Artist · chart history · #71 in alternative artist polls
Pennywise
Band Hermosa Beach United States Formed 1988 punk rock band from Hermosa Beach, California
Pennywise formed in 1988 in Hermosa Beach, United States. Pennywise has 80 chart appearances on 64 radio countdowns from 21 stations on RockLists, spanning 1995–2023. The most successful song on radio countdowns is “The Western World”, which appears on 12 lists and was voted number one once. In total the artist has topped 1 countdown. The station that charted Pennywise most often is KROQ (Los Angeles, CA), with 24 appearances. The artist’s biggest year on year-end countdowns was 2008.
Pennywise came out of Hermosa Beach, California, in 1988, a skate punk band that borrowed its name from the clown in Stephen King's It and played like it had something to prove every night. Jim Lindberg sang, Fletcher Dragge played guitar, Byron McMackin played drums and Jason Thirsk played bass, later succeeded by Randy Bradbury, and the formula was simple and fierce: fast melodic hardcore with choruses built for a whole room to shout.
They were Epitaph lifers, on the label run by Bad Religion's Brett Gurewitz, and from the self-titled debut in 1991, home of "Bro Hymn", through The Fuse in 2005 they put out a new album every two years like clockwork. The critics liked the first two, but it was About Time in 1995 that finally broke them to a worldwide audience, riding the same California punk wave as Green Day, the Offspring, NOFX, Rancid and Bad Religion. Straight Ahead in 1999, with "Alien" and "Victim of Reality", is as tight and furious as they ever got, and Land of the Free? in 2001 kept the fists up with "Divine Intervention".
By 2007 they had sold more than 3 million records on their own terms. Lindberg left in 2009 and Ignite's Zoli Téglás took over for All or Nothing in 2012, but when a back injury sidelined Téglás later that year, Lindberg came home.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
Songs by Pennywise on radio countdowns
| # | Song | Strength | Lists | Best | #1s | Peak year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Western World | 12 | #1 | 1 | 2008 | |
| 2 | Alien | 11 | #16 | – | 1999 | |
| 3 | Fuck Authority | 10 | #23 | – | 2001 | |
| 4 | Bro Hymn Tribute | 8 | #23 | – | – | |
| 5 | Victim of Reality | 6 | #26 | – | 2000 | |
| 6 | Divine Intervention | 5 | #57 | – | 2001 | |
| 7 | Die For You | 3 | #25 | – | 2008 | |
| 8 | Yesterdays | 3 | #56 | – | 2003 | |
| 9 | Same Old Story | 3 | #41 | – | 1995 | |
| 10 | Disconnect | 2 | #55 | – | 2005 | |
| 11 | Waiting | 1 | #91 | – | 2003 | |
| 12 | Let Us Hear Your Voice | 1 | #46 | – | 2012 | |
| 13 | Keep Moving On | 1 | #63 | – | 2018 | |
| 14 | F*@% Authority | 1 | #82 | – | – | |
| 15 | I Can Remember | 1 | #107 | – | 2014 | |
| 16 | Bro Hymn | 2 | #468 | – | – | |
| 17 | Society | 1 | #90 | – | 1997 | |
| 18 | Down Under | 1 | #91 | – | 1999 | |
| 19 | All Or Nothing | 1 | #91 | – | 2012 |
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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