Artist · chart history · #705 in indie & aaa artist polls
O.A.R.
Band Rockville Formed 1996
O.A.R. formed in 1996 in Rockville. O.A.R. has 38 chart appearances on 36 radio countdowns from 19 stations on RockLists, spanning 2003–2024. The most successful song on radio countdowns is “Love and Memories”, which appears on 11 lists with a best position of #34. The station that charted O.A.R. most often is WBER (Rochester, NY), with 6 appearances. The artist’s biggest year on year-end countdowns was 2008.
O.A.R., short for Of A Revolution, came together in Rockville, Maryland, in 1996, and it's a band built on old friendships. Marc Roberge sings and plays guitar, Chris Culos drums, Richard On plays guitar and Benj Gershman the bass; four of them went through Thomas Sprigg Wootton High School together, then carried on side by side at Ohio State, where they picked up Jerry DePizzo, a saxophone and guitar man from Youngstown, Ohio.
That saxophone is the tell. O.A.R. make easygoing, sun-warmed rock with a loose, roomy swing, the kind of thing built for sticky summer nights and singalongs rather than brooding. Souls Aflame in 1999 carried "Hey Girl", In Between Now and Then followed in 2003 with "Right on Time", and Stories of a Stranger in 2005 brought the wistful "Love and Memories", with records on Vanguard and Atlantic along the way.
On stage the lineup swells, with Jon Lampley on trumpet and Mikel Paris on keys, and the catalog kept growing too, to ten studio albums and six live ones. "Shattered (Turn the Car Around)" became their only Billboard Hot 100 entry, reaching 36 in December 2008, and in 2021 Billboard counted it among the greatest adult alternative songs of all time.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
Songs by O.A.R. on radio countdowns
| # | Song | Strength | Lists | Best | #1s | Peak year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Love and Memories | 11 | #34 | – | 2005 | |
| 2 | Shattered (Turn the Car Around) | 4 | #8 | – | 2008 | |
| 3 | This Town | 4 | #2 | – | 2009 | |
| 4 | Shattered | 2 | #18 | – | 2008 | |
| 5 | Peace | 2 | #29 | – | 2014 | |
| 6 | Hey Girl | 5 | #43 | – | 2003 | |
| 7 | Heaven | 1 | #38 | – | 2011 | |
| 8 | Sunday Bloody Sunday | 1 | #45 | – | 2004 | |
| 9 | Right on Time | 2 | #94 | – | 2004 | |
| 10 | That Was A Crazy Game of Poker | 1 | #485 | – | – | |
| 11 | One Shot | 1 | #89 | – | 2006 | |
| 12 | Gift | 1 | #82 | – | 2009 | |
| 13 | In the Clouds | 1 | #87 | – | 2023 | |
| 14 | I Go Through | 1 | #87 | – | 2016 |
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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