Of course, you can actually see the faces of the members of Mudvayne in that video, and Zombie has been spending more time applying ghoulish makeup to the casts of his films than his own face in recent years, but make no mistake: Once a face-painter, always a face-painter. (Just ask Gene Simmons.) "Do What You Do" is Mudvayne's fourth top 10 rock hit, a streak that only began in 2005 with the chart-topping "Happy?" and its two follow-ups. As well-known as the band is for its hilariously over-the-top 2000 video "Dig" and their face-painting antics on the red carpet when that clip was nominated for a Video Music Award, Mudvayne didn't become a real radio staple until much more recently. But let's hope they don't start thinking that fans will be happy with them as just a bunch of garden-variety ugly dudes, and that they go back to their roots sooner than later.

Idolator has mentioned that the title track from Guns N' Roses' Chinese Democracy has had a somewhat soft radio impact, whether compared to the performance of recent comeback singles by fellow monsters of rock Metallica and AC/DC or to the ridiculously high expectations attached to Axl Rose's first all-originals album in 17 years. Still, "Democracy" has steadily climbed in the five weeks since its debut, and has already reached a few landmarks: at No. 5, it's GNR's biggest Mainstream Rock hit since 1991's "Don't Cry," and if it ascends higher than No. 3, where both "Cry" and "You Can Be Mine" peaked, it'll be the band's best-charting rock single. Yes, amazingly, one of the biggest rock bands of the past 20 years never had a rock No. 1, and even its Hot 100 chart-topper "Sweet Child O' Mine" peaked at No. 7 on Mainstream Rock. "Chinese Democracy" is also, at No. 24, the band's very first Modern Rock hit, which is yet another sign that nobody really knows what "modern rock" is anymore.

But it'll be very interesting to see what happens with the band's chart positions next week, both because the album will be on sale by then, and because the album's second single, "Better," was released to radio on Monday. "Better" has long been my favorite of the leaked songs that have been making their way to the Internet since 2006, and when it wasn't chosen as the first official single I thought Axl was making a big mistake. I'm still trying to figure out whether the muted response to "Chinese Democracy" was a factor in "Better" coming out now or whether this was the plan all along. Rap and R&B artists have long practiced the art of the warm-up single preceding the big surefire hit, but it's a method that has only caught on with mainstream rock acts fairly recently—think Coldplay's one-two punch of "Violet Hill" and "Viva La Vida." And with "Better" now getting its chance at radio, I'm pretty confident it'll turn out to be the real Guns comeback single. The album's sole retailer might wanna start getting a "Get 'Better' at Best Buy" ad campaign ready.

The video, which (spoiler alert!) drags on for two minutes of dialogue before the song even starts, below:

When I first heard the song several weeks ago, I immediately laughed at its ridiculous brooding arrangement. But my wife, who's less familiar with the works of Dwayne Carter, was confused by my reaction; "Lollipop" sounded like just another crappy alt-rock song to her, and I can understand why. Even the lyrics, as sung by Framing Hanley, don't sound that out of place, given the cock-rock resurgence led on those same stations by the likes of Buckcherry's "Too Drunk To Fuck" and Hinder's "Use Me." The band's arrangement conveniently skips past the many N-words in the second verse, although there's just no smoothing over refrains like "shawty wanna hump, you know I love to touch your lovely lady lumps." If "Lollipop" ends up being Framing Hanley's first major hit, I'm willing to bet it'll also be the band's last.

There's a long history of alt-rockers recording covers of pop hits; some have tongue in cheek, and others have a genuine affection for the song. Most have a mix of both. In recent years, it's become something of a cottage industry for indie rockers to light up filesharing networks with tossed-off renditions of "Since U Been Gone" or "…Baby One More Time." But the history of bands actually charting on rock radio with familiar covers is much spottier, and the source material is usually limited to revered '80s hits—Alien Ant Farm's version of Michael Jackson's "Smooth Criminal," the Ataris' take on Don Henley's "Boys Of Summer," Orgy's massacre of New Order's "Blue Monday." (And don't forget the many covers to come out of the '90s ska boom, most notably Save Ferris' "Come On Eileen.") There's a whole subgenre out there of ironically mellow gangsta rap covers, but only Dynamite Hack's "Boyz In The Hood" was a genuine radio hit.

The common denominator between all of those songs, you may notice, is that the covers are the only hits the bands in question ever had. And if there's one thing less dignified than being a one-hit-wonder, it's being a one-hit wonder whose one hit was a cover; no one cares about the other songs that your band actually wrote, and you're getting substantially less in royalties than you would if you had a songwriting credit. Occasionally, an established band releases a cover as a single, like Disturbed's fairly awesome version of Genesis' "Land Of Confusion" or Fall Out Boy's fairly lame recording of "Beat It." But Marilyn Manson may be the only contemporary rock artist whose long line of radio hits kicked off with a cover. And after breaking through with "Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)," Manson continued to go back to the well of '80s goth karaoke throughout his career, releasing his versions of "Tainted Love" and "Personal Jesus."

The fact that Lil Wayne's track topped the chart mere months before Framing Hanley's cover, not way back in 1985, makes "Lollipop" kind of an anomaly. It doesn't trigger nostalgia for the halcyon days of MTV, it's just a goofy reminder of a song that's still stuck in our heads from hearing it all summer. "Lollipop" is technically Framing Hanley's second single, but its first, the dour "Hear Me Now," wasn't much of a hit. And if their Weezy cover does blow up, it will probably give the band enough of an afterglow to get a minor follow-up hit, but after that the band's future career prospects will be slim to none. Like Alien Ant Farm or the Ataris, they'll be known forever for a cover they probably worked up one day in soundcheck as a joke, and then made the mistake of letting their A&R man hear and get excited about. So here's hoping Framing Hanley enjoy the next few months of fleeting fame, and maybe do something splashy like get Wayne to perform the song with them on TV, to make the most of it.

[Pic via WDKX]

Hollywood Undead were anointed MySpace superstars way back in those heady days of 2005, before the dream of a social-networking site functioning as some kind of democratic equalizer that would launch musicians who are really good at clicking "add friend" was murdered by Tila Tequila's attempt at a recording career. So it's a little surprising that seeds
sown three years ago, when Hollywood Undead racked up its first million plays, have finally blossomed into a major-label album release and a charting single. And the fact that the band sounds more like some kind of late-'90s throwback—think Insane Clown Posse fronting Stabbing Westward—only makes their recent victory all the more surprising and anachronistic.

Because MySpace is about the last place I'd look to follow a music chart, the first I heard of Hollywood Undead was this past summer, when Baltimore's Virgin Mobile Festival held a Book The Band contest in which the public voted on a band to open the festival's second day. And of course, the contest was widely mocked when an "Internet-only band" that had never played a live show before successfully mobilized its online fanbase to secure a spot on the same stage as Bob Dylan and Kanye West. I attended and reviewed this year's festival, but didn't show up early to see Hollywood Undead's set because, let's face it, the opportunity to crack jokes about some lousy contest winners is not a good enough reason to make a 10-hour day into an 11-hour one. Still, I welcome the insurgence of Hollywood Undead, whose members include Charlie Scene, Johnny 3 Tears and Da Kurlzz, because honestly, the rock airwaves haven't seen a band quite this ludicrous since the decline of Limp Bizkit.

Another other noteworthy debuts on Modern Rock this week is at No. 33: "Love Hurts" by Incubus, which I was somewhat disappointed to find is not a Nazareth cover. It's the fourth song to crack the chart from Light Grenades, which will be two years old in November. Back in January, I noted that Incubus, despite seeming past their commercial prime to me, was the only band to have scored three spots on Billboard's list of the Top 40 Hot Modern Rock Songs of 2007, and marveled at how faithful radio had been. Even back then, the album seemed to have run its course, with the third US single "Oil And Water" having finally dropped off the chart. Now "Love Hurts," which was released as the album's third single in Europe in mid-2007, is finally getting a surge of Stateside airplay, and it's hard to tell exactly why. Incubus' official site recently posted a video for the song, but it's taken from a concert DVD, Look Alive, that was released nearly a year ago. Still, given recent statements from the band, which indicated that they wouldn't be releasing another album until 2010, I can't blame them for continuing to milk Grenades for even more chart success.

