Artist · chart history · #147 in indie & aaa artist polls · #239 in alternative artist polls
Barenaked Ladies
Band Toronto Canada Formed 1988
Barenaked Ladies formed in 1988 in Toronto, Canada. Barenaked Ladies has 153 chart appearances on 87 radio countdowns from 30 stations on RockLists, spanning 1991–2025. The most successful song on radio countdowns is “One Week”, which appears on 46 lists with a best position of #3. The station that charted Barenaked Ladies most often is CD101 (Columbus, OH), with 28 appearances. The artist’s biggest year on year-end countdowns was 1998.
Barenaked Ladies started out in Scarborough, Ontario, in 1988 as a duo, just Ed Robertson and Steven Page with their guitars. They filled out into a five-piece with Jim Creeggan on bass, his brother Andy Creeggan on percussion and keyboards, and Tyler Stewart on drums, and Canada fell for them first: their self-released cassette The Yellow Tape, in 1991, became the first independent recording in the country to go platinum, and the debut album Gordon, in 1992, was a smash at home.
The early songs, "If I Had a $1,000,000", "Brian Wilson", "Be My Yoko Ono" and "Enid" among them, show what makes this band tick. Robertson and Page can swing from a gag to something genuinely aching in the space of a verse, and they never seem to decide whether they're a comedy act or a heartbreak band. That's the charm. The sound is pop and rock songwriting dressed in acoustic, folk-flavored arrangements and stacked with vocal harmonies, nimble and warm and a lot sharper than the goofball reputation lets on.
America took longer. Kevin Hearn, a multi-instrumentalist, replaced Andy Creeggan in 1995, and the band ground it out on tour, with the 1996 live album Rock Spectacle building the audience and Born on a Pirate Ship offering the bittersweet "The Old Apartment". Then Stunt, in 1998, blew the doors off: "One Week", a breakneck, rapid-fire jumble of a song, went all the way to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, and "It's All Been Done" and "Call and Answer" followed it onto the radio. Maroon, in 2000, added "Pinch Me".
On stage they're as much a variety show as a rock band, with comic back-and-forth, songs made up on the spot and freestyle rapping. Page left in 2009, and Robertson, Jim Creeggan, Stewart and Hearn carried on as a quartet. They have 8 Juno Awards on the shelf and 2 Grammy nominations, and the Canadian Music Hall of Fame inducted them in 2018.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
Songs by Barenaked Ladies on radio countdowns
| # | Song | Strength | Lists | Best | #1s | Peak year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | One Week | 46 | #3 | – | 1998 | |
| 2 | If I Had A $1,000,000 | 24 | #69 | – | – | |
| 3 | Brian Wilson | 15 | #14 | – | 1998 | |
| 4 | Be My Yoko Ono | 17 | #50 | – | 1991 | |
| 5 | The Old Apartment | 10 | #27 | – | 1996 | |
| 6 | Pinch Me | 4 | #21 | – | 2000 | |
| 7 | If I Had A Million Dollars | 7 | #3 | – | 1991 | |
| 8 | Lovers In A Dangerous Time | 3 | #38 | – | 1992 | |
| 9 | Mcdonald's Girl | 3 | #18 | – | 1991 | |
| 10 | Million Dollar Rap | 3 | #255 | – | – | |
| 11 | Call And Answer | 3 | #43 | – | 1999 | |
| 12 | It's All Been Done | 6 | #20 | – | 1998 | |
| 13 | Enid | 2 | #99 | – | 1992 | |
| 14 | Million Dollar Rap (live) | 1 | #231 | – | – | |
| 15 | You Run Away | 1 | #48 | – | 2010 | |
| 16 | Too Little Too Late | 1 | #71 | – | 2001 | |
| 17 | Jane | 1 | #679 | – | – | |
| 18 | Get In Line | 1 | #67 | – | 1999 | |
| 19 | Falling For The First Time | 1 | #88 | – | 2001 | |
| 20 | Another Postcard | 1 | #77 | – | 2003 |
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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