OMC — "How Bizarre"
A New Zealand radio phenomenon with zero Hot 100 footprint—it topped Mainstream Top 40 as a radio-only track because no commercial single existed. That spoken-sung verse and trumpet hook owned summer 1997.
OMC stands for "Otara Millionaires Club," a tongue-in-cheek reference to Ōtara's status as one of Auckland, New Zealand's most economically disadvantaged suburbs. Phil Fuemana formed the original group in 1992, but when it split in 1994, his younger brother Pauly Fuemana continued the project with producer Alan Jansson, eventually shortening the name to OMC. "How Bizarre," written and produced by Pauly Fuemana and Alan Jansson, released December 15, 1995 in New Zealand on Huh!/Polydor.
The song was a regional smash: #1 in New Zealand for three weeks in early 1996, then #1 in Australia for five weeks. It topped charts in Canada, Austria, and Ireland, and reached #5 in the UK. But the American story is the strange one. "How Bizarre" was released in the US as a RADIO-ONLY track—no commercial single was pressed—which made it technically ineligible for the Billboard Hot 100. Yet somehow, impossibly, the song hit #1 on Billboard's Mainstream Top 40 in August 1997, making OMC the first New Zealand act ever to top a Billboard chart. It also reached #4 on Hot 100 Airplay, a disembodied chart success for a song that officially didn't exist in stores. *How Bizarre* (1996) was OMC's sole studio album.
A 1998 royalty dispute between Fuemana and Jansson went to arbitration, with Fuemana retaining the OMC name and artist royalties. The project became a one-off time capsule—that spoken-sung verse and the trumpet hook embedded themselves permanently in every '90s memory bank, the result of a creative accident from New Zealand's south side. Pauly Fuemana died on January 31, 2010, at just 40 years old, after battling chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy (CIDP), an autoimmune nerve disorder. The song's American run mirrors Natalie Imbruglia's "Torn": an inescapable radio smash the Hot 100 barely registered — proof that the most unavoidable songs don't always need a chart number to matter.
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