One of the biggest rhetorical divides that distinguishes music broadcasting from visual media is the difference in accepted connotations of the word "adult." In film and television, using that word to describe content means that something sexy and/or exciting is on the horizon, but in radio, "adult" formats are the dullest, slowest stations, programmed for the broadest, most boring possible audience. Adult Contemporary and Adult Top 40 are looked at as background music for waiting rooms, the stations where the lamest pop hits go to die. Those formats have a younger, hipper sibling—Adult Album Alternative—that splits the difference between adult contempo and modern rock stations, but it didn't have its own Billboard chart until this summer, when the mag added Triple-A to its stable of rock airplay charts alongside the long-running Hot Modern Rock Tracks and Hot Mainstream Rock Tracks. Chris Molanphy touched on the new chart last month, but I thought I'd take a closer look since I'll be discussing it a bit more often in the future.

One of Billboard's sister publications, Radio & Records, has been publishing a Triple-A chart for years; Billboard simply appropriated the same data for its own chart, which first appeared in the July 10 issue. So while the Triple-A chart is technically only 14 weeks old, but several of its songs have been on it longer than it's ostensibly existed, including Matt Nathanson's 29-weeks-charting "Come On Get Higher." The most recent available Arbitron data shows that while AAA hasn't experienced substantial market share growth in the past decade, it's held remarkably steady while Alternative stations have declined in listenership.

One of the things that immediately struck me about the Triple-A chart is its resemblance to the Modern Rock chart of the pre-Nirvana years: tons of singer-songwriters, bands that are a little too hip for the mainstream, and bands that are so far behind the curve that most young rock fans are so over them. In an era where the Modern Rock chart is marked by AC/DC's first appearance and Metallica reaching unprecedented new peaks, it's refreshing to have an alt-rock chart that filters out all the insurgent hard rock and metal elements. For the first time in almost a decade, we now have both Counting Crows and Sheryl Crow on a rock singles chart. Classic rockers with declining commercial fortunes like John Mellencamp and the Pretenders are sharing space with young bands from the MOR end of the indie rock spectrum like My Morning Jacket and The Hold Steady.

Since Modern and Mainstream are both top 40 charts, it's always been easy to measure how many songs they have in common (the average is around 50%). Triple-A will be a little harder to triangulate, since it's only top 30, but the crossover is pretty minimal. It currently shares no songs with Mainstream Rock, and only "Cath…" by Death Cab For Cutie, "Take Back The City" by Snow Patrol, and two Coldplay hits with Modern. But that's not taking into account the fact that several songs have been hitting both charts at different times. Bush frontman Gavin Rossdale's "Love Remains The Same" was a blip on Modern Rock months ago, but it's been a solid performer on Triple-A.

And then there are the getting airplay on both Modern Rock and Triple-A with completely different songs. R.E.M.'s up-tempo "Supernatural Superserious" was a moderate Modern hit, but the lighter, piano-driven "Hollow Man" is all over Triple-A; Beck has "Gamma Ray" on the former and "Orphans" on the latter. And while the Raconteurs charted with two singles from their latest album on Modern Rock, it's a non-single, the rootsy "Old Enough," that's getting all the Triple-A love. Just for the novelty of it, I'll be very curious to see what song, if any, will be the first to appear on all three rock charts; my best guess is that it'll depend on whether U2 or the White Stripes releases a new album sooner. But then, if one of those bands releases a single hard enough for Mainstream Rock, I would be surprised if Triple-A stations skip straight to playing a mellower deep cut instead.

He may not be quite up there in the annals of procrastination legend with Axl Rose or Dr. Dre, but one of rock's biggest holdouts in recent memory, Rage Against The Machine frontman Zack de la Rocha, put a product on retail shelves this summer after a long wait. In the seven years between his band's breakup and its recent reunion, de la Rocha reportedly worked on solo material with everyone from Trent Reznor to ?uestlove to DJ Shadow without ever releasing an album, or even anything other than a stray compilation track. So it's a little unexpected that now, after Rage has been back together and touring for a year, is when de la Rocha decides to release new music with a new band.

One Day As A Lion, de la Rocha's project with ex-Mars Volta drummer Jon Theodore, released a self-titled EP over the summer, and the single "Wild International" has spent the last 8 weeks in the lower reaches of the Modern Rock chart, peaking at No. 20. When I first heard the song and thought it was a surprise new Rage single, I was impressed, and when I realized it wasn't, I was even more impressed. The keyboards de la Rocha plays on the song may not be as inventively skronky as Tom Morello's guitar playing, but they're pretty damn close. de la Rocha seems to be focusing less on the rapping element of his vocals, which I appreciate, having never been a fan of the guy's rhymes.

Now that de la Rocha's ripped off the Band-Aid—and announced that there's a One Day full-length on the way—the question remains whether or not he'll continue to work on solo and side projects, and allow the Rage reunion to function as only a touring unit. Rage slowly grew into the fanbase that still clamors for them today, if their reception on the festival circuit last year was any indication, and they currently occupy a place in the alt-rock firmament. Singles like "Killing In The Name" and "Down Rodeo," which never appeared on the Modern Rock chart when they were initially released, till get significant airplay today. And though their rap-metal style may sound somewhat dated to younger rock fans, one thing is clear: In a year that acts like the Flobots, Rise Against, and M.I.A. are scoring Modern Rock hits left and right, nothing is too stridently leftist and vaguely "revolutionary" for alternative radio.

Speaking of seven-year sabbaticals, remember the Toadies? Fourteen years ago, "Possum Kingdom" made them, in my opinion, one of the finest one-hit wonders of '90s rock radio. But their quite good debut Rubberneck failed to yield any other big hits, and they took seven years to follow up that album in 2001, and another seven to deliver their third, No Deliverance. Though "Possum Kingdom" peaked at No. 4 on the Modern Rock chart and No. 9 on Mainstream Rock, the three Toadies singles that have charted since then have all done better on the Mainstream side. That includes the title track of their new album, which debuts at No. 39 this week. The nervous, punky sound of Rubberneck always led me to categorize the Texas band as more of an alt-rock act, but the southern-rock swing on "No Deliverance" leads me to believe differently:

There's perhaps no better way to illustrate the increasingly blurred line between alternative and active rock radio playlists than the career of Metallica. The band have been mainstays on the Mainstream Rock chart ever since 1991's self-titled "black album" made them household names. But back then, "metal" was pretty much a dirty word on the Modern Rock chart, which was still populated by dad-rock acts like Sting and Elvis Costello and just getting its first taste of grungy hard rock. Metallica's first minor dent on the Modern Rock chart didn't come until 1996's "Until It Sleeps," which coincided with the band outraging the headbanging faithful and earning derision from the alt-rock world by shearing their hockey hair and headlining Lollapalooza. "Sleeps" only peaked at No. 27, and none of the other Load or ReLoad singles charted on Modern Rock.

But alternative radio continued to skew more metal-friendly while Metallica released no new albums, but continued to flood the market with various stopgap projects. Those one-offs—Garage Inc., S&M, and the Mission: Impossible II soundtrack—helped the band chip away at alt-rock resistance, as did 2003's infamous shit sandwich St. Anger. Still, the band never cracked the Modern Rock top 10 until this month, with Death Magnetic's also totally awful lead single "The Day That Never Comes" currently sitting at No. 7. The song reached No. 1 in its third week on the Mainstream chart, but I'll be very curiously watching how far it climbs on the other chart. And changing whatever station plays the song while I'm tuned in.

Speaking of flipping radio dials, right before Labor Day, Idolator's Chris Molanphy declared Modern Rock "the most boring chart of the summer" thanks to its week-to-week stasis and overall lack of new blood. I more or less predicted this stasis back in May. But I have to admit, I'm a little impressed by how three of the four bands I singled out back then have absolutely dominated the chart: Weezer and Coldplay both topped the chart, while the Offspring scored two Top Five hits. And just as I suspected, Nine Inch Nails was the underperformer of the bunch, peaking at No. 6 and dropping off the chart completely in the same time frame that "Pork & Beans" clung to the top 10. It's possible that "Discipline" simply didn't connect with listeners in the same way that previous NIN hits did, but the fact that it was the band's first single since divorcing from Interscope does make me wonder how well it might have done with major-label promotional muscle behind it.

Foo Fighters to take 'long break' [NME]

Last month, the Hot 100—the big cheese of Billboard's singles charts—turned 50, and the publication's been rolling out the red carpet in honor of that golden anniversary. But today, another Billboard milestone is passing by with a little less fanfare: the 20th birthday of the Modern Rock chart. The late-'80s college rock explosion resulted in more and more commercial radio stations playing a variety of young bands and singer-songwriters that didn't quite fit into the Pink Floyd/Van Hagar-heavy format covered by the Album Rock Tracks chart (now known as Mainstream Rock) Billboard responded to that trend on Sept. 10, 1998, when it published the first Hot Modern Rock Tracks chart.

