Artist · chart history · #571 in indie & aaa artist polls
R L Burnside
Solo artist Harmontown United States
R L Burnside is an artist from Harmontown. R L Burnside has 16 chart appearances on 13 radio countdowns from 7 stations on RockLists, spanning 1999–2026. The most successful song on radio countdowns is “It's Bad You Know”, which appears on 5 lists with a best position of #6. The station that charted R L Burnside most often is WYEP (Pittsburgh, PA), with 8 appearances. The artist’s biggest year on year-end countdowns was 1999.
R. L. Burnside, the hill country bluesman from Harmontown, spent most of his life playing music that barely anybody outside his own corner of the world got to hear. Born in 1926, he sang, wrote and played guitar for decades with next to no recognition, until 1995, when he started recording and touring with Jon Spencer and a whole new crowd came running.
That crowd wasn't the usual blues-society types. It was punks and garage-rock kids, who heard in Burnside's grinding, hypnotic guitar and weathered voice the same raw nerve they chased in their own scene. He made his records for Fat Possum, and Come On In, in 1998, is where "Let My Baby Ride" comes from.
He kept at it until his death in 2005, a late bloomer who never sanded a single rough edge off his sound to earn the attention.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
Songs by R L Burnside on radio countdowns
| # | Song | Strength | Lists | Best | #1s | Peak year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | It's Bad You Know | 5 | #6 | – | 1999 | |
| 2 | Let My Baby Ride | 3 | #167 | – | – | |
| 3 | Someday Baby | 2 | #206 | – | – | |
| 4 | Everything Is Broken | 2 | #316 | – | – | |
| 5 | Old Black Maddie | 1 | #395 | – | – | |
| 6 | Bad Luck City | 1 | #311 | – | – | |
| 7 | Miss Maybelle | 1 | #398 | – | – |
Albums with charting songs
Where each song was first released, from MusicBrainz.
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