Song · David Gray
“Please Forgive Me” by David Gray
From the album White Ladder (1998)
“Please Forgive Me” by David Gray appears on 11 radio countdowns from 8 stations between 2001 and 2026. It was first released in 1998 on the album White Ladder. Its best result is #21 on the WXRT Listener Poll: Top 30 Songs of 2001. In the combined RockLists rankings it is the #494 alternative song of 2001 and #5,254 alternative song of all time.
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"Please Forgive Me" comes from White Ladder, David Gray's fourth album, and it was cooked up by a tiny crew: Gray on guitar, keyboards and piano, Clune on bass, drums and keys, both of them singing, and Iestyn Polson engineering, with all three sharing the production credit. Gray has said the song came to him out of nowhere.
It first came out as a single in November 1999 and stalled at No. 72 in the UK; reissued in October 2000, it climbed to No. 18. Along the way Paul Hartnoll of Orbital remixed it, the remix was pressed onto promo vinyl, Pete Tong made it record of the week on his Essential Selection, and it was all over the airwaves in Ibiza, an unlikely second life for a singer-songwriter's plea.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
RockLists rankings
Alternative & Modern Rock
Indie & Adult Alternative
All Rock Formats
Year-end countdowns
| Year | # | Station | Countdown | of |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2001 | 21 | 93XRT Chicago, IL | WXRT Listener Poll: Top 30 Songs of 2001 | 30 |
| 2001 | 88 | 102.7 WEQX Southern Vermont and the Capital District of New York (Albany) | WEQX Top 102.7 of 2001 | 103 |
| 2001 | 101 | WHTG Monmouth-Ocean, NJ | G106.3 Top 106 Songs of 2001 | 106 |
All-time and decade countdowns
| Year | # | Station | Countdown | of |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2001 | 423 | Virgin Radio | Virgin Radio Top 500 Songs of All-Time (December 2001) | 500 |
| 2001 | 1384 | WFPK | WFPK 2001 Greatest Songs of All Time | 2000 |
| 2004 | 317 | Virgin Radio | Virgin Radio Top 500 Songs of All-Time (December 2004) | 500 |
| 2004 | 240 | WXPN | WXPN 885 All-Time Greatest Songs (2004) | 885 |
| 2009 | 404 | WXPN | WXPN 885 Desert Island Songs (2009) | 885 |
| 2024 | 583 | WYEP | WYEP Best Songs of the Past 50 Years | 1049 |
| 2026 | 781 | KXT | KXT 917 Song Countdown | 917 |
| 2026 | 865 | WYEP | WYEP Greatest Songs of All Time | 1180 |
Also listed as: Please Forgive me.
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