In the two decades since, the alternative rock format has exploded—in terms of both stations and listeners—and then shrunk some, all the while going through an aesthetic identity crisis seemingly every five years. I've occasionally implied that the chart may have outlived its usefulness, given the dwindling listenership and its increasing crossover with the Mainstream Rock chart. But those arguments are largely facetious, and I hope Billboard never takes my suggestion to heart. (I'd have a lot less to follow or write about.) Two months ago, the trade mag actually added a third rock singles chart, Triple-A (as in Adult Album Alternative); the music on that chart more resembles Modern Rock's jangly early days. So with Triple-A at one pole and Mainstream Rock at the other, the Modern Rock chart is now, more than ever, effectively the center of Billboard's rock charts and its most important one, which assures that it should be alive and well for as long as there's terrestrial radio data to track.

A couple years ago, former Idolator regular Anthony Miccio counted down all of the Modern Rock No. 1s on a highly entertaining blog called modernrock4eva, which I've looked at from time to time as inspiration for this column, and to remind myself of just how silly and mercurial this chart has always been. For every No. 1 that could be praised as the harbinger of a new era along the lines of "Smells Like Teen Spirit," you have a handful of novelty hits, flukes, and bizarre mid-career diversions. I have no interest in honoring the canon, so I thought I'd go through the chart's first 21 calendar years and pick one No. 1 from each: not the best song, but the one that was most likely forgotten, never heard, or be classified as a "surprising" hit:

1988: Siouxsie and the Banshees - "Peek-a-Boo"

This isn't the most obscure of the five songs that topped the chart in its first four months of existence. But it was the chart's very first No. 1, and I can think of no more auspicious a beginning for this institution than a bonkers dance-pop crossover full of backmasked accordion.

1989: Public Image Ltd. - "Disappointed"

There are some perfectly valid reasons that this band is revered by some much more than John Lydon's other, more famous band. But this backup singer-aided ball of cheese, one of PiL's last gasps before Lydon entered an endless cycle of Sex Pistols reunions, is most likely not one of them.

1990: David J - "I'll Be Your Chauffeur"

Before embarking on this column, I had no idea that being a Bauhaus alum was apparently all it took to top this chart in its early days. Love And Rockets reached No. 1 in '89, and the next year both Peter Murphy and David J reached the summit as solo artists.

1991: U2 - "The Fly"

There were more obscure No. 1's from this year, but this wins by virtue of being one of the least-known lead singles from an established band's blockbuster album ever released. It's kind of amazing, in retrospect, that U2 managed to release this song first with future Achtung Baby smashes like "One" and "Mysterious Ways" waiting in the chamber. In light of how well they got away with this gamble, it's easier to understand where they got the balls to release "Numb" and "Discotheque" as lead singles later on.

1992: Lou Reed - "What's Good"

1992 was, for many people and especially for my 10-year-old self, ground zero for the alt-rock explosion. It was also the year I became aware of the Modern Rock chart—MTV's 120 Minutes would run through the top 10 before a commercial break each week. But even as some of the decade's biggest bands were scoring their first hits, the chart was still being dominated by oldsters enjoying their final glimpses of serious rock airplay, including Peter Gabriel, The B-52's, XTC, and ol' Lou.

1993: Tears For Fears - "Break It Down Again"

It's hard to compare this song to any of the Songs From The Big Chair megahits, but this one still sounds tremendous to me.

1994: Counting Crows - "Einstein on the Beach (For an Eggman)"

Their 1993 debut August And Everything After yielded three Modern Rock top 10 hits, but the only Counting Crows song to ever top the chart was this bouncy outtake, which was tossed on the DGC Rarities compilation.

1995: Red Hot Chili Peppers - "My Friends"

I may not particularly like the many, many power ballads RHCP has recorded since reuniting with John Frusciante. But they all beat the hell out of the one they did when Dave Navarro was in the band.

1996: The Cranberries - "Salvation"

The Cranberries' metamorphosis from the winsome Irish balladeers of "Dreams" to the creepy doomsayers of "Zombie" and this peppy anti-heroin screed is one of the more fascinating transformations of the mid-'90s alt-rock era. Some of Rihanna's fashion and artistic choices of late make me wonder if Dolores O'Riordan is her spirit animal.

1997: Live - "Lakini's Juice"

Along the same lines as "Salvation," this is a fascinating instance of an overexposed band becoming somewhat interesting at the exact moment that its career took a nosedive. It's a shame Live's ensuing commercial decline was full of more pap like "The Dolphin's Cry" than riffs as fucking nasty as the one here.

1998: The Goo Goo Dolls - "Slide"

1998 was a truly dire year for Modern Rock: It began with the 15-week reign of Marcy Playground, who were succeeded by the seven-week reign of Fastball (you can probably guess the songs). Things didn't get much better from there, and I can honestly say every single one of the 11 songs that topped the chart that year holds at least one unpleasant memory for me. And while this one isn't as good as "Iris," it's still the least overplayed of these songs that I could choose.

1999: Limp Bizkit - "Re-Arranged"

Most of Limp Bizkit's fun songs shoehorned in incongrously slow, serious bridges, so it was pretty shocking that they managed to make a whole song out of one of those brooding grooves that turned out to be one of their best hits.

2000: Green Day - "Minority"

Reminding myself that Green Day had such a popular "political" song shortly before American Idiot makes me marvel at how well they succeeded at selling that album as both a comeback and a change of pace.

2001: Sum 41 - "Fat Lip"

2001 was the year that Staind, Nickelback, Linkin Park and Incubus all became power ballad superstars, but at least one band was having some goofy, sloppy fun at No. 1 (well, two, if you count those guys that covered "Smooth Criminal").

2002: Unwritten Law - "Seein' Red"

Every time I read this song's title and tried to remember what it sounded like before looking it up on YouTube, all I could think of was Chevelle's "The Red," which reached No. 4 at almost the exact same time that this song topped the chart, features a refrain of the phrase "seeing red," and has remained a much stronger radio staple in the years since.

2003: Jane's Addiction - "Just Because"

A perfunctory one-week chart-topper from a hollow, pointless reunion. And thanks to Entourage's really, really annoying theme song, it isn't even the best-known track from its parent album.

2004: The Offspring - "Hit That"

This seems to be about the point where The Offspring decided to back off from the antics of novelty hits like "Pretty Fly (For A White Guy)." But before getting fully serious with their recent hit "Hammerhead," they had to wean themselves off the silly shit by making a song with farting ska horns, awkwardly deployed hip-hop slang, and a video starring an animated dog.

2005: Audioslave - "Be Yourself"

Audioslave was an ugly marriage of convenience always headed for an inevitable divorce, but this song marked one time they seemed almost convincingly compatible.

2006: The Foo Fighters - "DOA"

Even though it's just three years old, it's not even the 10th-most-played Foo Fighters song on radio now. A shame, since it's just about their only recent single that follows through on the unfulfilled promise of muscular new wave glimpsed on early singles like "This Is A Call" or "Monkey Wrench."

2007: Incubus - "Anna Molly"

"Megalomaniac" could've been their "Lakini's Juice," but instead these guys kept at it and made leaner, better hard-rock hits.

2008: Staind - "Believe"

I leave you with the current No. 1, partly to give symmetry to our journey, and partly because I hope someday soon we'll all have long forgotten that gooey Diane Warren bullshit like "believe in me, 'cause I was meant for chasing dreams" ever topped a chart that's championed much weirder, better stuff.

In my last two columns, commenters asked me to rate the radio potential of current indie rock favorites that haven't yet made that crossover. (I'd follow Matos' lead and avoid the I-word, if the distinction between well-informed-college-kid "indie" and mass-market-rock-radio "alternative" isn't key here.) It was an intriguing idea, but one I greeted with some trepidation; criticizing music is one thing, evaluating its commercial prospects is a whole other can of worms.

So I'll begin by saying that I'm probably the wrong guy to even try to make those calls for a number of reasons. I've always been pretty bad at predicting hits and flops, especially with rock radio, and I let my own judgment cloud my sense of popular opinion. Seven or eight years ago, I never would've guessed that Modest Mouse or Death Cab For Cutie would later become platinum bands with radio hits; they seemed to me like paragons of the tradition of indie bands just big enough to get signed to majors, but achieve no real mainstream profile. (Incidentally, as I wrote this I was making calls at work, and "I Will Possess Your Heart" was the hold music at one place—I'm still kind of mystified that that song's limp attempt at ominous drama was such a home run with radio listeners.) I think of alt-rock programmers as largely lacking in imagination, so when I try to predict their moves, I tend not to reach or get creative. Even now, if you asked me to name bands on the cusp of radio breakthroughs, I'd probably just look to see who's been on the cover of Alternative Press lately.

