Artist · chart history
Walk the Moon
Band Cincinnati United States Formed 2008 indie rock band 2008+
Walk the Moon formed in 2008 in Cincinnati, United States. Walk the Moon has 80 chart appearances on 66 radio countdowns from 28 stations on RockLists, spanning 1987–2026. The most successful song on radio countdowns is “Shut Up & Dance”, which appears on 26 lists and was voted number one once. In total the artist has topped 1 countdown. The station that charted Walk the Moon most often is The Buzz (Burlington, VT / Plattsburgh, NY / Montreal, QC), with 8 appearances. The artist’s biggest year on year-end countdowns was 2012.
Walk the Moon took their name from the Police's "Walking on the Moon" and their marching orders from Talking Heads, which is to say they came out of Cincinnati wanting to make you move and think at the same time. Singer and keyboard player Nicholas Petricca got the band going while he was a student at Kenyon College, and after a few early lineup shuffles the crew settled around him: Eli Maiman on guitar, Kevin Ray on bass and Sean Waugaman on drums, with everybody pitching in on backing vocals.
What sets them apart from the indie-rock pack is their unembarrassed love of the '80s toolkit: bright keyboards, synth hooks, new wave pulse and gang choruses. "Anna Sun", from i want! i want! in 2010, is a giddy whirl of keys and shouted vocals, and it became their biggest song on the countdowns. After the Anna Sun EP, Talking Is Hard on RCA Records in 2014 delivered "Shut Up & Dance", the dance-rock sugar rush that became their most successful hit by a mile, along with "Different Colors".
What If Nothing, in 2017, kept the synths front and center, with "One Foot" stomping hard and "Kamikaze" diving headlong into synth-pop.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
Songs by Walk the Moon on radio countdowns
| # | Song | Strength | Lists | Best | #1s | Peak year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Shut Up & Dance | 26 | #1 | 1 | 2014 | |
| 2 | Anna Sun | 22 | #2 | – | 2012 | |
| 3 | One Foot | 8 | #11 | – | 2017 | |
| 4 | Tightrope | 7 | #36 | – | 2012 | |
| 5 | Kamikaze | 4 | #12 | – | 2018 | |
| 6 | Different Colors | 5 | #30 | – | 2015 | |
| 7 | Can You Handle My Love? | 3 | #18 | – | 2021 | |
| 8 | Giants | 2 | #25 | – | 2022 | |
| 9 | Jenny | 1 | #9 | – | 2012 | |
| 10 | Timebomb | 1 | #34 | – | 2019 | |
| 11 | Daddy's Coming Home | 1 | #105 | – | 1987 |
Albums with charting songs
Where each song was first released, from MusicBrainz.
Featured on
Songs by other artists credited with Walk the Moon as a guest.
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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