Special One is the fourteenth studio album by the band Cheap Trick.

Eleven weeks after the release of their previous studio album Cheap Trick in 1997, the parent company of their record label, Red Ant Records, went bankrupt and it ended the promotion of the album.

They formed their own record label, Cheap Trick Unlimited, which released several live albums.

In 2001, they started writing songs which they eventually recorded in eight different studios for the 2003 release of Special One.

Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic writes, "Special One is never embarrassing, the way that some of the group's late-'80s efforts are to their core audience, but it never delivers the goods, either, and it's hard to hear the group strain to reach the idealized heights that their fans believe they once reached effortlessly."