Artist · chart history
Steve Vai
Solo artist Carle Place United States
Steve Vai is an artist from Carle Place. Steve Vai has 6 chart appearances on 5 radio countdowns from 2 stations on RockLists, spanning 1990–1998. The most successful song on radio countdowns is “The Audience is Listening”, which appears on 4 lists with a best position of #402. The station that charted Steve Vai most often is KISW (Seattle-Tacoma, WA), with 4 appearances.
Steve Vai came out swinging in 1990 with Passion and Warfare, the most successful record of his solo career and a full-on guitar opera where every note seems to be trying to outdo the last. "Erotic Nightmares" and "The Audience is Listening" made it onto rock radio, which is saying something for instrumentals this unhinged: squealing whammy dives, dizzy runs and a sense of humor lurking under all the technique.
Born in 1960 and from Carle Place, Vai got his start in 1978, at eighteen, transcribing music for Frank Zappa, and then played in Zappa's band from 1980 to 1983. He went solo in 1983, released Flex-Able in 1984, and in between his own records he lent his fingers to Alcatrazz, David Lee Roth and Whitesnake.
He has since won three Grammys from fifteen nominations and worked with everyone from Ozzy Osbourne to Public Image Ltd, taking his fretboard fireworks on the road with G3 and with Beat, which revisits the King Crimson of the 1980s.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
Songs by Steve Vai on radio countdowns
| # | Song | Strength | Lists | Best | #1s | Peak year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Audience is Listening | 4 | #402 | – | – | |
| 2 | Erotic Nightmares | 1 | #210 | – | – | |
| 3 | Audience Is Listening | 1 | #942 | – | – |
Albums with charting songs
Where each song was first released, from MusicBrainz.
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