Artist · chart history
Shona Laing
Solo artist New Zealand
Shona Laing is an artist from New Zealand. Shona Laing has 12 chart appearances on 11 radio countdowns from 5 stations on RockLists, spanning 1987–1991. The most successful song on radio countdowns is “Soviet Snow”, which appears on 7 lists with a best position of #25. The station that charted Shona Laing most often is Live 105 (San Francisco, CA), with 5 appearances. The artist’s biggest year on year-end countdowns was 1988.
Shona Laing grew up in Eastbourne, a suburb of Lower Hutt in New Zealand, and was still at Hutt Valley High School when people first noticed her talent. She had folk hits at home long before the rest of the world caught on, but the '80s turned her into something sharper: a smart, cool-headed pop voice with an eye on the headlines.
South, from 1987, is the record that carried her overseas. "Soviet Snow" takes the Chernobyl disaster and wraps it in icy synths and a quiet, creeping dread, while "(Glad I'm) Not a Kennedy" floats on a cool, glassy melody that sticks long after it fades. American alternative stations such as WLIR played songs from the album, and that was enough to make her name far from home.
Along the way she also sang on Manfred Mann's Earth Band album Somewhere in Afrika and wrote music for, and appeared in, the 1985 action film Shaker Run.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
Songs by Shona Laing on radio countdowns
| # | Song | Strength | Lists | Best | #1s | Peak year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Soviet Snow | 7 | #25 | – | 1988 | |
| 2 | Glad I'm Not a Kennedy | 5 | #35 | – | 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.
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