Artist · chart history · #162 in alternative artist polls
Modern English
Band Colchester United Kingdom Formed 1979
Modern English formed in 1979 in Colchester, United Kingdom. Modern English has 106 chart appearances on 101 radio countdowns from 29 stations on RockLists, spanning 1983–2026. The most successful song on radio countdowns is “I Melt With You”, which appears on 96 lists with a best position of #2. The station that charted Modern English most often is CD101 (Columbus, OH), with 14 appearances. The artist’s biggest year on year-end countdowns was 1986.
Modern English started out in Colchester, Essex, in 1979, a post-punk outfit with a taste for atmosphere, and landed on 4AD, the label that made gloom sound gorgeous. The lineup that the credits remember takes in Robbie Grey, Gary McDowell, Michael Conroy, Richard Brown and Stephen Walker.
Their second album, After the Snow, came out in 1982 and carried "I Melt With You", the song that has defined them ever since. It's new wave at its most lovestruck: a chiming, galloping guitar figure and a chorus that swells like a heartbeat under a crowded dance floor. It has never really gone away.
The band pushed on through the middle of the decade with Ricochet Days in 1984, home of the stately "Hands Across the Sea", and Stop Start in 1986, which brought "Ink and Paper". Then came the stop without the start: they broke up in 1987, got back together two years later, split again in 1991, and reunited once more in 1995, carrying on in several lineups since. Decades after "I Melt With You", they were still at it, with the album 1 2 3 4 in 2024 and its single "Long In The Tooth", a title that says it with a wink.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
Songs by Modern English on radio countdowns
| # | Song | Strength | Lists | Best | #1s | Peak year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | I Melt With You#163 of all time | 96 | #2 | – | 1983 | |
| 2 | Ink and Paper | 3 | #14 | – | 1986 | |
| 3 | Long In The Tooth | 1 | #522 | – | – | |
| 4 | Hands Across the Sea | 1 | #383 | – | – | |
| 5 | Smiles And Laughter | 2 | #1781 | – | – | |
| 6 | It's OK | 1 | #89 | – | 2010 |
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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