(Ccredits: Far Out)
Sun 25 January 2026 16:15, UK
A debut single is just the beginning. The track that introduces a band to the world usually takes a minute to make any kind of noise. Typically, a brand-new act has yet to gather all that many fans or be known by all that many people, but on rare occasions, that first-ever track hits hard and blows up.
In the modern age of music, that’s changed slightly. Not only can a band have built up a reputation through playing gigs, but social media means that they can tease the track to an unending pool of people before it even comes out. While sales aren’t so much of a metric anymore in the age of digital music streaming, something like The Last Dinner Party’s debut ‘Nothing Matters’ bringing in over 200 million streams is definitely the new age equivalent of a high-selling debut single that launched a career with a bang.
But back in the days before social media, if a band wanted their debut to sell, they had to do the groundwork by playing shows, and lots of them, to get their name out there. They had to persuade radio stations to play the track, with acts in the 1960s even sending out the prettiest girl in their record label office to go hand deliver it to DJs. They had to simply hope and pray that when fans went out to buy their seven-inch records, or their 45s, that week, their single might stand out on the shelves.
It was a whole different world of music consumption back then, as people had to actually go out and spend some money. It feels alien now, but it did mean that the charts were ever-changing and were for all to play, typically resetting every seven days and genuinely giving new names a chance to climb quick if they could hook people in.Â
Overwhelming though, both then and today, a debut single is a statement of intention. Every artist dreams of that opening track kicking the door down and announcing their arrival, but especially rock acts, where energy is the name of the game. Praying that their debut will hook people in and keep them there, the opening track delivered by a classic rock act could be make or break, it could even build a legacy in a moment.
What was the best-selling classic rock debut single?
In a list of the best-selling classic rock songs of all time, there is little to no debuts: Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ was a huge hitter, but came from their fourth album, AC/DC made the best-sellers list with ‘Highway To Hell’, but only six albums into their career, and Bon Jovi’s ‘Livin’ on a Prayer’ is the epitome of a classic rock hit, and that too took him a while.
However, for The Knack, it was instant in 1979, when they launched themselves with their debut album, Get the Knack, and their debut single, ‘My Sharona’, which was such a huge track that you’re singing it in your head right now, aren’t you? It’s a timeless classic with that powerful and hooky introduction, enduring as an earworm for decades now.
They were complete nobodies, but the success of the track is the power of a good song, and the second it came out, listeners were hooked and radio stations had it on repeat, leading to it becoming Capitol Records’ fastest gold status debut single since they released The Beatles’ ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ in 1964 as their US distributor, bringing the Fab Four to the states.
By now, ‘My Sharona’ is one of the best-selling singles of all time, having shifted well over ten million copies, but in the list of its peers as one of the top-selling tracks, this tune from The Knack is one of the only debut singles to appear.
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