The "farm team" relationship between major labels and indie buzz bands isn't what is used to be. One reason is that the American rock underground is stylistically much more diverse and far-reaching than it was in the '90s, when the ever-expanding variety of guitar bands was xxed by the fact that they were still all guitar bands. Another is that the bar for independent label success is higher than ever, but mainstream radio remains one of the last gatekeepers that's strongly beholden to major labels. It's now possible for an indie band to have a gold album, get on the cover of Spin, travel the late-night talk circuit, and have a video on MTV without making the jump to a major. But until that leap happens, odds are there isn't enough marketing muscle to grease all the palms and mail out all the promos that it takes to get even a moderate amount of radio airplay.

Still, I trolled for suggestions from Idolator readers, most of which were bands I'd heard of many times in the course of my daily music press browsing, but hadn't actually heard. I'm pretty old-fashioned as far as indie rock goes: I go to shows and check out new (mostly local) bands all the time, and I buy records by artists I've been a fan of for years and years already, not really bothering to check out the endless parade of unappetizing band names in the Pitchfork hype cycle. Unless, like Vampire Weekend and MGMT, those bands actually get some airplay and I have to cover them in this space. So with all those caveats in mind, here are my opinions on a few blog darlings, with their potential for alt-rock radio crossover judged on a scale from one to five Dave Grohls:

Tokyo Police Club - "Tesselate"

I have to confess, it was at most a month ago that I realized that this band and Tokio Hotel were two totally different things. More accents—this time, it's a phony one adopted by a Canadian singer! Let's face it: Fake Brit accents don't get you far on U.S. rock radio, unless your name is Billie Joe Armstrong.
Two and a half Grohls.

Fleet Foxes - "Whyte Winter Hymnal"

This is kind of nice, I guess. Way too college radio to be in serious contention, though.
Two Grohls.

The Hold Steady - "Sequestered In Memphis"

I remember then-Pitchfork writer Tom Breihan took me to see The Hold Steady right after his review of their second album had run, which gave me a chance to see a band almost at the exact moment when the buzz around it was cresting into some serious career momentum. And I really tried to give them a chance. But eventually, I realized I have some pretty serious contempt for this band, possibly because I've spent to much of the past few years listening to the kind of '70s rock they're ostensibly so inspired by that I can't help but notice how those comparisons are kind of horseshit. Maybe they've started to feel guilty about not actually sounding anything like the E Street Band like Rolling Stone said they would, because it sounds like they're pushing horns and piano up way higher in the mix than the last time I'd heard them. In any event, alternative radio has always had a soft spot for amelodic talk rock, but I don't think these guys could be the next Cake.
One and a half Grohls.

No Age - "Eraser"

Someone was serious with this suggestion?
One Grohl.

She & Him - "Why Don't You Stay Here"

I have to admit I swooned a little the first time I saw Zooey Deschanel sing "Baby, It's Cold Outside" in Elf. So when she formed a band and released a record on Merge, I figured it'd better than the average singing actress vanity project, or at least well sung. There's something about her voice on this song—especially on those harmonies at the end—that makes me grit my teeth in repulsion. Still, if enough radio programmers look at the promo pic and mistake Deschanel for Katy Perry, this could rack up a lot of spins.
Two and a half Grohls.

Black Kids - "I'm Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance with You"

This sounds fairly radio-ready, considering a fair amount of bands with the same kind of emo-by-way-of-Robert-Smith pinched vocal style have made it big. If I heard this out of context I really would've pegged these guys as more Warped Tour stalwarts than (former) Pitchfork darlings. They could probably get a big hit, if they don't break up first.
Four and a half Grohls.

This is the kind of mind-numbingly specific chart statistic that is almost impossible to prove or disprove, but I've got a strong hunch that the current Hot Modern Rock Tracks chart is the first to feature three female solo artists in a very long time, if it ever did. This week saw Modern Rock debuts from both M.I.A. and Santogold, with "Paper Planes" entering at No. 28 and "L.E.S. Artistes" at No. 40; completing the female-fronted trifecta is Katy Perry's "I Kissed A Girl." The Max Martin-produced pop smash, which debuted on the chart almost immediately after I made much ado about the Martin-masterminded Carolina Liar breaking the decade-old Martin/Modern barrier, is at No. 39 and on the verge of dropping off in its ninth week. And, just to add a cherry on top, the female-fronted Ting Tings are at No. 38 with "Shut Up and Let Me Go."

As you can see, these songs are all in the lower reaches of the chart; the highest any of them has reached so far was Perry's summit at No. 27, and only "Paper Planes," which has made it to the upper reaches of the Hot 100, seems to have the momentum to climb higher. And most of the songs are getting some kind of boost elsewhere, making their Modern Rock chart positions essentially a side effect of their mainstream prominence; M.I.A.'s song is in the Pineapple Express trailer; the Ting Tings' track is in an iTunes ad; and Perry made a speedy ascent up the pop charts, which preceded her rock radio push by several weeks. But the fact remains that these songs are getting played on rock stations that you might ordinarily be able to listen to for hours without hearing a single female vocalist.

There have, of course, been bigger Modern Rock hits by female-fronted acts in recent memory—Paramore scored two big singles in the past year. But they're a band made up of one highly recognizable girl singer and a bunch of relatively anonymous dudes, a format that's proven successful in the past for the likes of Garbage and the Cranberries. Female solo artists, on the other hand, are a lot more scarce on alt-rock airwaves, or at least have been for the past decade. When Billboard began the Modern Rock chart in 1988, the "college rock" scene as it was defined then was full of females, as well as fey males; it's progressively become more macho ever since. The very first Modern Rock No. 1 was Siouxsie and the Banshees' "Peek-A-Boo," and Siouxsie Sioux made regular appearances on the chart in its early years, as did the likes of Kate Bush, Sinead O'Connor, Suzanne Vega, and later on Tori Amos.

But then came the grunge era, which made alternative rock both much more popular and considerably more aggressive. Initially, bands with multiple female members like Belly, the Breeders and L7 maintained a strong radio presence, even as punk bands associated with the riot grrrl movement proved too underground or confrontational for mainstream radio, or perhaps just indifferent to catering to it. Male singer-songwriters like Robyn Hitchcock and Elvis Costello started disappearing from modern rock playlists a little quicker than their female counterparts, but in general things quickly became much more band-driven. Even essentially one-man operations like Nine Inch Nails tended to fly under pluralized band names. In fact, there may be only one significant male Modern Rock solo artist who hadn't previously fronted a popular band from the past 15 years: Beck.

Female solo artists were a little commonplace, at least up until the mid-'90s, but they always seemed in danger of going pop, and losing rock fans in the process. The Sugarcubes and 10,000 Maniacs were Modern Rock staples, as were Bjork and Natalie Merchant when they initially went solo. But as they gained bigger and broader fanbases, Modern Rock gradually dropped them. No Doubt, on the other hand, lost rock radio well before Gwen became a solo star. Jewel and Sarah McLachlan disappeared from rock playlists right around the time the Lilith Fair codified them as the new faces of adult-contemporary chick rock. Alanis Morrissette's Jagged Little Pill scored three Modern Rock No. 1s on the way to becoming one of the biggest selling albums of the '90s; after that, rock radio seemed to realize that there wasn't much more angst where "You Oughta Know" came from, and let Top 40 radio keep her.

The last time a female solo artist topped the chart was in 1996, when Tracy Bonham's "Mother, Mother" went to No. 1 shortly after Alanis reached that summit for the last time with "Ironic." In the ten years since Hole's "Celebrity Skin," the only female-fronted band that's topped the chart has been Evanescence—and that was with "Bring Me To Life," a duet with Paul McCoy of 12 Stones. Bands like the Donnas and Flyleaf have scored minor hits, but haven't ever really gotten close to that brass ring. For the most part, women have remained in supporting instrumental roles in mainstream rock in recent years, from Meg White to that time-worn cliche, the girl bassist.

It's not a surprise that two of the acts now on the chart—M.I.A. and the Ting Tings—hail from across the pond. In the last few years, we've seen many female solo artists from the UK who have gone over big in their homeland before crossing over to younger, hipper Americans: Lily Allen, Amy Winehouse, Kate Nash, Duffy, etc. But those artists were generally pigeonholed as pop or soul artists than as rock artists, and only Winehouse's "Rehab" had any kind of traction on Modern Rock radio. And then you've got the old issue of skin color: neither M.I.A. nor Santogold are white, and both have influences that stretch beyond rock. But Santogold's new wavey "L.E.S. Artistes" and M.I.A.'s Clash sample in "Paper Planes" have just enough guitar to comfortably fit in alongside the Weezers and the Seethers they're now sharing airtime with. Hell, M.I.A. might even be getting herself some of that political rap-rock audience that's made the Flobots so popular. (Yes, I hope I made you squirm with that comparison.)

