Artist · chart history · #484 in indie & aaa artist polls
Big Star
Band Memphis Active 1971–2010
Big Star formed in 1971 in Memphis and was active until 2010. Big Star has 36 chart appearances on 23 radio countdowns from 8 stations on RockLists, spanning 2001–2026. The most successful song on radio countdowns is “September Gurls”, which appears on 17 lists with a best position of #65. The station that charted Big Star most often is The Colorado Sound (Fort Collins–Denver, CO), with 9 appearances.
Big Star came together in Memphis in 1971: Alex Chilton and Chris Bell on vocals and guitars, Andy Hummel on bass and Jody Stephens on drums. They took the jangle of the Byrds and the melodic smarts of the Beatles and made something aching and new out of it, the purest American power pop there is.
#1 Record, in 1972, got glowing reviews and then went nowhere, sunk by Stax's poor marketing and patchy distribution. It's a heartbreaker of a record all the same: "Thirteen" is as delicate as a pressed flower, "Feel" and "When My Baby's Beside Me" crunch and ring. Bell walked away, frustrated, and the others made Radio City without him, finishing it in December 1973; "September Gurls" chimes like the best single never heard, and "O My Soul" and "Back of a Car" rock loose and raw. Columbia had taken over the Stax catalog by then and effectively blocked its distribution, and Hummel went back to college.
A third album was recorded that fall of 1974 and shelved, and the band was finished by the end of the year. It surfaced later as Third/Sister Lovers and slowly became a cult classic. Bell was killed in a car accident at 27. R.E.M. and the Replacements named them as an influence in the '80s, and in 1993 Chilton and Stephens brought the band back with Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow of the Posies, even making a new album, In Space, in 2005. Chilton died in 2010, and Hummel months later.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
Songs by Big Star on radio countdowns
| # | Song | Strength | Lists | Best | #1s | Peak year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | September Gurls | 17 | #65 | – | – | |
| 2 | Thirteen | 8 | #47 | – | – | |
| 3 | The Ballad Of El Goodo | 3 | #140 | – | – | |
| 4 | When My Baby's Beside Me | 2 | #575 | – | – | |
| 5 | Thank You Friends | 1 | #480 | – | – | |
| 6 | In The Street | 1 | #575 | – | – | |
| 7 | Feel | 1 | #556 | – | – | |
| 8 | O My Soul | 1 | #690 | – | – | |
| 9 | Back Of A Car | 1 | #852 | – | – |
Albums with charting songs
Where each song was first released, from MusicBrainz.
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