Artist · chart history
The Weakerthans
Band Winnipeg Canada Active 1996–2015
The Weakerthans formed in 1996 in Winnipeg, Canada and was active until 2015. The Weakerthans has 8 chart appearances on 7 radio countdowns from 5 stations on RockLists, spanning 2007–2024. The most successful song on radio countdowns is “Civil Twilight”, which appears on 3 lists with a best position of #48. The station that charted The Weakerthans most often is CFNY 102.1 The Edge (Toronto, ON), with 4 appearances. The artist’s biggest year on year-end countdowns was 2008.
The Weakerthans started with John K. Samson walking away from the punk band Propagandhi to run a publishing company, then teaming up with two players from another Winnipeg punk outfit, Red Fisher: John P. Sutton on bass and Jason Tait on drums. The plan was to write something more melodic and inward-looking than any of them had tried, and the name tells you how bookish the project was, drawn partly from a line in the 1992 film The Lover and partly from Ralph Chaplin's union anthem "Solidarity Forever", which the band worked into "Pamphleteer" on Left and Leaving.
Fallow came out in 1997 on G7 Welcoming Committee to good notices from Canadian critics, and guitarist Stephen Carroll, once of Painted Thin, came aboard after that. By 2001 they were up for the Juno for Alternative Album of the Year. You can still hear the punk wiring in their louder songs, but Samson's writing is small, precise and big-hearted, clever without ever going cold. Reconstruction Site in 2003 brought "The Reasons" and "Plea from a Cat Named Virtute", a title that tells you how far from the usual rock subjects they were willing to roam, and Reunion Tour in 2007 delivered "Civil Twilight" and "Tournament Of Hearts".
Four studio albums in, the band went quiet, and the split is dated to 2015.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
Songs by The Weakerthans on radio countdowns
| # | Song | Strength | Lists | Best | #1s | Peak year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Civil Twilight | 3 | #48 | – | 2008 | |
| 2 | One Great City! | 1 | #219 | – | – | |
| 3 | Tournament Of Hearts | 1 | #61 | – | 2008 | |
| 4 | Plea from a Cat Named Virtute | 1 | #596 | – | – | |
| 5 | The Reasons | 1 | #152 | – | – | |
| 6 | Night Windows | 1 | #117 | – | 2008 |
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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