Artist · chart history · #326 in alternative artist polls
The Aquabats
Band Orange County United States Formed 1994
The Aquabats formed in 1994 in Orange County, United States. The Aquabats has 6 chart appearances on 5 radio countdowns from 3 stations on RockLists, spanning 1997–2022. The most successful song on radio countdowns is “Super Rad”, which appears on 3 lists with a best position of #39. The station that charted The Aquabats most often is X103.9 (Riverside-San Bernardino, CA), with 2 appearances. The artist’s biggest year on year-end countdowns was 1997.
The Aquabats came out of Huntington Beach in 1994 wearing masks and matching costumes and swearing, with perfectly straight faces, that they were crime-fighting superheroes. They turned their shows into full-blown comic-book pageants, with stunts and fight scenes against costumed villains and monsters, and made the superhero bit the subject of the songs themselves.
Behind the capes the lineup has never stopped shifting, but singer the MC Bat Commander and bassist Crash McLarson have been there the whole way, with Jimmy the Robot on sax and keyboards, and the likes of Cat Boy on trumpet and Chainsaw, the Prince of Karate, on guitar still turning up to fill out the live shows. The Fury of the Aquabats!, from 1997, is the ska-punk sugar rush that gave them "Super Rad" and their first appearance on the Billboard 200.
They didn't stay a ska band forever. In the early 2000s they reinvented themselves as a new wave-flavored rock outfit, and later they took the whole act to television: The Aquabats! Super Show! ran on The Hub from 2012 to 2014, picked up eight Daytime Emmy nominations and won one, and came back on YouTube after a Kickstarter campaign. Their seventh studio album, Finally!, arrived in 2024.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
Songs by The Aquabats on radio countdowns
| # | Song | Strength | Lists | Best | #1s | Peak year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Super Rad | 3 | #39 | – | 1997 | |
| 2 | CD Repoman | 1 | #71 | – | 1997 | |
| 3 | Red Sweater | 1 | #811 | – | – |
Albums with charting songs
Where each song was first released, from MusicBrainz.
Every countdown appearance
| Year | # | Song | Countdown |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 811 | Red Sweater | The Colorado Sound Top 1055 Colorado Sound Songs of All Time |
| 2022 | 393 | Super Rad | The Colorado Sound Top 900 Songs of the '90s |
| 1999 | 106.7 | Artist ranking | KROQ Top 106.7 Artists of All-Time (Memorial Day 1999) |
| 1997 | 76 | Super Rad | KROQ Top 106.7 Songs of 1997 |
| 1997 | 39 | Super Rad | X103.9 Top 103.9 Songs of 1997 |
| 1997 | 71 | CD Repoman | X103.9 Top 103.9 Songs of 1997 |
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