The last thing I want to do is hasten the inevitability of a whole new round of "women in rock" trend pieces, mind you. But it's good to see a little more gender balance in Modern Rock, even if I don't particularly like any of the songs currently tipping the scales.

In 2000, a band from Georgia named Rehab was one of the many rap-rock acts flooding the music industry in the wake of Kid Rock and Limp Bizkit. That October, they released their major-label debut Southern Discomfort and scored a minor hit with the simply awful "It Don't Matter," which reached No. 20 on the Modern Rock chart. After failing to score any follow-up hits, Rehab was dropped from Sony, deservingly going the way of so many of their peers. The group's rapper, a walking dirt 'stache named Brooks Buford, briefly signed to So So Def Records as a solo artist, and resurfaced hosting the short-lived MTV show Trailer Fabulous, which could be described as Pimp My Ride for double-wides. But nearly eight years after the release of Southern Discomfort, one of its tracks, "Sittin' At A Bar," has suddenly become a hit:

In the past two months this song, now retitled "Bartender Song (a.k.a. Sittin' At A Bar)," has reached No. 16 on the Modern Rock chart, No. 26 on Mainstream Rock, and No. 77 on the Hot 100. And it's still rising. In June, Southern Discomfort was re-released under the name Sittin' At A Bar by Sony subsidiary Epic, with three new versions of the song appended to its tracklist. When I was searching my soul to come up with an accurate explanation for the popularity of this terrible, terrible song, the best point of comparison I could come up with is Sublime's "Santeria." Both songs feature wistful, countryish melodies, wack rhymes, and a healthy serving of curse words and misogyny. And when I conducted a survey of the past six months of alternative airplay for my last column, I noticed that the single most played song of the entire 1990s was "Santeria." ("Smells Like Teen Spirit" was fourth, behind Blur's "Song 2" and another Sublime track.)

I'm not sure exactly how "Bartender Song" began this long, tangled road to crossover success. Perhaps Sony re-signed the band and decided to work an older song to radio first, or maybe the song has just been building a grassroots following for the last seven years that the label finally decided to capitalize on. "Bartender" song was also issued as a bonus track on a 2006 pressing of their 2005 independent album, Graffiti The World, so obviously it's been one of the band's more popular songs for a while. One thing is clear, however: with the rise of the Flobots and now Rehab, and Atmosphere's first appearance on the Modern Rock chart in recent weeks with "You," white rappers are a big look for alt-rock radio in '08.

Until last week, it seemed like Weezer's "Pork & Beans" would be the rock radio hit of the summer. The song, which I've come to think of as the "Umma Do Me" for the horn-rimmed set, hit No. 1 on Modern Rock in its third week on the chart, and stayed there for 11 weeks, the longest stay at the top since the Foo Fighters' "The Pretender" 18-week reign late last year. And who unseated Weezer from the spot? The Foos, of course, with their third consecutive Modern Rock No. 1, "Let It Die."

Even given the band's ridiculous career momentum these days, I'm a little surprised at the success of "Let It Die," which I expected would fizzle at radio like previous third singles from FF albums ("Low," "Next Year"). Last year, when I wrote about the numerous Grammy nominations for the band's last album and remarked "I just hope Dave Grohl doesn't feel the need to pander to voters by releasing one of the album's overly serious dirges as the next single," this was exactly what I was referring to. Even of the tracks on Echoes, Silence, Patience And Grace that go for the slow build and big rock ending, I'd rather hear "Come Alive" or "But, Honestly" on the radio, but go figure. Incidentally, this fan-made YouTube montage of Nirvana footage set to "Let It Die" is, just on a conceptual level, perhaps creepier than anything I've ever seen on Idolator's tribute-video beat.

I've been beating a drum for a while now about how Billboard's Hot Modern Rock Tracks and Hot Mainstream Rock Tracks are getting harder and harder to tell apart. For instance, right now the two charts are 60% the same—24 of the top 40 songs appear on both charts. But it's still really easy to tell where a band gets its bread buttered. Nickelback and My
Chemical Romance may each get airtime on both formats, but you can probably guess who charts better on which chart every time.

Staind's new single, "Believe," however, has been rising up both charts at an almost exactly equal pace, which is rare, if not unheard of. And it's not a massive hit like "The Pretender" that's gunning for the top of both charts, it's just on two steady, parallel paths: It entered the Modern Rock chart four weeks ago at No. 27, then jumped to No. 16, then to No. 11, and currently sits at No. 9; It entered the Mainstream Rock chart four weeks ago at No. 25, then jumped to No. 15, then to No. 11, and currently sits at No. 9.

It's hard to read any real significance into those numbers, though they are interesting. But it helps that "Believe" sounds just like every other sluggish ballad Staind has made since frontman Aaron Lewis' accidental solo hit "Outside" changed the course of the nu-metal band's career. So the music is a control; the variables are the charts. Staind has historically been in the Nickelback category: very big on the Mainstream chart, while more moderately successful on the Modern chart, sometimes charting high but never as high as on Mainstream. So this could be a fluke, or it could be further evidence that the charts are moving toward common ground—particularly Modern, which has fewer big stars to depend on for hits now, and has gradually become more welcoming of groaning frat grunge than it used to be.

It's time to see what the most-played songs and artists on rock radio have been from January to June. And surprise, surprise, the drummer/singer/guitarist you can't get away from is in the top 5 of each list—twice. First, the top songs:

1. Seether, "Fake It"
2. Foo Fighters, "The Pretender"
3. Foo Fighters, "Long Road To Ruin"
4. Linkin Park, "Shadow Of The Day"
5. Puddle Of Mudd, "Psycho"
6. Bravery, "Believe"
7. Seether, "Rise Above This"
8. Finger Eleven, "Paralyzer"
9. Paramore, "CrushCrushCrush"
10. Rise Against, "The Good Left Undone"
11. Atreyu, "Falling Down"
12. Weezer, "Pork & Beans"
13. Three Days Grace, "Never Too Late"
14. Linkin Park, "Given Up"
15. Flobots, "Handlebars"
16. 3 Doors Down, "It's Not My Time"
17. Death Cab For Cutie, "I Will Possess Your Heart"
18. Jack Johnson, "If I Had Eyes"
19. Panic At The Disco, "Nine In The Afternoon"
20. Chevelle, "I Get It"

Almost every song here cracked the top 5 of Billboard's Hot Modern Rock Tracks chart, and the four that didn't—Rise Against, Jack Johnson, Death Cab and Panic—peaked elsewhere in the top 10. But these figures are all about longevity, songs that stay on playlists for months and months, not the ones that make a big splash and then quickly disappear. Therefore, we get plenty of the 2007 hits that refuse to die like "The Pretender," "Paralyzer," and "Never Too Late." And songs that broke in the spring and have been unavoidable ever since, like "Pork & Beans" and "Handlebars," will almost surely rate higher on the year-end list.

"Nine In The Afternoon," which I predicted would be a flash in the pan airplay-wise, has turned out to have substantial legs based on its placement here. That's not to say I'm ready to halt my sophomore-slump schadenfreude for Panic At The Disco—their album Pretty. Odd. has still sold below expectations, and the slightly more tolerable follow-up single "That Green Gentleman" failed to chart at all, which may have helped clear the way for the long radio shelf life "Nine" has had.

Now, let's look at the 20 most-played artists on alternative radio so far in 2008:

1. Foo Fighters
2. Linkin Park
3. Red Hot Chili Peppers
4. Green Day
5. Nirvana
6. Seether
7. Weezer
8. Pearl Jam
9. Stone Temple Pilots
10. Smashing Pumpkins
11. Three Days Grace
12. Offspring
13. Sublime
14. Incubus
15. Nine Inch Nails
16. Puddle Of Mudd
17. Paramore
18. Beastie Boys
19. Alice In Chains
20. Killers

Again, no surprises at the top, where the Foos and Linkin Park take their predictable spots, dominating with multiple singles from their 2007 albums and a comfortable bedrock of earlier hits. And Seether's two big recent hits get them plenty far up, despite a relative lack of airplay for previous singles. But overall you've got an interesting cross-section here, one that demonstrates just how much older recurrents dominate alt-rock radio these days. Less than half of the artists—nine total, four in the top 10—have had new singles out in the last few months. Three of the bands haven't been together for more than a decade, and the fact that those bands are Nirvana, Sublime, and Alice In Chains, all of whom have deceased frontmen, is a little creepy.

