Artist · chart history · #231 in alternative artist polls
Gene Loves Jezebel
Band United Kingdom Formed 1980
Gene Loves Jezebel formed in 1980 in the United Kingdom. Gene Loves Jezebel has 91 chart appearances on 48 radio countdowns from 10 stations on RockLists, spanning 1986–2014. The most successful song on radio countdowns is “Desire”, which appears on 31 lists with a best position of #6. The station that charted Gene Loves Jezebel most often is CD101 (Columbus, OH), with 24 appearances. The artist’s biggest year on year-end countdowns was 1987.
Gene Loves Jezebel was the brainchild of twin brothers Michael and Jay Aston, who started the band in the UK in 1980 and spent the next decade turning goth's gloom into something glossier and a good deal more flirtatious. They came up in the gothic rock and post-punk crowd, and the 1983 debut album Promise made it to number 8 on the UK Indie Chart. Immigrant followed in 1985, with Ian Hudson and then James Stevenson on guitar and Julianne Regan and Stephen Davis among the bassists passing through.
The peak came with Discover in 1986, which went top 40 on the UK Albums Chart. "Heartache" and "Desire (Come and Get It)" are all chiming guitars, swooning vocals and velvet drama, and between 1986 and 1987 the band put 5 singles on the UK chart. The House of Dolls followed in 1987 with "The Motion of Love", "Twenty Killer Hurts", "Suspicion" and "Gorgeous", and the band found a following in the US too. The Remix Sampler EP in 1990 had "Jealous", a strutting, glammed-up rocker.
Michael left in 1990, and Jay kept Gene Loves Jezebel going for Heavenly Bodies in 1992 before the twins briefly came back together in the mid-'90s, with Chris Bell and Peter Rizzo in the lineup, and VII arrived in 1999. In the end the brothers went their separate ways, and each ended up running his own version of Gene Loves Jezebel.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
Songs by Gene Loves Jezebel on radio countdowns
| # | Song | Strength | Lists | Best | #1s | Peak year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Desire | 31 | #6 | – | 1986 | |
| 2 | Jealous | 20 | #13 | – | 1990 | |
| 3 | The Motion of Love | 10 | #15 | – | 1987 | |
| 4 | Heartache | 9 | #69 | – | 1986 | |
| 5 | Twenty Killer Hurts | 3 | #133 | – | – | |
| 6 | Suspicion | 2 | #19 | – | 1988 | |
| 7 | Gorgeous | 3 | #284 | – | – | |
| 8 | 20 Killer Hertz | 3 | #23 | – | 1987 | |
| 9 | 20 Killer Hurts | 2 | #72 | – | 1987 | |
| 10 | Sweetest Thing | 2 | #656 | – | – | |
| 11 | Who Wants To Go To Heaven? | 2 | #1400 | – | – | |
| 12 | Stephen | 1 | #1840 | – | – | |
| 13 | Josephina | 1 | #99 | – | 1992 |
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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