The Alternative Number Ones: Chumbawamba’s “Tubthumping”

In The Alternative Number Ones, I’m reviewing every #1 single in the history of the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks/Alternative Songs, starting with the moment that the chart launched in 1988. This column is a companion piece to The Number Ones. The column is now biweekly, alternating with The Number Ones on Mondays.

"The fact that Chumbawamba will probably end up being a one-hit wonder misses the point. The wonder is that they ever had a hit at all." That was the kicker. In February 1998, however, that was how the writer Chris Mundy chose to end his Rolling Stone profile of Chumbawamba, the British anarchist punk collective who'd somehow taken the world by storm with a drunken-singalong novelty song.

Mundy flew all the way to Prague for that article, and he presumably spent a significant amount of time with Chumbawamba. There's a long and proud tradition of magazine writers snarkily shitting all over their profile subjects. Now that magazine profiles only barely exist anymore, that recipe seems to be lost. I don't think that's what Mundy intended to do with that kicker, though. I think he was merely writing the obvious truth. In any case, he was right, on both scores. Chumbawamba were fated to go down in history as definitive one-hit wonders, and it's fucking incredible that they were ever able to score that one hit in the first place.