One Track Mind: Percy Sledge, "When a Man Loves a Woman" (1966)

NICK DERISO: All hail the one-hit wonder, the lightning-bolt song that accomplishes so much so quickly that it never needs a follow up.

We love a tune like that, and there may never be another as timeless as Percy Sledge's "When A Man Loves a Woman."

Sledge recorded it, using a chord progression reminiscent of Pachelbel's "Canon in D," more than 40 years ago. And it's still news.

Simultaneously romantic and unfulfilled, it's a song that can bring you low — but also one that rides with you to dizzying heights. Sledge says whatever you want him to say on this one.

That very artistry makes his one hit a wonder, indeed. In so doing, the Leighton, Ala., native elevated what we thought of the genre — setting itself apart with every anguished, passionate stanza from novelty knock-offs like "Ice, Ice Baby" or "Macarena."

Other one-hit wonders were designed, it seems, for disposability. Not this one.

Still others were simply too specific, and fail to translate to successive generations like Sledge's side.

Era-defining music, disco or grunge or the first flowerings of MTV, quickly fades. Meanwhile, tracks by Shannon Hoon of Blind Melon or Minnie Riperton are too closely linked to their doomed singers.

Each no doubt fits the description, often because they were so popular for a time as to be maddening, but they lack the transformative quality of "When A Man Loves a Woman."

The only person it didn't change, it seems, is Percy Sledge.

He has been singing this song since Quin Ivy, an Alabama-based producer, pulled him off a tour with a Southern soul vocal group called the Esquires to record it.

Sledge quit his day job, working as a hospital orderly in Sheffield, not long after the tape found its way to the legendary Atlantic Records mogul Jerry Wexler — who heard the track, and reportedly told partner Ahmet Ertegun: "Our billing for the summer is in the bag."

It still is.

Sledge tours incessantly — playing more than 100 nights a year for decades now — and he put out a greatest hits package in 1992 called "It Tears Me Up: The Best of Percy Sledge."

You can stop with the first one, though, the one he'll likely conclude every concert with until he's done with the road.

"When A Man Loves A Woman," credited to writers Calvin Lewis and Andrew Wright, is its own oasis of cool love and cooler longing.

A song so good that Sledge charted with it twice, in 1966 and then again in 1987 after appearing in a Levi commercial, "When A Man Loves a Woman" withstood assaults by both Michael Bolton (who went to No. 1 in 1991) and Bette Midler (No. 35 in 1980).

This pleading, soulful ballad powers through even their mawkishly over-the-top assassination attempts. (Aaron Neville, on the other hand, did it justice.)

We hate it when one-hit wonders — like, say, Linda Perry of 4 Non Blondes — try different things. We want them to remain as they have always been, and Sledge has never, ever let us down.

He actually had four other Top 40 hits — 1966's "Warm and Tender Love" (No. 17) and "It Tears Me Up" (No. 20); 1967's "Love Me Tender" (No. 40); and 1968's "Take Time to Know Her" (No. 11).

But he never made another record as great. More importantly, he never made an eye-rolling sequel or a pandering genre-jumper.

Percy Sledge just keeps singing this song.

And we love it.