Artist · chart history · #132 in alternative artist polls · #860 in indie & aaa artist polls
Madness
Band Camden Town United Kingdom Formed 1976 English pop/ska band
Madness formed in 1976 in Camden Town, United Kingdom. Madness has 189 chart appearances on 87 radio countdowns from 27 stations on RockLists, spanning 1983–2026. The most successful song on radio countdowns is “Our House”, which appears on 66 lists with a best position of #15. The station that charted Madness most often is CD101 (Columbus, OH), with 42 appearances. The artist’s biggest year on year-end countdowns was 1983.
Madness came out of Camden Town in north-west London and became one of the leading bands of the two-tone ska revival at the turn of the '80s, a seven-piece built around Suggs on lead vocals, Mike Barson on keyboards, Lee Thompson on saxophone, Chris Foreman on guitar, Mark Bedford on bass, Daniel Woodgate on drums and Cathal Smyth, who covered everything from trumpet and harmonica to bass and backing vocals.
The sound was a stomping, bouncing ska-pop, Barson's piano tumbling over Thompson's honking sax while the rhythm section kept the floor from ever standing still. On 2 Tone and Stiff, the early albums, One Step Beyond… in 1979, Absolutely in 1980 and The Rise & Fall in 1982, came stuffed with singles: "One Step Beyond", "Night Boat to Cairo", "My Girl", "Baggy Trousers", "Our House".
From 1980 to 1986 they practically lived on the UK singles chart, clocking up 214 weeks there across the '80s, a record for a group that they share with UB40. They landed 16 top-ten singles at home, "It Must Be Love" among them, and "House of Fun" went all the way to number one, in Britain and in Ireland, where "Wings of a Dove" topped the chart too. America came around as well: "Our House", a bright, brassy singalong, was their biggest hit there, reaching number 7 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Barson left in 1984, the year of Keep Moving, and Steve Nieve filled in on keyboards and synthesizer until 1986. The band has carried on, with 6 of the original 7 still playing together, and in 2000 the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors gave them the Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Song Collection. In 2005 The Dangermen Sessions, Volume One brought "Shame & Scandal" to the countdowns, where "Our House" and "One Step Beyond" still get the biggest cheer.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
Songs by Madness on radio countdowns
| # | Song | Strength | Lists | Best | #1s | Peak year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Our House | 66 | #15 | – | 1983 | |
| 2 | One Step Beyond | 42 | #4 | – | – | |
| 3 | Madness | 15 | #339 | – | – | |
| 4 | It Must Be Love | 11 | #9 | – | 1983 | |
| 5 | House of Fun | 15 | #204 | – | – | |
| 6 | My Girl | 5 | #90 | – | – | |
| 7 | Baggy Trousers | 9 | #174 | – | – | |
| 8 | Embarassment | 4 | #230 | – | – | |
| 9 | Night Boat to Cairo | 3 | #152 | – | – | |
| 10 | Wings of a Dove | 4 | #83 | – | 1983 | |
| 11 | Shame & Scandal | 3 | #39 | – | 2005 | |
| 12 | Madness (Is All in the Mind) | 1 | #367 | – | – | |
| 13 | Keep Moving | 2 | #269 | – | – | |
| 14 | We Are London | 1 | #431 | – | – | |
| 15 | Turning Blue | 1 | #1752 | – | – |
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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