Artist · chart history · #51 in indie & aaa artist polls
Phish
Band Burlington United States Formed 1983 American rock band formed in Burlington, Vermont, in 1983
Phish formed in 1983 in Burlington, United States. Phish has 156 chart appearances on 71 radio countdowns from 22 stations on RockLists, spanning 1996–2026. The most successful song on radio countdowns is “Bouncing Around The Room”, which appears on 24 lists with a best position of #69. The station that charted Phish most often is CD101 (Columbus, OH), with 70 appearances. The artist’s biggest year on year-end countdowns was 2009.
Phish came together in Burlington, Vermont, in 1983, four musicians who seemed to regard the three-minute song as a starting point rather than a destination. Trey Anastasio played guitar and took most of the lead vocals, Mike Gordon played bass, Jon Fishman drums, and a second guitarist, Jeff Holdsworth, rounded out the first lineup. Page McConnell brought his keyboards in 1985, Holdsworth left the next year, and the four who remained have never changed since. Everybody sings, and most of the songs come from Anastasio working with lyricist Tom Marshall.
Their records only hint at the real thing. Lawn Boy in 1990 has the jaunty "Bouncing Around the Room"; Junta holds the sprawling "You Enjoy Myself", and "Divided Sky" twists and tumbles through more sections than most bands fit on a whole album. Listen for five minutes and you'll hear funk, reggae, progressive rock, psychedelia, bluegrass, jazz and country all jostling for space, often inside a single tune, and the wonder is that it never collapses into a novelty act. The songs are sturdy frames, and the band treats every one as an invitation to wander off.
The stage is where the legend lives. After breaking out of New England in the late '80s, they built an audience the old-fashioned way, by word of mouth and by fans swapping tapes of live shows, and in the mid-'90s that audience swelled. They belong to the loose circuit of jam bands, improvising groups taking their cues from the way the Grateful Dead ran their concerts, and they did more than most to turn it into a touring force in the '90s.
Elektra signed them in 1991, and the studio albums kept coming: A Picture of Nectar with "Chalk Dust Torture", Rift, Hoist with "Down With Disease" and "Julius", Billy Breathes with "Free", The Story of the Ghost and Farmhouse. A break began in October 2000 and ran to December 2002; they called it quits in August 2004, then reunited in October 2008 and have played regularly since March 2009. Along the way they launched their own label, JEMP Records, for archival releases, and their American sales of albums and DVDs had passed 8 million by 2020.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
Songs by Phish on radio countdowns
| # | Song | Strength | Lists | Best | #1s | Peak year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Bouncing Around The Room | 24 | #69 | – | – | |
| 2 | Down With Disease | 16 | #334 | – | – | |
| 3 | Chalk Dust Torture | 16 | #470 | – | – | |
| 4 | Backwards Down The Number Line | 15 | #12 | – | 2009 | |
| 5 | Fast Enough For You | 7 | #765 | – | – | |
| 6 | Lengthwise/Maze | 7 | #924 | – | – | |
| 7 | Evolve | 7 | #26 | – | 2024 | |
| 8 | You Enjoy Myself | 6 | #304 | – | – | |
| 9 | Julius | 7 | #1164 | – | – | |
| 10 | Free | 11 | #100 | – | 1996 | |
| 11 | The Line | 6 | #33 | – | 2014 | |
| 12 | Heavy Things | 6 | #17 | – | 2000 | |
| 13 | Waiting All Night | 2 | #13 | – | 2014 | |
| 14 | Farmhouse | 2 | #490 | – | – | |
| 15 | Sample In A Jar | 1 | #132 | – | – | |
| 16 | Divided Sky | 2 | #637 | – | – | |
| 17 | Loving Cup | 1 | #240 | – | – | |
| 18 | Everything's Right | 3 | #72 | – | 2020 | |
| 19 | Guyute | 1 | #303 | – | – | |
| 20 | Weekapaug Groove | 1 | #326 | – | – | |
| 21 | 46 Days | 1 | #79 | – | 2003 | |
| 22 | Sigma Oasis | 1 | #929 | – | – | |
| 23 | Birds of a Feather | 1 | #51 | – | 1998 | |
| 24 | Breath and Burning | 2 | #60 | – | 2016 | |
| 25 | Back On The Train | 1 | #451 | – | – | |
| 26 | Tweezer | 1 | #1262 | – | – | |
| 27 | Fuego | 1 | #154 | – | 2014 | |
| 28 | Gotta Jibboo | 1 | #24 | – | 2000 | |
| 29 | The Connection | 2 | #88 | – | 2004 | |
| 30 | Contact | 1 | #725 | – | – | |
| 31 | First Tube | 1 | #821 | – | – | |
| 32 | Waste | 1 | #889 | – | – |
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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