Artist · chart history
White Lies
Band Ealing United Kingdom Formed 2008 UK post‐punk band
White Lies formed in 2008 in Ealing, United Kingdom. White Lies has 5 chart appearances on 5 radio countdowns from 4 stations on RockLists, spanning 2009–2013. The most successful song on radio countdowns is “Bigger than us”, which appears on 2 lists with a best position of #15. The station that charted White Lies most often is Studio Brussel (Flanders, Belgium), with 2 appearances. The artist’s biggest year on year-end countdowns was 2011.
White Lies started out as Fear of Flying, a band from Ealing in west London, until Harry McVeigh, Charles Cave and Jack Lawrence-Brown found themselves writing songs that didn't suit the old outfit and started over. They played it smart: they sat on their first gig for five months to let the buzz build, and within days of finally taking the stage they had a deal with Fiction Records. McVeigh sings and plays guitar, Cave plays bass and sings backup, Lawrence-Brown drums, and Tommy Bowen fills in the keyboards when they play live.
The sound is post-punk revival at its most widescreen, all brooding gloom and arena-sized choruses, delivered with a perfectly straight face. "Unfinished Business" and "Death" put them on the road in Britain and North America, with a headline slot at BBC Radio 1's Big Weekend, and landed them on every "ones to watch" list going, the BBC's Sound of 2009 and the BRITs Critics' Choice among them.
To Lose My Life... arrived in January 2009 and went to number one on the UK albums chart. Ritual, recorded in 2010 and released in January 2011, brought "Bigger Than Us", and they have kept at it ever since: Big TV, Friends, Five, As I Try Not to Fall Apart and, in 2025, Night Light.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
Songs by White Lies on radio countdowns
| # | Song | Strength | Lists | Best | #1s | Peak year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Bigger than us | 2 | #15 | – | 2011 | |
| 2 | To Lose My Life | 2 | #53 | – | 2009 | |
| 3 | Fairwell to the fairground | 1 | #26 | – | 2009 |
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.
Every countdown appearance
| Year | # | Song | Countdown |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2013 | 88 | Bigger than us | WBER Listener Countdown 2013 |
| 2011 | 15 | Bigger than us | Studio Brussel De Eindafrekening 2011 |
| 2009 | 53 | To Lose My Life | 91X Top 91 Songs of 2009 |
| 2009 | 98 | To Lose My Life | WFNX Top 101 Songs of 2009 |
| 2009 | 26 | Fairwell to the fairground | Studio Brussel De Eindafrekening 2009 |
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