwriter, though author credit — and royalties — also went to Pilot’s keyboardist Billy Lyall, who died in 1989. The song peaked at #5 in the US (#1 in Canada) and charted worldwide.
“It’s just about the enjoyment of life,” Paton recently told the New York Times. “About waking up in the morning, you know? I was 22 when I wrote it.”
In 2018, when the Danish firm Novo Nordisk set out to promote the Type 2 diabetes medication Ozempic, ad creatives settled on the tune’s “oh oh oh” as a hook and licensed “Magic” from Sony Music Publishing. Using a new backing track, they hired 66-year-old Paton to return to the famed Abbey Road Studios and redo his vocals with the brand name in place. “It was a great thrill to be back at Abbey Road, singing my song,” he recalled. Paton (who got seven figures out of the deal) embraced the jingle and the brand.
Later, Ozempic — and fellow diabetes-control brands such as Jardiance and Wegovy — began trending on social media after users learned how celebrities have used the drugs for weight loss despite not having diabetes or clinical obesity.
Sadly, one of the key “Magic” contributors — guitarist Ian Bairnson, who played the lead solo — didn’t get credit on the track, much less royalties. Bairnson died at age 69 in 2023, five years after “Magic” was reinvented.
Everybody’s Talkin’
By Fred Neil
“I don’t hear a word they’re sayin’ ”
A veteran of New York City’s Brill Building, Fred Neil wrote songs cut by early R&R stars such as Buddy Holly (“Come Back Baby”) and Roy Orbison (“Candy Man”). In the early ’60s, Neil became a fixture in the Greenwich Village folk scene, where he mentored a young Bob Dylan; later proteges included Stephen Stills, David Crosby, and Joni Mitchell. But Neil was leery of the music business and the spotlight. When he penned the soul-searching “Everybody’s Talkin’,” he meant it.
“He sang it once,” Neil’s manager Herb Cohen recalled, “and then we packed up, and I took him to the airport.” The song expressed Neil’s desire to leave his L.A. studio sessions and get back home to Miami.
Fred Neil’s version — recorded for his eponymous 1967 album — is arguably the best. When film director John Schlesinger was creating Midnight Cowboy, he reportedly asked Neil to speed up the song for use in the movie, but Neil refused. Harry Nilsson, however, covered the song in 1968 for his album Aerial Ballet. Nilsson’s version — with a juiced-up key and tempo, soaring strings, and extra wah-ooo vocals — was chosen as the theme song for Midnight Cowboy.
It went on to chart at #6, earn a Grammy, and become Nilsson’s signature hit despite being a cover. Dozens of artists recorded versions, including Stevie Wonder, Dion, Willie Nelson, Neil Diamond, Liza Minnelli, Bill Withers, and Louis Armstrong.
Fred Neil got lifelong royalties but little credit. Like the protagonist in “Everybody’s Talkin’,” he went to “where the sun keeps shining through the pouring rain” — his Coconut Grove, FL home base. Neil turned his energy to saving sea mammals — his second-most-covered tune, “The Dolphins,” helped inspire the Dolphin Project — before his death at age 65 in 2001.
“Fred’s an endangered species,” Jerry Jeff Walker said. “Like his dolphins, he’s trying to keep from getting caught and made to perform at SeaWorld.”
City of New Orleans
By Steve Goodman
“Good morning, America, how are ya?”
When 21-year-old Steve Goodman wrote his masterpiece in 1970, he was part of a cadre of songsters in Chicago’s folk club scene, along with his best pal John Prine. Like Prine, Goodman befriended Kris Kristofferson, who helped him get a recording deal. On his self-titled ’71 debut, Goodman released “City of New Orleans,” a bluegrass travelog about riding the rails on the Illinois Central Railroad line from Chicago to the Big Easy, delineating scenes inside and out of the train with a grand backdrop of Americana.
One night at a Chicago gig featuring Arlo Guthrie, “an unknown songwriter came up to me and asked me to listen to his songs,” Guthrie recalled. Woody’s son agreed to listen for as long as “it takes to drink a beer.”
Goodman played his train song, and Guthrie liked it enough to record Arlo’s version — adding his own jaunty piano, church-choir singers, and hotshot rhythm section — for his 1972 album Hobo’s Lullaby. It charted at #18 as a single and became Guthrie’s biggest hit.
Many covers followed, by artists including Johnny Cash, John Denver, Judy Collins, and Randy Scruggs. Willie Nelson’s version — the title of his 1984 album — reached #1 on the US Country chart and earned a “Best Country Song” Grammy for Goodman.
By then, Steve was gone. Around the time he penned his main hit, he was diagnosed with leukemia; he lived the rest of his years as if on borrowed time, cranking out songs by the dozen (including “Go Cubs Go” for his beloved Chi-town team) and developing a cult following. Goodman defied all medical predictions and lived to age 36, fathering three children and providing for the family with help from his train song.
