Artist · chart history · #329 in indie & aaa artist polls
Neutral Milk Hotel
Band Ruston United States Active 1989–1998
Neutral Milk Hotel formed in 1989 in Ruston, United States and was active until 1998. Neutral Milk Hotel has 30 chart appearances on 17 radio countdowns from 8 stations on RockLists, spanning 2005–2026. The most successful song on radio countdowns is “In The Aeroplane Over The Sea”, which appears on 13 lists with a best position of #80. The station that charted Neutral Milk Hotel most often is The Current (Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN), with 7 appearances.
Neutral Milk Hotel started as one of Jeff Mangum's home recording projects in Ruston, Louisiana, in the late '80s, a lo-fi dream that drifted with him through years of wandering after high school. In 1996 he worked with his childhood friend Robert Schneider on On Avery Island, and it won good notices. For the next record he built a real band, bringing in Julian Koster, Jeremy Barnes and Scott Spillane.
In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, released on Merge in 1998, is where the whole thing catches fire. It's a crackling, fuzzed-out psychedelic folk record where Mangum's wild, cracking voice is swarmed by singing saw, uilleann pipes and wheezing noise. The songs are surreal and cryptic, circling love, spirituality, nostalgia, sex and loneliness, and "The King of Carrot Flowers Pt. One", "Holland, 1945", "Two-Headed Boy" and the title track hit with a fervor that's almost frightening.
The reviews were good rather than rapturous, but word spread online as the band toured, and the attention took its toll on Mangum, who stopped wanting to go on the road. The band went quiet not long after. In their absence the cult grew and the album's reputation rose until it came to be hailed as a landmark of indie rock, with the Arcade Fire and the Decemberists among the bands who took its lessons to heart. Neutral Milk Hotel came back to tour in 2013 before going quiet again in 2015.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
Songs by Neutral Milk Hotel on radio countdowns
| # | Song | Strength | Lists | Best | #1s | Peak year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | In The Aeroplane Over The Sea | 13 | #80 | – | – | |
| 2 | Holland, 1945 | 8 | #115 | – | – | |
| 3 | Two-Headed Boy | 4 | #351 | – | – | |
| 4 | The King of Carrot Flowers PT 1 | 1 | #73 | – | – | |
| 5 | The King of Carrot Flowers Pt. One | 1 | #222 | – | – | |
| 6 | Two-Headed Boy Pt. Two | 1 | #759 | – | – | |
| 7 | Untitled | 1 | #811 | – | – |
Albums with charting songs
Where each song was first released, from MusicBrainz.
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