Beth Ditto: making a little go a long way. Photograph: Sarah Lee
For a band who were essentially unknown before last year, the Gossip have achieved more in 12 months than some do in a lifetime. By "the Gossip" I mean Beth Ditto, obviously, rather than the entire group, because if ever a band revolved around one member, it's this one. Even with the most comparable equivalent from the past, Blondie, Debbie Harry's dominance of the spotlight didn't stop people noticing that there were five glowering hulks sharing the stage with her. Whereas Ditto so overshadows the rest of the Gossip (and not just physically) that she's effectively a one-woman show.
Anyway, since topping the NME's Cool List at the end of 2006 brought her to wider attention, Ditto's accomplishments have included getting onto the covers of magazines everywhere, being adopted by fashionistas (surely in no way due to skinny models trying to advertise their open-mindedness by being seen with a fat person), writing an advice column for the Guardian and generally compelling the public to confront its twitchiness about fat people, particularly fat women.
It's an impressive list of spin-offs. The surprising thing is that while she is now among the elite corps of musicians who are immediately recognisable to the woman on the Clapham omnibus, Ditto has only released one song that anybody actually knows. And it only reached number seven a whole 11 months ago - yet her celebrity endures. This makes Ditto a one-hit wonder on a massively overachieving scale. The single's parent album, also titled Standing in the Way of Control, didn't make the Top 20, and a subsequent single, Listen Up!, failed to steam onto radio playlists. (Yes, I know the Gossip have been around since 1999 and had released three previous albums. That just makes it all the more interesting, that the cult of Ditto was launched by one fire-breathing guitar tune, after seven years of trying to extend their reach beyond America's gay-indie and riot grrrl scenes.)
Has any other artist been able to create so much mileage out of just one song? Natalie Imbruglia might qualify here with Torn - it's kept her in lucrative endorsement work, despite nobody being able to name any of the other seven hits the Guinness Book of Hit Singles claims she's had. While I'm at it, Shoulda Woulda Coulda is one of Beverley Knight's 16 chart hits - could you hum any of the others? Who else has made an ongoing, serious (ie, non-novelty) career out of just one song? Suggestions?
