Album · Oingo Boingo
Good for Your Soul by Oingo Boingo
Good for Your Soul is an album by Oingo Boingo, released in 1983. 4 songs from it have charted on rock radio countdowns, with 7 countdown appearances in total. The biggest is “Nothing Bad Ever Happens”, on 4 lists with a best position of #20.
Good for Your Soul, Oingo Boingo's third album, came out on A&M on July 26, 1983, and it turned out to be their last for the label, with Robert Margouleff producing. Four years after Danny Elfman spun the band out of the Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo, the surrealist theatre troupe he used to lead, the theatrical twitch is still all over it. This is new wave played by an eight-piece with a horn section: Leon Schneiderman, Sam "Sluggo" Phipps and Dale Turner honking saxes, clarinet, trumpet and trombone over Johnny "Vatos" Hernandez's drums and Kerry Hatch's bass, while Steve Bartek's guitar and Richard Gibbs's keyboards jitter in the gaps.
Elfman yelps and sneers through it like a carnival barker with a bad case of nerves. "Nothing Bad Ever Happens" is the track the countdowns grabbed, with "Who Do You Want to Be?", "Sweat" and "Wake up (it's 1984)" surfacing later. Before the mid-'80s were out, the band would swerve toward pop.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
Songs from Good for Your Soul on radio countdowns
| # | Song | Strength | Lists | Best | #1s | Years |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Nothing Bad Ever Happens | 4 | #20 | – | 1983–2003 | |
| 2 | Who Do You Want to Be? | 1 | #1388 | – | 2003 | |
| 3 | Sweat | 1 | #1540 | – | 2003 | |
| 4 | Wake up (it's 1984) | 1 | #1926 | – | 2003 |
Only songs that appear on at least one countdown are listed. Release data from MusicBrainz.