Artist · chart history · #264 in indie & aaa artist polls
Guided By Voices
Band Dayton United States Formed 1983
Guided By Voices formed in 1983 in Dayton, United States. Guided By Voices has 89 chart appearances on 42 radio countdowns from 13 stations on RockLists, spanning 1996–2026. The most successful song on radio countdowns is “Glad Girls”, which appears on 20 lists with a best position of #54. The station that charted Guided By Voices most often is CD101 (Columbus, OH), with 37 appearances. The artist’s biggest year on year-end countdowns was 2001.
Guided by Voices are Robert Pollard's band, formed in Dayton, Ohio, in 1983, and through every lineup change the only fixture has been Pollard himself. They came up out of the '80s lo-fi scene, recording on Portastudio four-track cassette machines, and their songs are famously short: a British Invasion hook, a burst of garage fuzz, a psychedelic or prog detour, a punk shove, and then on to the next one before you've caught your breath.
The best-known lineup had Pollard singing, his brother Jim on guitar and bass, Mitch Mitchell on lead guitar, Tobin Sprout on rhythm guitar and vocals, Kevin Fennell on drums and Greg Demos on bass, and it made the records that built their devoted cult following: Bee Thousand in 1994, with "I Am a Scientist", and Alien Lanes in 1995, crammed with scraps of genius like "Motor Away" and "My Valuable Hunting Knife". Under the Bushes Under the Stars came next, and Mag Earwhig! and the Wish in One Hand... EP, home of "Teenage FBI", arrived in 1997 with a new cast of players.
The output is staggering, 43 full-length albums and counting. The band called it a day in 2004, the classic lineup reunited in 2010 for Matador Records' 21st anniversary party and went on to make six more albums, they split again in 2014, and Pollard relaunched Guided by Voices in 2016 with a new lineup that has kept going ever since.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
Songs by Guided By Voices on radio countdowns
| # | Song | Strength | Lists | Best | #1s | Peak year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Glad Girls | 20 | #54 | – | 2001 | |
| 2 | Teenage FBI | 18 | #80 | – | 1999 | |
| 3 | My Valuable Hunting Knife | 10 | #201 | – | – | |
| 4 | I Am A Tree | 14 | #1489 | – | – | |
| 5 | Hold On Hope | 7 | #1393 | – | – | |
| 6 | I Am A Scientist | 4 | #264 | – | – | |
| 7 | Chasing Heather Crazy | 3 | #302 | – | – | |
| 8 | Game of Pricks | 3 | #478 | – | – | |
| 9 | Motor Away | 1 | #139 | – | – | |
| 10 | Kicker of Elves | 1 | #685 | – | – | |
| 11 | Everybody Thinks I'm A Rain Cloud (When I'm Not Looking) | 1 | #88 | – | 2005 | |
| 12 | Hardcore UFOs | 1 | #535 | – | – | |
| 13 | A Salty Salute | 1 | #575 | – | – | |
| 14 | Everywhere With Helicopter | 1 | #448 | – | – | |
| 15 | I Think A Telescope | 1 | #1012 | – | – | |
| 16 | The Official Ironmen Rally Song | 1 | #96 | – | 1996 | |
| 17 | Surgical Focus | 1 | #490 | – | – |
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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