Artist · chart history
Cold War Kids
Band Fullerton United States Formed 2004
Cold War Kids formed in 2004 in Fullerton, United States. Cold War Kids has 200 chart appearances on 149 radio countdowns from 50 stations on RockLists, spanning 2006–2026. The most successful song on radio countdowns is “First”, which appears on 31 lists with a best position of #2. The station that charted Cold War Kids most often is CD101 (Columbus, OH), with 36 appearances. The artist’s biggest year on year-end countdowns was 2007.
Cold War Kids came out of Long Beach, California, in the mid-2000s with a sound like a bar band that had wandered into church: Nathan Willett's pleading, preacherly holler over piano and guitar, Matt Maust's lumbering bass, Jonnie Russell on guitar, keys and piano, and Matt Aveiro pounding the drums like he was trying to wake the neighbors. Early records came out on the indie Monarchy Music, and in 2006 they signed with Downtown/V2 and made Robbers & Cowards, which won them a devoted cult of fans and critics.
The Up in Rags EP from that same year carries the early favorites: the rattling, stomping "Hang Me Up to Dry", "Hospital Beds" and "We Used to Vacation". Loyalty to Loyalty in 2008 ("Something Is Not Right With Me") and Mine Is Yours in 2011 ("Louder Than Ever", "Skip the Charades") pushed the sound in new directions, to mixed reviews.
The lineup kept shifting, with Dann Gallucci, Joe Plummer, Matthew Schwartz and David Quon coming aboard around Willett and Maust, and the songs got bigger and brighter: "Miracle Mile" on Dear Miss Lonelyhearts in 2013, "First" on Hold My Home in 2014, "Love Is Mystical" on LA Divine in 2017. New Age Norms 1 arrived on November 1, 2019, "What You Say" followed on New Age Norms 3 in 2021, and a self-titled album brought "Run Away with Me" in 2023.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
Songs by Cold War Kids on radio countdowns
| # | Song | Strength | Lists | Best | #1s | Peak year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | First | 31 | #2 | – | 2015 | |
| 2 | Hang Me Up to Dry | 29 | #2 | – | 2007 | |
| 3 | Love Is Mystical | 11 | #8 | – | 2017 | |
| 4 | Audience | 17 | #12 | – | 2010 | |
| 5 | Hospital Beds | 11 | #19 | – | 2007 | |
| 6 | Miracle Mile | 10 | #3 | – | 2013 | |
| 7 | Louder than Ever | 11 | #13 | – | 2011 | |
| 8 | What You Say | 12 | #6 | – | 2021 | |
| 9 | Complainer | 6 | #7 | – | 2019 | |
| 10 | Something Is Not Right With Me | 10 | #35 | – | 2008 | |
| 11 | Run Away with Me | 8 | #11 | – | 2023 | |
| 12 | So Tied Up | 7 | #33 | – | 2017 | |
| 13 | Skip the Charades | 8 | #39 | – | 2011 | |
| 14 | All This Could Be Yours | 5 | #15 | – | 2014 | |
| 15 | We Used to Vacation | 6 | #28 | – | 2007 | |
| 16 | Who's Gonna Love Me Now | 4 | #31 | – | 2020 | |
| 17 | Lost That Easy | 2 | #30 | – | 2013 | |
| 18 | Can We Hang On? | 2 | #21 | – | 2018 | |
| 19 | Feel Too Much | 1 | #25 | – | 2024 | |
| 20 | No Reason to Run | 1 | #32 | – | 2017 | |
| 21 | Saint John | 1 | #47 | – | 2008 | |
| 22 | Jailbirds | 1 | #63 | – | 2013 | |
| 23 | Finally Begin | 1 | #43 | – | 2011 | |
| 24 | I Can't Walk Away | 1 | #62 | – | 2022 | |
| 25 | I've Seen Enough | 1 | #76 | – | 2009 | |
| 26 | Always | 1 | #94 | – | 2022 | |
| 27 | Who's Gonna Love You | 1 | #99 | – | 2020 | |
| 28 | Miracle Man | 1 | #96 | – | 2013 |
Albums with charting songs
Where each song was first released, from MusicBrainz.
Featured on
Songs by other artists credited with Cold War Kids as a guest.
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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