Songfacts®:

• "The One And Only" was a #1 hit in the UK and also did well in America, where it went to #10. It was the first single for Chesney Hawkes, an English singer and actor who was 19 when it was released in 1991.
  
  The song plays in the end credits of Buddy's Song, a film starring Hawkes and Roger Daltrey about a boy named Buddy (Hawkes) who is determined to go further than his father (Daltrey) did in his teddy rocker days. It's a fitting song for the film, expressing the confidence Buddy finds as he succeeds on his own.
  
  The movie didn't do very well, but the song did, spending five weeks at #1 in the UK.
• When Hawkes reached the top of the UK singles chart with this song, it marked the first time both father and son had got to #1. Chesney's father is Chip Hawkes of The Tremeloes, who in 1967 topped the charts with "Silence Is Golden." Chip Hawkes' last hit single with the Tremeloes was "Hey Buddy."
• "The One And Only" fits well in Buddy's Song, but it wasn't written for the film. It was written by Nik Kershaw, who had several UK hits in the '80s, including "I Won't Let The Sun Go Down On Me" and "The Riddle," and it dealt with his personal journey.
  
  By 1989, Kershaw's hits had dried up and his record deal wasn't renewed. He had also started a family, so he decided to have a go at songwriting for other artists instead of pushing on as an artist. "The One And Only" was the first song he wrote for someone else.
  
  "I'd had a few knocks and was feeling a bit 'nobody loves me,'" he told The Guardian. "So I wrote the song about self-respect."
• Nik Kershaw said in 1000 UK #1 Hits by Jon Kutner and Spencer Leigh, "I wasn't particularly precious about The One And Only. I've just got this affliction to write those kind of songs. I just have to write them and stick them on a shelf and get them out of the way. I really don't know why people like them."
• "The One And Only" didn't take off in America until it was used in the Michael J. Fox movie Doc Hollywood in the summer of 1991. Thanks to its use in the film, the song earned radio play and MTV added the video to rotation. It climbed to #10 that November.
• Chesney Hawkes follow-up single was "I'm A Man Not A Boy," which was also used in Buddy's Song. It only reached #27 in the UK and flopped in the US. Since then he hasn't landed any hits as a performer, but as a songwriter he's had some success, including the tracks "Once Around The Sun" for Caprice and "I'm a Man Not a Boy" by North & South. He collaborated on Tricky's 2001 Mission Accomplished EP, and in 2025 toured as James Blunt's opening act. That same year, he competed on Celebrity Big Brother.
• The song plays as a ringtone in the 2011 movie Source Code and as an alarm clock tone in the 2009 film Moon. David Bowie's son Duncan Jones directed both films.
• Nik Kershaw co-produced this song and got to know Chesney Hawkes during the process. He shared his thoughts in The Guardian: "Ches was a new, fresh face, like I had been seven or eight years previously. We had great fun in the studio, doing things like recording feedback and playing it backwards in a sampler. When the record company started spending money on the single, I knew it had a chance, but I never thought it was a potential #1. Ches did all the promo. I sat in an armchair sipping merlot while it flew up the charts.
  
  I don't think many people realize I wrote it. The song has bought me a couple of houses, and Ches and I are still best mates. I sometimes wonder how it would have worked out for him if he hadn't had to follow a No 1. He was nurturing his own career nicely until I turned up to spoil it with a hit that overshadowed everything. He's hugely talented, but he never got a chance to prove it, because of that song."
  
  Hawkes added: "Nik co-produced and played guitar, doing crazy things like playing it with a pencil. We totally hit it off... We were living the dream, girls camped outside the house and everything. People either loved the song or hated it."
• The music video ties into the film Buddy's Song in a very clever way. It takes place in the theater where the film is showing. Chesney Hawkes pops out of the screen and beckons a toothsome girl in the audience; they romp about until Roger Daltrey comes out of the screen to fetch him. Hawkes then brings the girl into the film and they share a kiss.
  
  The girl in the video is Saffron from the band Republica.