Artist · chart history
Red Flag
Band Liverpool United States Formed 1984 US synthpop act
Red Flag formed in 1984 in Liverpool, United States. Red Flag has 5 chart appearances on 5 radio countdowns from 4 stations on RockLists, spanning 1988–2022. The most successful song on radio countdowns is “Russian Radio”, which appears on 2 lists with a best position of #154. The station that charted Red Flag most often is Live 105 (San Francisco, CA), with 2 appearances. The artist’s biggest year on year-end countdowns was 1988.
Red Flag were Mark and Chris Reynolds, two brothers who grew up in Liverpool and followed their father's work to Montreal and Seattle before the family finally landed in California in 1979, Los Angeles first. The synthesizer bug bit in 1982, when Mark walked into a music shop and chose a Roland Juno-60 instead of a guitar, and from there the brothers steered by Depeche Mode, OMD and Propaganda.
Their first recording, "Distant Memories", made under the name Shades of May, found its way into a 1983 re-cut of the 1976 film A Matter Of Style, and when San Diego station 91X chose it for a 1984 compilation, the brothers moved down to San Diego. Another early track, "The Meaning Of Life", written for the 1983 film Ocean Fever, was filed under lostwave for a while.
Naïve Art, on Enigma Records in 1989, is the payoff: glossy, clipped synth-pop with chilly keyboards and melodrama worn proudly. "Broken Heart" is a sleek, sequencer-driven lament caught between heartache and the dance floor, and "Russian Radio" pulses with the same cool precision. Mark died in 2003, and in 2007 Chris carried on alone under the Red Flag name.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
Songs by Red Flag on radio countdowns
| # | Song | Strength | Lists | Best | #1s | Peak year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Russian Radio | 2 | #154 | – | – | |
| 2 | Broken Heart | 3 | #74 | – | 1988 |
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.
Every countdown appearance
| Year | # | Song | Countdown |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 443 | Russian Radio | X96 Top 500 Alternative Songs of All Time |
| 1990 | 90 | Broken Heart | 91X Top 91 Songs of 1990 |
| 1990 | 154 | Russian Radio | Live 105 Top 300 Songs of All-Time (Memorial Day 1990) |
| 1988 | 74 | Broken Heart | KROQ Top 106.7 Songs of 1988 |
| 1988 | 88 | Broken Heart | Live 105 Top 105.3 Songs of 1988 |
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