Even some of the still-active older bands get a negligible amount of their chart placement from recent material: Smashing Pumpkins have eight songs in the top 500 most played songs of the year, but last year's underwhelming comeback single "Tarantula" is the least popular of those; all 10 of Pearl Jam's entries are from no later than 1994; and even if Stone Temple Pilots came home from their reunion tour
tomorrow and recorded a smash hit, it'd struggle to get as many spins as "Interstate Love Song." Meanwhile, Green Day, RHCP, Weezer and Nine Inch Nails get healthy spins for songs from the '90s as well as those from this decade.

The enduring popularity of first-wave grunge bands makes the presence of umpteenth-wavers like Three Days Grace and Puddle of Mudd unsurprising. But it's impressive that a relatively new band like Paramore has inched up so high on the list—especially since its two big hits were released in '07, and the one single the band released this year, the Idolator fave "That's What You Get," pretty much tanked, barely cracking the Modern Rock chart. And though The Killers' Sam's Town, released way back in 2006, was widely deemed a disappointment, enough of the band's singles, including that album's "When You Were Young," have remained in recurrent play enough to keep them high up on the list. In fact, they're up much higher than bands who achieved comparable success around the same time and haven't had alt-rock hits lately, like My Chemical Romance (59) and Fall Out Boy (74). FOB might wanna keep that "Mr. Brightside" cover in their set for a while, because it might eventually be more familiar to the casual fans in the crowd than any of their originals.

There's no dancing around the fact that rock radio in 2008 is ruled largely by pretty much any monsters of 90's alt-rock who are still roaming around the major-label landscape. One need look no further than the current Hot Modern Rock Tracks, the top three slots of which have been filled by Weezer, Offspring and the Foo Fighters for three weeks now, to prove this point. I say some variation of this line every other column, I know, but said landscape is much than it used to be, so the survivors are bigger now almost by default, even as bands of more recent vintage nip at their heels.

Rock programmers must be among the most loyal in their profession, because name recognition seems to triumph over all in their arena; consider that the rock charts have recently seen the return of even more onetime hitmakers, some of whom no one particularly wanted to hear from again, and others who are remembered fondly even though they're indisputably past their peak.

One of the more surprising familiar names to reappear lately is Candlebox, the Seattle hard rock band who got signed and went multiplatinum at the tail end of the early-'90s grunge explosion. The band never got much respect from the alt-rock crowd, lacking the cred of any connection to the '80s Sub Pop scene, and fared better on Active Rock stations. (I remember seeing the video for "Change" on
Headbanger's Ball months before MTV started giving the band heavy Alternative Nation exposure.) But they became frigging huge for a brief moment, and each of their first three albums yielded at least one top 5 Mainstream Rock hit, even the infamous sophomore slump Lucy and 1998's Happy Pills, which I didn't even really know existed. By that standard, the newly reunited Candlebox's current No. 19 single, "Stand," can't quite be considered a comeback—but it's also the chart's airplay gainer this week, so it may be getting there. And it can't hurt that the song's opening riff is so similar to that of the band's breakthrough single, 1993's "You," that when
I first checked the song out on YouTube, I initially did a double take to make sure I didn't click on the wrong search result.

There's a lot riding on Mötley Crüe's Saints Of Los Angeles, the first album by the band's original lineup since 1997's Generation Swine. And while the first-week album sales and the summer tour receipts haven't come in yet, things look good on the radio front, where the title track hasn't dipped out of the Mainstream Rock top 10 since debuting there in April. (It's currently peaking at No. 7.) But that's a little less impressive when you consider that "If I Die Tomorrow," the Simple Plan outtake (seriously!) that the band recorded for a greatest-hits comp in 2005, peaked at No. 4, and Nikki's side project Sixx: A.M. hit No. 2 just a few months ago. And if you're still wondering about the unconfirmed rumors that Mötley cut a 360 deal with concert-promotion giant Live Nation, which would give the company a cut of any of the band's possible revenue streams, there might be subliminal hints in "Saints," which features refrains of "we signed our life [sic] away" and "give it up, give it up."

Over on the Modern Rock chart, one of the format's longest-running dynasties, The Cure, has been back in business as of late. The band racked up four Modern Rock chart-toppers in its heyday, and probably would've had more if Billboard had created the chart earlier than 1988, just before Disintegration came out. Of the band's contemporaries from that era, only U2 and, to a lesser degree, Depeche Mode, are still making occasional runs at the chart. The latest from Fat Bob and co., "The Only One," is one of four advance singles planned for the new Cure album, which won't be out until September and hasn't yet been given a title. The track, a pretty faithful approximation of the band's most radio-friendly Wish-era songs, has only peaked at No. 34 and already seems to be slipping off the charts, while the second single, "Freakshow," has yet to chart since being released earlier this month. I'm pretty curious to see if The Cure's experiment with so many singles in quick succession will have any impact on radio play, or if those songs will end up functioning as early leaks for die-hard fans to snap up. Perhaps one of the singles released in July or August will get a surge of airplay once the album comes out this fall, or maybe "The Only One" will drop off months before its release, never to return. Time will tell.

So who's definitely not staging a comeback, at least on the radio? Filter and the Black Crowes come to mind. Both bands recently reunited and released new albums, but their lead singles peaked at No. 27 and No. 33, respectively, on Mainstream Rock, then quickly fell off the chart. Likewise, Bush frontman Gavin Rossdale's "Love Remains The Same," from his recent solo debut, dropped off the Modern chart after hitting No. 33, which can't be more embarrassing than his song with the Blue Man Group, at least. And Judas Priest, who scored a minor hit in 2005 with their first new single after the return of frontman Rob Halford, "Revolution," have yet to chart with any of the songs off of their admirably ludicrous concept album Nostradamus. But if so-called rock stations can't embrace a seven-minute single about a 16th-century prophet, let's face it, that's their problem.

Early on in the life of this column, I acknowledged one big caveat: I'd be reporting on modern rock radio without having easy access to any such station on my radio dial. I've based whole columns on songs that I've yet to actually hear on terrestrial radio, like the Flobots' "Handlebars." Since the demise of the trailblazing WHFS, the Baltimore/Washington, D.C. rock radio market's rock outlets have been reduced to the active rock station 98 Rock and the active/modern hybrid (DC101). So the dirty little secret of a lot of my reportage is that it's come from following the charts, playlists, and streams of modern stations in other markets, which has allowed me to see what modern-rock hits haven't crossed over to active-leaning stations.

But all that's changed in recent weeks: Clear Channel has flipped one of its smooth jazz stations to Channel 104.3, Baltimore's first full-time mainstream alt-rock station in over three years. The station is borrowing its morning show from DC101, and from what little I've tuned in to hear so far, the playlist may turn out to lean a little Active like its sister station. But for better or worse, it looks like I finally have somewhere to hear crap like "Handlebars" on my car stereo.

Last time, I focused on the new hits from established acts that are currently dominating the Modern Rock top 10. So in the spirit of new beginnings like that of Channel 104.3—albeit symbolic beginnings that tend to bring the same old shit—I thought I'd take a look at some of the more unfamiliar names that are scoring their first radio hits in the lower reaches of the rock charts. By far my favorite recent debut is "Love Me Dead" by Ludo, which is still crawling slowly upward, currently peaking at No. 19 after nearly three months on the chart. I'm not really sure what this band's deal is, and I'm hesitant to try and describe the song. So I will instead merely hope that you're as entertained by the video as I was the first time I stumbled upon it:

Another chart debut that's been kicking around for about the same amount of time with greater success—currently No. 3 on Mainstream Rock and No. 15 on Modern—is "Addicted" by Saving Abel, a band that seems to be striking the same nauseating balance between nu-grunge sludge and Sunset Strip sleaze as, say, Hinder. Hell, "Addicted" sounds eerily similiar to Hinder's first hit, "Get Stoned," which is to say, get ready for these assclowns to become the next big Active Rock dynasty. Safetysuit's "Someone Like You", at No. 22 on Modern Rock, likewise fits into a comfortable preexisting radio niche of big, sweeping sub-Coldplay arena balladry, even if it's a little surprising that the band hails from Oklahoma. And the only odd thing about yet another grungy debut, Another Black Day's "Wicked Souls," is that it reached No. 25 on Mainstream Rock while on an independent label, Bieler Bros. (As far as I can tell, the only other acts on either chart that aren't on a major label or a subsidiary thereof are Nine Inch Nails, who of course are record industry castaways by choice, and Vampire Weekend.)

