Rock Radio Playlists Remain Paralyzed In 2008

Al Shipley | January 10, 2008 11:00 am
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Since many people find it hard to tell the great from the godawful when it comes to 21st-century mainstream rock, welcome to “Corporate Rock Still Sells,” where Al Shipley (a.k.a. Idolator commenter GovernmentNames) examines what’s good, bad, and ugly in the world of Billboard‘s rock charts. This time around he gives Billboard‘s current rock radio charts a once-over:

Considering that my last couple of columns have been full of December detritus, I thought it’d be good to start off the new year in the now, so let’s look at Billboard’s current Hot Modern Rock Tracks and Hot Mainstream Rock Tracks charts. I’d talk about them more often, but both charts move so sluggishly that it’d be an exercise in redundancy to base every entry off that data. For example: 13 of the top 20 tracks on the Mainstream chart maintain their positions from the previous week (and 11 on Modern), and no songs dropped out of or entered either chart. Part of that is due to radio playlists in general freezing up for a while before and after the holidays, but I don’t think those numbers would be too different in the middle of July.

The Modern and Mainstream charts are currently 40% comprised of the same songs–down only slightly from their 45% overlap two months ago–so let’s talk about what they have in common before getting down to their differences. At the top spot on both is “Fake It” by Seether, a South African band that again proves, a decade after Silverchair, that bad Nirvana wannabes aren’t a uniquely American resource. But I will say that “Fake It” definitely deserves to be the biggest song of their miserable career so far, if for no other reason than its big, goofy “woah-oh, woah-oh, you’re such a fuckin’ hypocrite!” hook that’s so much fun to sing along to. Still, they lose points for the video (above), which interprets the title in the most obvious way possible with an oh-so-clever “music video that exposes the artifice of music videos” concept you’ve seen a dozen times before. The other song entrenched in the top 5 of both charts is Serj Tankian’s “Empty Walls,” a song I find completely charmless despite having enjoyed almost everything System Of A Down ever did.

Other common ground between the charts include the usual hard-rock suspects like the Foo Fighters, Breaking Benjamin, and the hit that would not die, Finger Eleven’s “Paralyzer.” Now spending its 50th week on the Mainstream chart and sinking slowly enough that it should easily reach a full year’s residence there in a couple of weeks, the song has pretty much gotten as high as it can get on every chart that’ll harbor an uptempo guitar rock tune these days. I don’t know what the longevity records for either chart are–resident chart experts, feel free to chime in if you have an idea–but its run is certainly impressive, especially considering that it only peaked on Billboard‘s Hot 100 in the past month. Meanwhile, the song’s follow-up, “Falling On,” which Wikipedia tells me is “another example of Finger Eleven’s new genre, Dance/punk,” has struggled to capitalize on the momentum of “Paralyzer” for several months, and has yet to make a significant dent on any charts outside of the band’s native Canada.

As for tracks that are the sole province of the Mainstream chart, at No. 2 is Sixx: A.M.’s “Life Is Beautiful,” the debut single from Nikki Sixx’s questionably punctuated new band, which is quickly eclipsing both Methods Of Mayhem and that Vince Neil song from the Encino Man soundtrack as the most successful Mötley Crüe solo project. And… well, I try to accentuate the positive in this column most of the time, and figure out what’s worthwhile in a format that, for most critics, is a total blind spot. But pretty much every other song on the chart that hasn’t crossed over to Modern is fucking terrible, and they’re by several artists you’ve probably hated since the turn of the century: Kid Rock, Puddle Of Mudd, KoRn, and even Creed, in the form of the slightly less offensive Alter Bridge. The entries by Killswitch Engage and Five Finger Death Punch are admirably heavy for radio fare, but I can’t say I actually like them. Godsmack recently released a greatest hits compilation called Good Times, Bad Times…Ten Years of Godsmack, and while it might make a good title track for a career retrospective, “Good Times, Bad Times” is just about the last Led Zeppelin song I’d want to hear the brooding hard-rock band cover.

The Modern Rock chart is at least a little better, despite the presence of The Bravery and Angels & Airwaves, both of whom I’m slightly shocked and appalled to find still have careers. Chevelle’s “I Get It” (which peaked and dropped off the Mainstream chart already) is almost as catchy as “Paralyzer,” and I’m of the opinion that two Paramore songs are better than none, even if “Crushcrushcrush” is one of the last songs on Riot! that I would’ve picked as a single. Currently descending down the lower reaches of the chart is Eddie Vedder’s sleeper hit, “Hard Sun,” which has done pretty well for a song off the soundtrack to a low-grossing Sean Penn movie, let alone the sole acoustic number on a chart full of crunchy, compressed hard rock. Not that the Pearl Jam frontman doesn’t have a long track record of success on rock radio, but a cover of obscure Canadian singer-songwriter Indio featuring Sleater-Kinney’s Corin Tucker is certainly one of the unlikelier hits of his career.

Of course, there are more songs from Linkin Park and Three Days Grace that have been on the charts for months, and will probably hang around for at least a couple more. As nice it is to pretend like January brings a whole new year with a clean slate, the fact is that most radio formats will be full of lingering 2007 hits until at least March. I thought last year was easily the best and most interesting in recent memory for rock radio, but based on this evidence I’m not entirely optimistic about 2008.