One-hit wonder Jeanine Deckers

Really, really unusual among recording successes was that of Belgian nun Jeanne-Paule Marie Deckers while she was cloistered in a Dominican convent in Belgium. Her surprise international hit, in 1963, was the song Dominique. She became known in Europe as Soeur Sourire, which translates as Sister Smile, or the Smiling Sister. In the U.S., she was billed as The Singing Nun, and in her convent, she was known as Sister Luc Gabriel.

Many older Americans (like this one) recall her 1964 television appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, and others know of her from the 1966 Debbie Reynolds movie about her, The Singing Nun. Her unlikely rise to celebrity is said to have been the inspiration for Sally Field's TV show The Flying Nun.

Although Deckers donated much of what she earned to her convent, she left the order and performed as Luc Dominique, became a social activist with special interests in birth control and autism, and found herself in tax trouble for what she had considered charitable contributions from her big hit song's profits. She and her companion, Anna Pecher, died in 1985 in a double suicide.