Artist · chart history · #237 in indie & aaa artist polls
Uncle Tupelo
Band Belleville United States Active 1987–1994
Uncle Tupelo formed in 1987 in Belleville, United States and was active until 1994. Uncle Tupelo has 35 chart appearances on 22 radio countdowns from 6 stations on RockLists, spanning 1999–2026. The most successful song on radio countdowns is “The Long Cut”, which appears on 14 lists with a best position of #644. The station that charted Uncle Tupelo most often is The Colorado Sound (Fort Collins–Denver, CO), with 14 appearances.
Uncle Tupelo came out of Belleville, Illinois, in 1987, when Jay Farrar, Jeff Tweedy and Mike Heidorn regrouped after the singer of their previous band, the Primitives, left for college. What they did next was unlike anything on country radio: they welded the rickety, heartfelt twang of the Carter Family and Hank Williams to the snap and fury of hardcore punk bands like the Minutemen, and wrote about the working people of their hometown and the rest of Middle America.
Their 1990 debut, No Depression, gave the whole alt-country movement its name and its rulebook, and "Whiskey Bottle" is as bleak and beautiful as small-town music gets. Two more trio albums followed before they signed to Sire and grew to a five-piece. The major-label debut, Anodyne, in 1993, is warmer and roomier, and "The Long Cut", "New Madrid" and "Chickamauga" show both songwriters at their most assured.
But Farrar and Tweedy had stopped getting along, and soon after Anodyne came out Farrar said he was leaving. They finished a farewell tour and ended it on May 1, 1994. Farrar started Son Volt with Heidorn; everyone else stuck with Tweedy and became Wilco. They never sold much, but you can hear their echo everywhere.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
Songs by Uncle Tupelo on radio countdowns
| # | Song | Strength | Lists | Best | #1s | Peak year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Long Cut | 14 | #644 | – | – | |
| 2 | Whiskey Bottle | 2 | #153 | – | – | |
| 3 | New Madrid | 4 | #515 | – | – | |
| 4 | No Depression | 3 | #404 | – | – | |
| 5 | Anodyne | 2 | #166 | – | – | |
| 6 | Sandusky | 1 | #168 | – | – | |
| 7 | Give Back The Key To My Heart | 1 | #203 | – | – | |
| 8 | Chickamauga | 4 | #620 | – | – | |
| 9 | Coalminers | 1 | #506 | – | – | |
| 10 | I Wanna Be Your Dog | 1 | #655 | – | – | |
| 11 | Graveyard Shift | 1 | #777 | – | – |
Albums with charting songs
Where each song was first released, from MusicBrainz.
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