Artist · chart history
Andrew Bird
Solo artist Lake Forest United States US indie rock multi-instrumentalist, singer, and songwriter
Andrew Bird is an artist from Lake Forest. Andrew Bird has 98 chart appearances on 61 radio countdowns from 20 stations on RockLists, spanning 2007–2026. The most successful song on radio countdowns is “Sisyphus”, which appears on 15 lists with a best position of #5. The station that charted Andrew Bird most often is WYEP (Pittsburgh, PA), with 30 appearances. The artist’s biggest year on year-end countdowns was 2019.
Andrew Bird, born in 1973 and from Lake Forest, makes music that sounds like one man impersonating a small orchestra, because that is more or less what he's doing. The violin is the heart of it, fed through loop and effects pedals until it stacks into choirs of itself, with his whistling floating over the top and a voice that sounds forever half-amused.
He came up through jazz in the '90s, sawing away with Squirrel Nut Zippers and Kevin O'Donnell's Quality Six before leading his own swing band, Andrew Bird's Bowl of Fire, through 3 albums between 1998 and 2001. Weather Systems, his first solo record in 2003, was the pivot away from jazz and into indie rock, and The Mysterious Production of Eggs, Armchair Apocrypha and Noble Beast turned that pivot into a signature: wordy, curious, gorgeously built songs like "Fake Palindromes", "Tenuousness" and "Fitz and the Dizzy Spells".
The later records have been leaner and more direct. Are You Serious in 2016 gave us "Capsized", and My Finest Work Yet, a title with its tongue firmly in cheek, turned "Sisyphus" into a shrugging hymn and landed a Grammy nomination for Best Folk Album. Along the way he has worked with Fiona Apple, the Handsome Family and Madison Cunningham, whistled "The Whistling Caruso" for The Muppets, scored the TV series Baskets and even stepped in front of the camera for Fargo.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
Songs by Andrew Bird on radio countdowns
| # | Song | Strength | Lists | Best | #1s | Peak year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sisyphus | 15 | #5 | – | 2019 | |
| 2 | Fitz and the Dizzy Spells | 14 | #28 | – | 2009 | |
| 3 | Capsized | 13 | #26 | – | 2016 | |
| 4 | Imitosis | 5 | #52 | – | 2007 | |
| 5 | Take A Picture | 6 | #22 | – | 2022 | |
| 6 | Fake Palindromes | 5 | #244 | – | – | |
| 7 | Pulaski At Night | 5 | #35 | – | 2013 | |
| 8 | Oh No | 4 | #20 | – | 2009 | |
| 9 | Heretics | 2 | #364 | – | – | |
| 10 | Eyeoneye | 2 | #92 | – | 2012 | |
| 11 | Tables and Chairs | 2 | #569 | – | – | |
| 12 | Tenuousness | 2 | #30 | – | 2009 | |
| 13 | Left Handed Kisses | 1 | #317 | – | – | |
| 14 | A Nervous Tic Motion of the Head to the Left | 2 | #519 | – | – | |
| 15 | Bloodless | 2 | #73 | – | 2019 | |
| 16 | Three White Horses | 1 | #41 | – | 2012 | |
| 17 | Capital Crimes | 1 | #52 | – | 2020 | |
| 18 | My Sister's Tiny Hands | 1 | #443 | – | – | |
| 19 | Action/Adventure | 3 | #656 | – | – | |
| 20 | Fits and Dizzyspells | 1 | #55 | – | 2010 | |
| 21 | Tin Foiled | 2 | #890 | – | – | |
| 22 | Masterfade | 1 | #643 | – | – | |
| 23 | Roma Fade | 3 | #75 | – | 2016 | |
| 24 | Armchairs | 1 | #728 | – | – | |
| 25 | Scythian Empires | 1 | #819 | – | – | |
| 26 | Fiery Crash | 1 | #836 | – | – | |
| 27 | Atomized | 1 | #99 | – | 2022 | |
| 28 | Lull | 1 | #857 | – | – |
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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