Artist · chart history
Elbow
Band Ramsbottom United Kingdom Formed 1990 UK rock band
Elbow formed in 1990 in Ramsbottom, United Kingdom. Elbow has 51 chart appearances on 40 radio countdowns from 17 stations on RockLists, spanning 1998–2026. The most successful song on radio countdowns is “Grounds for Divorce”, which appears on 13 lists with a best position of #15. The station that charted Elbow most often is WYEP (Pittsburgh, PA), with 8 appearances. The artist’s biggest year on year-end countdowns was 2014.
Elbow have been playing together since 1990, but they only took the name in 1997, and it took them until 2008 and their fourth album, The Seldom Seen Kid, to find the crowd that had been waiting for them. Guy Garvey sings and plays guitar, Craig Potter handles keyboards and piano, Mark Potter plays guitar and Pete Turner plays bass, with original drummer Richard Jupp behind them until 2016. Their music moves at the pace of a long walk home: slow, warm, unhurried, with Garvey's voice doing the heavy lifting over swelling piano.
The Seldom Seen Kid won the Mercury Music Prize in 2008, Elbow took Best British Group at the Brits in 2009, and "One Day Like This", a big-hearted singalong that keeps climbing until the whole room is in on it, won an Ivor Novello Award the same year. After it rang out at the closing ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympics it went back up the charts, and the band wrote "First Steps" as the BBC's theme for the London Games.
The run since has been as steady as the band itself: Build a Rocket Boys! in 2011, The Take Off and Landing of Everything in 2014, Little Fictions in 2017, and on to Audio Vertigo in 2024, their 10th studio album. Alex Reeves took over the drums in 2016 and became a full member in 2024.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
Songs by Elbow on radio countdowns
| # | Song | Strength | Lists | Best | #1s | Peak year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Grounds for Divorce | 13 | #15 | – | 2008 | |
| 2 | New York Morning | 6 | #8 | – | 2014 | |
| 3 | One Day Like This | 6 | #3 | – | – | |
| 4 | Lover's Leap | 3 | #13 | – | 2024 | |
| 5 | The Bones Of You | 3 | #303 | – | – | |
| 6 | Lippy Kids | 3 | #19 | – | 2011 | |
| 7 | Magnificent (She Says) | 3 | #28 | – | 2017 | |
| 8 | Newborn | 3 | #71 | – | 2002 | |
| 9 | Gentle Storm | 1 | #28 | – | 2017 | |
| 10 | Charge | 1 | #35 | – | 2014 | |
| 11 | The Only Road | 1 | #34 | – | 2023 | |
| 12 | Good Blood Mexico City | 1 | #35 | – | 2025 | |
| 13 | Sober | 1 | #594 | – | – | |
| 14 | Powder Blue | 1 | #34 | – | 1998 | |
| 15 | Forget Myself | 1 | #617 | – | – | |
| 16 | Lippy Kids (live @rock werchter) | 1 | #28 | – | 2011 | |
| 17 | Magnificent | 1 | #81 | – | 2017 | |
| 18 | With Love | 1 | #101 | – | 2011 | |
| 19 | Red Sky Radio (Baby Baby Baby) | 1 | #89 | – | 2023 |
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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