Artist · chart history · #825 in indie & aaa artist polls
The Housemartins
Band Kingston upon Hull United Kingdom Active 1983–1988
The Housemartins formed in 1983 in Kingston upon Hull, United Kingdom and was active until 1988. The Housemartins has 37 chart appearances on 32 radio countdowns from 13 stations on RockLists, spanning 1985–2025. The most successful song on radio countdowns is “Happy Hour”, which appears on 30 lists with a best position of #6. The station that charted The Housemartins most often is WOXY 97X (Cincinnati, OH), with 11 appearances. The artist’s biggest year on year-end countdowns was 1985.
The Housemartins came out of Hull in 1983 with jangling guitars, bright harmonies and a manifesto folded into the sleeve: the back cover of their debut album, London 0 Hull 4, lined up Jesus and Marx and told you to take hope along with them. Paul Heaton sang lead and blew trumpet, Stan Cullimore played guitar, Hugh Whitaker drummed and Ted Key held the bass until Norman Cook took over in 1985. On Go! Discs they made socialism and Christianity sound like a knees-up, and "Happy Hour" skipped along so brightly you could miss the barbs.
Then came the curveball: an a cappella cover of Isley-Jasper-Isley's "Caravan of Love" that went to number one in Britain in December 1986, nothing but voices and nerve. Dave Hemingway replaced Whitaker behind the kit in 1987 for The People Who Grinned Themselves to Death, and both studio albums went top-ten at home.
They called it a day in 1988, and the afterlife turned out almost as interesting as the band. Heaton and Hemingway started the Beautiful South, Cullimore went off to write children's books, and Cook headed for the dancefloor, eventually reinventing himself as Fatboy Slim.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
Songs by The Housemartins on radio countdowns
| # | Song | Strength | Lists | Best | #1s | Peak year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Happy Hour | 30 | #6 | – | 1986 | |
| 2 | Caravan of Love | 3 | #120 | – | – | |
| 3 | Flag Day | 1 | #10 | – | 1985 | |
| 4 | The People Who Grinned Themselves To Death | 1 | #199 | – | – | |
| 5 | There is Always Something There to Remind me | 1 | #1502 | – | – |
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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