Artist · chart history
DJ Shadow
Solo artist San Jose United States US hip hop producer, DJ & instrumentalist
DJ Shadow is an artist from San Jose. DJ Shadow has 25 chart appearances on 24 radio countdowns from 9 stations on RockLists, spanning 1996–2026. The most successful song on radio countdowns is “Rocket Fuel”, which appears on 7 lists with a best position of #9. The station that charted DJ Shadow most often is WBER (Rochester, NY), with 9 appearances. The artist’s biggest year on year-end countdowns was 2019.
DJ Shadow is Joshua Paul Davis, born in 1972, a San Jose crate-digger who turned old records into something no one had heard before. His debut album, Endtroducing....., came out in 1996 and was built from samples, stacked and layered into dusky, cinematic instrumental hip-hop. "Midnight in a Perfect World" drifts along like a late-night drive through an empty city, and "Building Steam with a Grain of Salt" rolls in slow and heavy. The earlier "Stem" had already hinted at what was coming.
He also spent the years from 1996 until 1999 in Unkle. The Private Press, in 2002, brought "Walkie Talkie" and a nomination for the Shortlist Music Prize. Later albums kept things moving: The Mountain Will Fall in 2016 carried the hard-hitting "Nobody Speak", and Our Pathetic Age in 2019 added "Rocket Fuel". Along the way he picked up a Libera Award for Video of the Year.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
Songs by DJ Shadow on radio countdowns
| # | Song | Strength | Lists | Best | #1s | Peak year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Rocket Fuel | 7 | #9 | – | 2019 | |
| 2 | Midnight In A Perfect World | 5 | #172 | – | – | |
| 3 | Organ Donor (Live) | 1 | #22 | – | 2004 | |
| 4 | Six Days | 1 | #21 | – | 2003 | |
| 5 | You Can't Go Home Again | 1 | #61 | – | 2002 | |
| 6 | The Sideshow | 1 | #49 | – | 2016 | |
| 7 | Nobody Speak | 2 | #50 | – | 2016 | |
| 8 | Building Steam with a Grain of Salt | 1 | #420 | – | – | |
| 9 | Stem | 1 | #35 | – | 1996 | |
| 10 | A Narrow Escape | 1 | #59 | – | 2024 | |
| 11 | Warning Call | 2 | #106 | – | 2012 | |
| 12 | You Made It | 1 | #128 | – | 2006 | |
| 13 | Walkie Talkie | 1 | #99 | – | 2002 |
Albums with charting songs
Where each song was first released, from MusicBrainz.
Featured on
Songs by other artists credited with DJ Shadow 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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