"They Say" by Scars On Broadway, which recently entered the Mainstream Rock chart and currently stands at No. 27, is a new project by some familiar names, System Of A Down's Daron Malakian and John Dolmayan. With System currently on an ambiguous hiatus that's widely speculated to be a permanent breakup, Scars On Broadway is the second offshoot of the band to hit the airwaves, after two successful solo singles by singer Serj Tankian. If things proceed at this pace, we could have another vaguely exciting face-off of ex-bandmates, in the fashion of the dueling Angels & Airwaves and +44 singles that followed the breakup of Blink 182 a couple of years ago. And when bands that weren't that great to begin with start splintering into seperate projects and competing on the chart, the overall effect tends to bring to mind the tagline from 2004's Alien vs. Predator: Whoever wins... we lose.

Apocalyptica, the Finnish cello ensemble that became something of a novelty act in the mid-'90s for playing classical covers of Metallica songs several years before string tributes to popular rock acts became a cottage industry unto itself, has gradually become a career band with original material, often collaborating with various hard rock and metal vocalists. And in "I'm Not Jesus" with Slipknot's Corey Taylor, Apocalyptica have finally broken through with their first big mainstream radio hit, "I'm Not Jesus," which is currently at No. 9 on Mainstream and No. 26 on Modern. It's not a bad song, but I really have nothing to say about it other than that it still cracks me up that the singer from Slipknot's real name, after being known as simply "No. 8" all those years, turned out to be "Corey."

By far the most eyebrow-raising new artist on the Modern Rock chart is Carolina Liar, whose "I'm Not Over" is currently at No. 24 and rising. Carolina Liar frontman Chad Wolf is a scraggly Southerner, and his hit fits in nicely alongside other slick, guitar-driven rock radio fodder, but his band boasts a unique pedigree. Somehow, after relocating to Los Angeles, Wolf ended up rubbing elbows with adult-contempo types like Dianne Warren and Celine Dion, before ultimately meeting Euro pop mastermind Max Martin, who assembled a band full of Swedish session musicians for Wolf and put together a debut album:

Martin, once known as the architect of the bombastically synthetic sound of his countless hits for Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys, has moved toward guitar-driven pop rock like Kelly Clarkson's "Since U Been Gone" and Pink's "U + Ur Hand" in recent years with the aid of another songwriter/producer for hire, Lukasz "Dr. Luke" Gottwald. But those songs were recorded by female pop stars, and while many rock fans and critics admitted (sometimes grudgingly) a weakness for their crunchy riffs and shoutalong hooks, rock radio never touched them. So it's interesting that Martin has finally, yet somewhat stealthily, broken through to one of the few corners of American radio that had previously eluded his Midas touch, and one wonders if Wolf was deliberately recruited for just that purpose. Even if that's not the case, it's still pretty funny to imagine that back when Martin was ruling the world with hits like "I Want It That Way," he may have been fantasizing about having his very own Days Of The New.

Since I began writing this column late last year, there's been a relative dearth of big-event releases on the rock radio landscape. Early-'07 albums released by Linkin Park and the Foo Fighters have continually dominated the airwaves, and even now the Modern Rock chart is, as Idolator's Chris Molanphy memorably termed it, "Fooless, but not Linkinless." Meanwhile, decidedly second-tier bands like Seether and Finger Eleven have been topping the chart whenever Dave Grohl and Chester Bennington weren't playing musical chairs with the No. 1 spot. So the last month, which has featured an onslaught of chart debuts by some of alt-rock's biggest names, has been exciting to watch, even if I dislike most of the songs. Those debuts, and the significance thereof, as detailed by Billboard last week:

The Offspring earns a career-best debut on the Modern Rock chart as "Hammerhead" opens at No. 5, logging the highest entry point for any title since Linkin Park's "What I've Done" debuted at No. 1 on the April 21, 2007, chart. This marks the fourth consecutive week that the Modern Rock chart has hosted a top 25 debut, following Coldplay's "Violet Hill," Nine Inch Nails' "Discipline" and Weezer's "Pork and Beans." It is the longest streak of top 25 debuts since a five-week stretch of lofty debuts in late summer 1999.

Not only are these all significant debuts from big artists, they're all lead singles from new albums dropping this summer—or in the case of Nine Inch Nails, an album already out online but due in stores soon. And, more significantly, each of the songs was given a big, official online unveiling, the immediacy of which no doubt contributed to the tracks being added to playlists even more quickly than what the artists' name recognition would've otherwise guaranteed. Weezer streamed "Pork & Beans" on the band's official Web site, and more than half a million people downloaded "Violet Hill" the first day Coldplay made the song available for free on their site (at least 44,000 iTunes customers bought it for 99 cents anyway). "Discipline" was, of course, just one of several online insta-releases that Trent Reznor has orchestrated in the past few months, including the song's aforementioned parent album The Slip. And Sony trumpeted the online release of "Hammerhead" with such fanfare that, for a confused moment, I thought that it was a major label-sanctioned free download of an entire album, which surely would've made Reznor grind his teeth a bit.

Rock radio playlists are infamously some of the most sluggish in the biz, and sometimes it can take even the biggest hits time to crawl to the top with a new single. So this crush of big debuts, along with the Raconteurs' "Salute Your Salution," which debuted just outside the top 25 a few weeks earlier, may be ushering in a new era of quicker Modern Rock chart impact, aided in no small part by this here Internet. Established bands are not only getting new singles to their hardcore fans faster, radio stations are picking up on the songs as soon as they hit the blogosphere; in the past potential hits have often wafted around online for weeks before the label pushes programmers for an "add" when the song is officially serviced to radio. Songs becoming inescapable on the radio within hours of an online leak are old news on urban radio, while hip-hop DJs have long since adapted to getting new hits via e-mail.

The only one of these songs that I really enjoy is also the one with the most personally interesting chart progress. "Discipline" is a little more groove-oriented and vocally restrained than the average NIN hit, and it's also pretty easily my favorite single the band's released since the '90s. But it's also the first song the band has pushed to radio after parting ways with Interscope, so we'll soon see if Trent Reznor's lack of major-label support will affect radio's embrace his work; over his last two albums, he's racked up four Modern Rock No. 1s. The last single NIN released on Interscope, "Capital G," was not obviously radio-friendly and didn't seem to get much support from the label—but it still became one of the most-played Modern Rock hits of 2007. So it won't shock me if "Discipline," which ascended into the top 10 in its third week of release, continues to rise.

I'm not ready to talk shit about "Violet Hill" yet, if for no other reason than that I simply haven't gotten over the shock that Coldplay has released a song that doesn't sound like "Clocks" and "Speed of Sound." And Weezer, a band whose fanatical following has been completely mystifying me for 14 years now, is generally good for at least one single I can stand per album, but "Pork & Beans" ain't it. I haven't bothered to listen to the other leaked songs from the band's new album not so much because of the negative buzz as the fact that they haven't charted yet, and you pretty much literally have to pay me to listen to Weezer voluntarily.

But by far the worst of these new debuts is the one that's the biggest—and the most surprising. Like the other debutantes (save Coldplay), the Offspring rose to prominence, and peaked in popularity, way back in the mid-'90s. They started off annoying and just got worse from there, alternating hilariously blatant crossover attempts with monotonous punk-pop dirges. Their latest isn't a debacle on the scale of "Original Prankster," but their most ridiculously goofy hits arguably promise more entertainment value than the band's blander, more somber track. And "Hammerhead" falls decidedly into the latter category.

It's gonna be a long summer if this lot is rock radio's Big Four for the next few months.

Unfamiliar names bubble up on the Billboard singles charts all the time. But usually those names are first encountered in the charts' lower reaches—not way up in the top 10, especially on a chart as slow-moving as Hot Modern Rock Tracks, and especially for a song that strays from the modern rock format. Which is part of why it was so intriguing to find "Handlebars" by the Flobots at No. 7 in only its third week on the chart. To give you an idea of how fast that rise is, the Raconteurs' "Salute Your Solution" reached the same spot in the same amount of time on the chart just a week before it. And that song had the benefit of being by an established band with a previous chart-topper, as well as an insta-release gimmick for its latest album that probably encouraged radio programmers to add the single quickly. Oh yeah, and the Raconteurs are a rock band through and through, tailor-made for the format, while the Flobots are a rap group.

