Artist · chart history · #135 in alternative artist polls · #652 in indie & aaa artist polls
The Church
Band Canberra Australia Formed 1980
The Church formed in 1980 in Canberra, Australia. The Church has 177 chart appearances on 103 radio countdowns from 29 stations on RockLists, spanning 1984–2026. The most successful song on radio countdowns is “Under the Milky Way”, which appears on 85 lists with a best position of #3. The station that charted The Church most often is CD101 (Columbus, OH), with 56 appearances. The artist’s biggest year on year-end countdowns was 1988.
The Church came together in 1980 with Steve Kilbey singing and playing bass, Peter Koppes and Marty Willson-Piper on guitars and Nick Ward on drums, and from the start this Australian band sounded like it was beaming in from somewhere slightly out of phase: chiming, drifting guitars, a dreamy, lightly lysergic haze and Kilbey's voice floating somewhere in the middle. Their debut album, Of Skins and Heart, gave them their first radio hit in 1981 with "The Unguarded Moment". Ward played only on that record, and Richard Ploog kept time for the rest of the '80s.
Major labels in Australia, Europe and America signed them, but the American one did not like the second album and dropped the band without releasing it, a blow that set them back in the States for years. They kept at it through the Sing-Songs and Persia EPs and Heyday in 1985, and then Starfish, in 1988, brought them roaring back: "Under the Milky Way", a slow, haunted drift of a song, went top 40 in the US, and "Reptile" coiled its guitars around it.
Gold Afternoon Fix followed in 1990, with "Metropolis", and Jay Dee Daugherty, formerly of the Patti Smith Group, took over the drums until 1993. Priest = Aura in 1992 gave them "Ripple". Koppes stepped away from 1992 to 1997, Tim Powles came in on drums in 1994 and has stayed ever since, and the music slowed down and spread out into surreal, dream-pop and post-rock landscapes. Willson-Piper left in 2013, with Ian Haug, formerly of Powderfinger, taking his place, and Koppes left again in 2020.
The big mainstream hits never really came back, but the band has kept a large cult following around the world and a steady stream of good notices for its later work, and in 2010 it was inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame. They are still at it, too, with The Hypnogogue in 2023 and Eros Zeta and the Perfumed Guitars in 2024. On the countdowns, "Under the Milky Way" still glows brightest.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
Songs by The Church on radio countdowns
| # | Song | Strength | Lists | Best | #1s | Peak year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Under the Milky Way#358 of all time | 85 | #3 | – | 1988 | |
| 2 | Reptile | 24 | #13 | – | 1988 | |
| 3 | Metropolis | 26 | #33 | – | 1990 | |
| 4 | The Unguarded Moment | 10 | #42 | – | – | |
| 5 | Ripple | 14 | #88 | – | 1992 | |
| 6 | C'Est La Vie | 1 | #26 | – | 2023 | |
| 7 | Aerodrome | 1 | #26 | – | 2024 | |
| 8 | I Think I Knew | 1 | #54 | – | 2023 | |
| 9 | Spark | 1 | #1215 | – | – | |
| 10 | No Explanation | 1 | #60 | – | 1984 | |
| 11 | Destination | 1 | #527 | – | – | |
| 12 | Tantalized | 1 | #1459 | – | – | |
| 13 | Happenstance | 1 | #82 | – | 2009 | |
| 14 | Columbus | 1 | #1737 | – | – | |
| 15 | Two Places At Once | 2 | #1749 | – | – | |
| 16 | I Am A Rock | 4 | #1930 | – | – |
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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