Bruce Hornsby marks almost 40 years of appearing on Billboard’s charts, thanks to “Indigo Park,” the title-track lead single from his new album.
The set by the venerable and versatile singer-songwriter from Williamsburg, Va., sold 2,000 copies in the United States in its first week of release (April 3-9), according to Luminate.
The song returns Hornsby to Billboard’s Adult Alternative Airplay chart, as it enters the April 18-dated ranking at No. 36. He last reached the list with “Gonna Be Some Changes Made,” which notched three weeks at No. 1 in summer 2004. He previously hit the chart, which began in 1996, with “Great Divide” (No. 6, 1998).
Stations spinning “Indigo Park” include WFUV New York, KCSN Los Angeles and WXRV Boston, according to Mediabase, which provides data to Luminate for Billboard’s airplay charts.
Hornsby’s history on Billboard’s charts dates to June 21, 1986, when his debut album, The Way It Is, with his former band the Range, arrived on the Billboard 200 at No. 178. The same week, the collection’s “Every Little Kiss” reached Mainstream Rock Airplay. The album’s title song topped the Billboard Hot 100 that December, while follow-up single “Mandolin Rain” rose to No. 4 in 1987. “Every Little Kiss,” promoted again to radio after the success of those songs, then climbed to No. 14.
Hornsby and the Range hit the Billboard 200’s top five again with 1988’s Scenes From the Southside, whose “The Valley Road” likewise hit the Hot 100’s top five. Hornsby has since built an adventurous catalog that has taken him to Billboard’s Americana/folk, bluegrass, classical, country and jazz charts.
“It just wouldn’t let me go,” Hornsby recently told Billboard of Indigo Park’s title song. “I kept giving it the Heisman, giving it the stiff-arm, but to no avail. After about four or five months into trying to not deal with this and having it come roaring into my head at 3, 4 in the morning, I finally succumbed to the insistence of this idea and decided, ‘OK, I’ll take a deep dive and write this song.’
“I was getting chills while I was writing it and recording it, and that’s telling you something because you can’t force chills,” he mused. “It either happens or it doesn’t, but when it does happen you need to listen to that. You need to follow the chills.”
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