Being that they're on the Modern Rock chart and nowhere to be seen on the hip-hop/R&B charts, the Flobots are pretty obviously not peers of, say, Rick Ross. They're not a crew of MCs, but rather a hip-hop band in The Roots mold—two rappers backed by live musicians—and they're from Denver. And "Handlebars" sounds, well... about like you'd probably expect a white (mostly white?) hip-hop band from Denver to sound like. The verses feature a stiff but slightly impressive double-time flow, and the song builds to an intense crescendo, as the lyric's seemingly innocent theme becomes gradually more sinister and, in a vague, wishy washy way, politically conscious. It's not hard to see why the 'twist' of the song has hooked radio listeners so quickly, even if it sounds like a really toothless cover of an unreleased Rage Against The Machine song to these ears. "Handlebars" first appeared on an independent EP in 2005, and was re-released on the band's major-label debut Fight With Tools over six months ago, which makes the song's very recent, very rapid ascendance even more surprising.

The meteoric rise of the Flobots gives me a good opportunity to talk about alt-rock radio's strange, unpredictable relationship with hip-hop, and the queasy race issues that go along with it. If alternative rock is at all still counter-culture enough to be considered an "alternative" to anything, it's hip-hop and its influence in pop and R&B, which has become increasingly pervasive over the past two decades. And outside of the "everything but rap and country" demographic that may or may not be comprised mainly of strawmen, odds are most of the people listening to rock radio like at least some hip-hop. So it becomes more of a question of what kind of rap they want to hear alongside their guitar-toting favorites, and how much of it they'll tolerate.

Modern rock radio has frequently shown love to songs that feature rapping, and to artists of color, but rarely at the same time. The notable exception to that rule is the aforementioned Rage ATM, whose '90s hits to this day remain a format staple, reliably dispensing fist-pumping anger like a cash machine every afternoon. But they were a racially diverse band that played hard rock with hip-hop elements. More traditional hip-hop acts have had a much spottier history. Outkast's "Hey Ya!" hit No. 16 on Modern Rock at the peak of its word-conquering ubiquity, but that was, of course, a guitar-driven pop song that just happened to be by one half of a veteran rap group. Cypress Hill, the Latino rap group beloved by every white pot smoker I knew in high school, who headlined Lollapalooza and whose "Insane In The Brain" got as much play on Alternative Nation as on Yo! MTV Raps, only hit the Modern Rock chart with later singles that deliberately catered to the format: "(Rock) Superstar" and the Clash-sampling "What's Your Number?" Few hip-hop acts were ever as popular with white rock fans as Public Enemy, but Chuck D only achieved rock airplay with his comically vapid guest appearance on Sonic Youth's "Kool Thing." And there were a number of more recent rap hits that I'd heard on rock stations here and there, and was surprised to find no Modern Rock history for whatsoever: Jay-Z's "99 Problems," The Roots' "The Seed 2.0," even the Gym Class Heroes' "Cupid's Chokehold."

Otherwise, the history of rapping on rock radio is lily white. The Beastie Boys became mainstays of alternative radio in the early '90s, just as they were becoming irrelevant to hip hop audiences. Eminem scraped the lower reaches of the Modern Rock top 20 with three of his biggest hits. Funky honkies like the Red Hot Chili Peppers, 311, Cake, and Beck have all had long careers full of popular singles with and without rapping, while one-hit wonders like Crazy Town, the post-House of Pain Everlast, and the N.W.A.-covering Dynamite Hack have dropped rhymes on rock airwaves from time to time. The Barenaked Ladies and the Butthole Surfers both scored their only Modern Rock No. 1's ("One Week" and "Pepper," respectively) with songs that featured rapped verses.

Active rock stations have always allowed much less hip-hop influence to seep in, save for the most aggressive rap-rock hybrids like Limp Bizkit, most of whom went out of fashion years ago. And as I mentioned in my last column, even rap-metal survivors like Kid Rock and Linkin Park have stripped the staccato rhymes out of most of their recent hits, while Anthony Kiedis has aged, horrifyingly, into a balladeer. In general, alt-rock radio is more reliant on guitar rock now than at any point since the mid-'90s, right before ska-punk, "electronica," the swing revival, and McG videos came along and made things garishly bright, bouncy, and self-consciously eclectic. You might still hear "Paul Revere" or Sublime every hour on the hour on most alt-rock stations, but new hits from breaking artists generally tend to fall somewhere along the grunge/emo/nu-metal axis.

Without getting into a Sasha Frere-Jones-style debate about whether rock radio was better when it was a melting pot of racial diversity (or, at least, mostly white folks with diverse influences), there definitely appears to have been a tidal shift. And I'd previously assumed that there wouldn't be any significant rap crossover to Modern Rock happening in the foreseeable future, especially with the face of underground hip-hop increasingly turning toward hipster-friendly party rap along the lines of Spank Rock rather than the conscious rap that has historically connected more with white rock fans. In a way, the earnest, vaguely jam band-ish Flobots feel like a throwback to a strain of indie rap that's been on the wane since the beginning of the decade. Time will tell whether "Handlebars" sticks on the chart and yields follow-up hits, though. They may end up as just a brief, unusual blip on the Modern Rock landscape like Matisyahu, the Hasidic reggae MC whose "King Without A Crown" peaked two years ago at No. 7—the same spot currently occupied by "Handlebars."

After a few sluggish months of slow-rising hits, the past few weeks have seen some major movement on the Billboard rock charts, with several new entries making big impacts. And the biggest comes from Disturbed, the Chicago nu-metal band distinguished primarily by frontman David Draiman's resemblance to Howie Mandel with multiple facial piercings, as well as his usually annoying, occasionally awesome Korn-meets-Shudder-To-Think vocal tics. "Inside The Fire," the lead single from their forthcoming album Indestructible, entered the Hot Mainstream Rock Tracks chart at a staggering No. 5, and moved up to No. 4 last week—pretty impressive, considering that even the biggest monsters of rock tend to take at least a few weeks to reach that high on the chart. This marks the band's tenth consecutive top 10 hit, and it's also quickly becoming one of its biggest hits to date on Hot Modern Rock Tracks, where it's historically had less traction. But since Draiman neither goes "oooh-wah-ah-ah-ah" nor covers Genesis on "Inside The Fire," the song is not one of the rare instances where I will refrain from changing the station when a Disturbed song comes on the radio.

Elsewhere on the Mainstream chart, a number of recent entries suggest the following theory: rap-metal is back, just without the rapping. The chart is still littered with holdovers from that widely maligned subgenre's turn of the century heyday, but right now three of those acts have hits rising up the chart without busting a single fresh rhyme: Linkin Park's "Given Up"; P.O.D.'s "Addicted"; and Kid Rock's "All Summer Long." Now, don't get me wrong. Mike Shinoda, Sonny Sandoval, and Bob Ritchie are not among my top five MCs of all time; they wouldn't even make my top 10. (Sorry, Sonny!) But these bands' early hits were at least a lot more fun than listening to these jokers and their bandmates decide to get 'melodic.' Please, nobody tell Fred Durst that all he has to do to get back on the radio is start earnestly crooning. He might cover The Who again.

As Chris Molanphy noted in his last 100 And Single column, the other big Modern Rock debuts come from the Raconteurs and Death Cab For Cutie. "Salute Your Solution," the lead single from the Raconteurs' Consolers Of The Lonely, is at No. 11 after entering the chart at No. 26 for the first week that anyone, including radio stations, had a copy of the song, given that the album it comes from was made available in "EVERY FORMAT AT ONCE" on March 25. Although Jack White's insta-release stunt was ostensibly done in part to circumvent the major-label "first-week sales" mentality, both the album and the single got off to very strong starts. Still, "Salute Your Solution" is one of my least favorite tracks off the album, and I can't see it topping the chart like "Steady, As She Goes" did in 2006. Death Cab, whose 2005 album Plans was just certified platinum this February, are right behind the Raconteurs at No. 12 with "I Will Possess Your Heart," an ambitious eight-minute single that most stations are presumably playing in its four-minute radio edit.

So what isn't on the Modern Rock chart? Two big rock hits currently in the upper reaches of the Hot 100 and the Pop 100.
• Three Days Grace's actually-kinda-good "Never Too Late" was one of the most-played Modern Rock hits of 2007, but it dropped off the chart well before its current crossover to VH1 and adult top 40 stations. That crossover was helped by program directors being made less squeamish about the song's anti-suicide theme through a new edit that changes the chorus line "you want to end your life" to "you want to change your life."
• Meanwhile, Fall Out Boy's cover of "Beat It," which has already been hailed by one Idolator contributor as potentially the best rock song of 2008, is all over pop radio, but it has yet to crack the rock charts. I'm not shocked, given that one of the big theories put forth in my '07 wrap-up was that FOB are quickly losing their rock radio support. But I wonder if those stations will keep holding out on this one, considering that many of them still play that damn Alien Ant Farm version of "Smooth Criminal." Personally, I think the band's take on "Beat It" is weak sauce—Patrick Stump earns his