Artist · chart history · #582 in indie & aaa artist polls
Afghan Whigs
Band Cincinnati Formed 1986
Afghan Whigs formed in 1986 in Cincinnati. Afghan Whigs has 96 chart appearances on 49 radio countdowns from 18 stations on RockLists, spanning 1993–2025. The most successful song on radio countdowns is “Debonair”, which appears on 30 lists with a best position of #52. The station that charted Afghan Whigs most often is CD101 (Columbus, OH), with 34 appearances. The artist’s biggest year on year-end countdowns was 2014.
The Afghan Whigs came out of Cincinnati in 1986 as a garage band cut from the same cloth as the Replacements, with Greg Dulli singing and playing rhythm guitar, Rick McCollum on lead guitar, John Curley on bass and Steve Earle rounding out the early lineup. They put out their first album on their own in 1988 and then signed to Sub Pop, which parked them right in the middle of the grunge rush, but Dulli had other music on his mind: R&B and soul, with all the swagger and guilt that come with them. Congregation in 1992 and the Uptown Avondale EP, with "Rebirth of the Cool", pointed the way.
Gentlemen, their fourth album and their first for a major, Elektra, arrived in 1993 and brought the idea into focus. "Debonair", the title track and "What Jail Is Like" swing like soul records and bite like punk ones, with Dulli playing the heel and making you listen anyway. Black Love followed in 1996, dark and slinky, with "Going To Town" and "Honky's Ladder".
The band called it quits in 2001, and Dulli insisted in interview after interview that there would be no reunion. There was: a brief one in 2006, then a proper return that brought Do to the Beast and "Algiers" in 2014.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
Songs by Afghan Whigs on radio countdowns
| # | Song | Strength | Lists | Best | #1s | Peak year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Debonair | 30 | #52 | – | 1993 | |
| 2 | Gentlemen | 24 | #75 | – | 1994 | |
| 3 | Rebirth of the Cool | 10 | #43 | – | – | |
| 4 | Honky's Ladder | 8 | #491 | – | – | |
| 5 | Algiers | 3 | #73 | – | 2014 | |
| 6 | Domino And Jimmy | 1 | #38 | – | 2023 | |
| 7 | Matamoros | 1 | #106 | – | 2014 | |
| 8 | The Getaway | 1 | #60 | – | 2022 | |
| 9 | Sixty Six | 7 | #97 | – | 1999 | |
| 10 | A Line Of Shots | 1 | #69 | – | 2023 | |
| 11 | The Lottery | 1 | #101 | – | 2014 | |
| 12 | Going To Town | 1 | #79 | – | 1996 | |
| 13 | Something Hot | 2 | #96 | – | 1998 | |
| 14 | Creep | 1 | #417 | – | – | |
| 15 | Toy Automatic | 1 | #90 | – | 2017 | |
| 16 | What Jail Is Like | 1 | #1811 | – | – | |
| 17 | Miles Iz Ded | 1 | #881 | – | – | |
| 18 | Demon in Profile | 1 | #894 | – | – |
Albums with charting songs
Where each song was first released, from MusicBrainz.
Year-end chart timeline
Combined year-end countdown points per year. Taller bars mean more songs placing higher across more stations.
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