American Dad: every episode where Steve sings — Scott Grimes had a recording career before the show, and it's never gone to waste

Grimes was a child actor who sang first. Richard Carpenter used him as a guest vocalist on his 1987 album Time and said publicly that he believed the kid had a future in music; the year before, Grimes had sung "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" on a Bob Hope special shot in Sweden. A&M released his self-titled debut in 1989, and its single "I Don't Even Mind" reached No. 34 on Billboard's Adult Contemporary chart. He came back to it as an adult with Livin' on the Run (2005), whose title track hit No. 34 AC and whose lead single "Sunset Blvd," which he co-wrote, reached No. 18 — his highest-charting record. A third album, Drive, followed in 2010. He is also one of four vocalists in Indoor Garden Party, Russell Crowe's band.

Where it shows up

Steve's voice is written as genuinely good, which is the joke: a scrawny, unpopular teenager who opens his mouth and produces a polished R&B tenor. The songs that make the fan rankings are almost all his.

• "Daddy's Gone" — "Hot Water" (25 September 2011) — the season opener built as a full musical, with Cee Lo Green involved. Steve and Roger share it, and it tops most lists.
• "Girl You Need a Shot (of B12)" — "Can I Be Frank (With You)?" (4 November 2012) — the Boyz 12 number, Steve fronting a boy band of middle schoolers.
• The Krampus songs — "Minstrel Krampus" (15 December 2013) — the Christmas episode that functions as a second musical, with Steve carrying several numbers including "We've Been Bad."
• "Hot Enough" — "Rubberneckers" (27 April 2014) — sometimes listed as "Is She Not Hot Enough?"
• "Trapped in the Locker" — "Criss-Cross Applesauce: The Ballad of Billy Jesusworth" (23 May 2016) — Steve's basketball-episode lament, and the one that circulates most on its own.
• "I'm a Virgin" — "A Starboy Is Born" — Steve and Roger, in the episode built around a guest turn by The Weeknd.
• "Mail Song" — "Dressed Down" (31 January 2022) — a late-period entry that still lands in the show's top fifteen songs by most counts.

A note on numbering: American Dad's production seasons and broadcast seasons drifted apart years ago, so the same episode gets filed under season 8 by one source and season 9 by another. The air dates above are the stable figure.

Of the ten songs most often ranked best in the series, roughly half are Steve's. No other character is close.

The two that are basically musicals

"Hot Water" and "Minstrel Krampus" are the episodes where the format gives way entirely rather than pausing for a number. Both hand Steve the load-bearing vocals, and both were written with the knowledge that the performance would hold up without animation carrying it.

Grimes is credited on more than 380 episodes of American Dad. The singing is not an occasional bit; it's a resource the writers room budgets for.

Still running

The series has aired 399 episodes across 22 seasons and returned to Fox on 22 February 2026, the network that originally launched it in 2005 before it spent a decade at TBS. Grimes has voiced Steve for the whole run, alongside a parallel career in live action — most visibly as Gordon Malloy on The Orville, a role that has also found reasons to let him sing.

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For the record: Grimes' highest chart position as a recording artist is No. 18. Steve Smith has never placed on a Billboard chart, which is the only category in which the character underperforms the actor.

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