His eldest daughter Rosanna put together the tribute album My Old Man in 2006. It was titled after one of Goodman’s most poignant songs — which she covered — about the passing of Steve’s old man, a car salesman who must’ve been proud of how his son rode the rails.
Anticipation
By Carly Simon
“It’s slooow good!”
Years before this song came to symbolize the thickness of Heinz Ketchup, it was famous: In 1971, Carly Simon had a #13 hit with “Anticipation,” the title track of her breakout second album. Composed quickly while she waited for fellow artist Cat Stevens to show up for a date, the lyrics waxed philosophical about the vagaries of a new relationship.
By the mid-’70s, Simon had switched singers — having married James Taylor and birthed his daughter Sally — and was a stay-at-home mom (setting aside her own singing career, with such hits as “You’re So Vain” and a duet with Taylor on “Mockingbird”). Meanwhile, creatives at the Leo Burnett agency sparked the idea of marketing Heinz’s tomato sauce based on its rich texture, a slow reward worth waiting for … like Carly’s song.
“I thought I would never record again due to the demanding and precious little sweet Sally I was taking care of (in the jolliest possible way), and so I was talked into selling my song ‘Anticipation’ to Heinz Ketchup for a commercial,” Simon recalled. “I wasn’t at all displeased with the results. It was well done and funny.”
The “Anticipation” Heinz ads debuted in 1976 and ran into the early ’80s. By then, Simon had left Taylor and revived her solo career with a different song-for-hire, the theme to The Spy Who Loved Me: “Nobody Does It Better.”
Good Time Charlie’s Got the Blues
By Danny O’Keefe
“Some gotta win, some gotta lose”
Singer-songwriter Danny O’Keefe has written tunes made famous by other artists — including Jackson Browne (“The Road”) and Miranda Lambert (“Covered Wagon”) — but his claim to fame was his own top-ten hit: “Good Time Charlie’s Got the Blues” landed at #9 in 1972 and became one of classic radio’s most enduring odes to desolation and yearning.
It was actually a do-over. Danny’s first version appeared in ’71 on the album Danny O’Keefe. The LP quickly sank, but Atlantic Records mogul Ahmet Ertegun liked O’Keefe’s work and directed him to producer Arif Mardin, who re-recorded “Good Time Charlie” (and the follow-up album O’Keefe) at American Studios in Memphis with an ace backup band.
After the new “Charlie” charted, Elvis Presley cut the tune (with virtually the same lineup) for his 1974 album Good Times.
That put it on the map, leading to myriad covers by the likes of Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Charlie Rich, Leon Russell, Dwight Yoakam, Jerry Lee Lewis, Rita Wilson, and Steve Forbert.
O’Keefe went on to release a dozen albums — including a moving 2019 song cycle about the Nez Perce Native American tribe, Looking Glass and the Dreamers — and he anthologized his best work in 2023’s Circular Turns.
“Good Time Charlie” sustained the journey. “It’s like a dear old friend — it allowed me to remain in the music business for the course of my life,” O’Keefe recalled. “Not everybody connects me with it. They may have heard Willie’s version or Elvis’s version or who-knows-whose version and they connect it with them more than they do with me, which is just fine.”
Woke Up This Morning
By Alabama 3
“Got yourself a gun!”
Taking a page from early Scorsese films, The Sopranos creator David Chase has always had a knack for combining gangster drama with a kick-ass soundtrack. From 1999–2007, the HBO series continually dropped in musical gems and surprises — from Al Green’s “Take Me to the River” sung by a wall-mounted fish, to Van Morrison’s “Glad Tidings” (from New York) amid mob turf wars, to that last shout-out in the finale (from Journey, no less): “Don’t Stop!”
Only one tune appeared in every single installment: “Woke Up This Morning” debuted as The Sopranos’ opening theme in its pilot and kicked off all 86 episodes.
It’s actually a section called “The Chosen One” from a longer tune — by the British band Alabama 3 — meshing hip-hop, gospel, acid house, and Howlin’ Wolf samples. The group’s lyricist Rob Spragg (aka Larry Love) said Chase handpicked the song.
“He was driving along the New Jersey turnpike when it came on his car radio,” Spragg recalled. “He thought the lyrics, ‘Woke up this morning, got yourself a gun / Mamma always said you’d be the chosen one,’ were perfect for the dynamic between Tony Soprano and his mother.”
Spragg, however, claimed the lyrics drew inspiration from another crime story: the Sara Thorton case in the late ’80s, in which a British woman was convicted of killing her abusive husband (later to have the murder rap reduced to manslaughter).
“It was meant to be about female empowerment,” Spragg said, “and it ends up becoming a gangster anthem.”
