Artist · chart history
Hum
Band Champaign United States Formed 1989 US alternative rock band
Hum formed in 1989 in Champaign, United States. Hum has 35 chart appearances on 34 radio countdowns from 21 stations on RockLists, spanning 1995–2026. The most successful song on radio countdowns is “Stars”, which appears on 31 lists with a best position of #30. The station that charted Hum most often is CD101 (Columbus, OH), with 7 appearances. The artist’s biggest year on year-end countdowns was 1995.
Hum came out of Champaign, Illinois, in 1989 and spent the first half of the '90s getting louder, stranger and more cosmic. The lineup that mattered had Matt Talbott singing and playing rhythm guitar, Tim Lash on lead guitar, Jeff Dimpsey on bass and Bryan St. Pere on drums, and together they made guitar music that sounds like a satellite falling slowly through the atmosphere: massive, fuzzed-out riffs with a dreamy, star-gazing heart.
RCA signed them, and You'd Prefer an Astronaut arrived in 1995 with "Stars", the radio hit everybody remembers them for, a slab of crunching space rock with a sad, sweet tune buried in the roar. Downward Is Heavenward followed on RCA in 1998, and after 4 albums in all the band called it quits in 2000.
They never really went away, though. Hum drifted back for shows through the 2000s, hit the road properly in 2015, and in 2020 dropped Inlet without warning, 22 years after their previous record, as heavy and lovely as anything they'd done. St. Pere died unexpectedly in 2021; after a long silence, the band returned to the stage in 2026.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
Songs by Hum on radio countdowns
| # | Song | Strength | Lists | Best | #1s | Peak year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Stars | 31 | #30 | – | 1995 | |
| 2 | Shapeshifter | 1 | #7 | – | 2022 | |
| 3 | In The Den | 1 | #9 | – | 2021 | |
| 4 | Cloud City | 1 | #17 | – | 2020 | |
| 5 | Step Into You | 1 | #28 | – | 2021 |
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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