Artist · chart history
Sparklehorse
Band Richmond United States Active 1995–2010
Sparklehorse formed in 1995 in Richmond, United States and was active until 2010. Sparklehorse has 4 chart appearances on 4 radio countdowns from 4 stations on RockLists, spanning 1996–2024. The most successful song on radio countdowns is “Evening Star Supercharger”, which appears on 1 list with a best position of #59. The station that charted Sparklehorse most often is KALX 90.7 (San Francisco Bay Area), with 1 appearance. The artist’s biggest year on year-end countdowns was 2023.
Sparklehorse was the band, but really it was the private universe of Mark Linkous, a singer and multi-instrumentalist from Richmond, Virginia, who ran the project from 1995 until his death in 2010. He liked the name, he said, because the two words sounded good side by side and could stand in, loosely, for a motorcycle, which is about as good a key to his music as any: pretty things with engine noise underneath.
The early lineup was a ramshackle chamber band, with Paul Watson on banjo, cornet, lap steel and electric guitar, Scott Minor on drums, chord organ and banjo, Johnny Hott on Wurlitzer and percussion, and Scot Fitzsimmons on standup bass. That debut with the tongue-twister title, Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot, came out in 1995 and gave them "Someday I Will Treat You Good", fuzzed-out and fragile at the same time, like a lullaby played through a busted speaker.
Linkous kept tinkering for another decade, and Dreamt for Light Years in the Belly of a Mountain in 2006 brought "Don't Take My Sunshine Away", as tender and warped as anything he'd done. The records came out through Capitol, EMI and Astralwerks, and they still sound like dispatches from a haunted farmhouse.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
Songs by Sparklehorse on radio countdowns
| # | Song | Strength | Lists | Best | #1s | Peak year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Evening Star Supercharger | 1 | #59 | – | 2023 | |
| 2 | Don't Take My Sunshine Away | 1 | #67 | – | 2006 | |
| 3 | Someday I Will Treat You Good | 1 | #87 | – | 1996 | |
| 4 | Wish You Were Here | 1 | #743 | – | – |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 743 | Wish You Were Here | The Colorado Sound Top 850 Cover Songs |
| 2023 | 59 | Evening Star Supercharger | KALX 200 Most Played New Songs in 2023 |
| 2006 | 67 | Don't Take My Sunshine Away | The End Top 107 Songs of 2006 |
| 1996 | 87 | Someday I Will Treat You Good | WHFS Top 99.1 Songs of 1996 |
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