Commentary on Alt Rock Top 10 Tracks
It's embarassing that a 20-year-old song, Linkin Park - Lost, is the top-played song on alternative radio at Audacy. I understand that the song had a re-release, commemorating Chester or something. I understand that Meteora is a strong album, and deserves the attention!
Linkin Park was in my radio rotation when Hybrid Theory went out to the radio stations, in advance of public release. I've been listening to them since before you discovered them. (Clam excluded cuz she might have reviewed it.) The lead singer is long dead, now. The songs never left rotation in Alternative Radio, because Alternative Radio still plays Linkin Park every half-hour. It sells. Lost was always in rotation, for 20 yearsish.
Linkin Park is great! They should be in the library. But...these are radio stations that drive popular music. Their top 10 tracks should be songs released in the last year or two. "Blame Brett" should have cracked the top 10, despite its late-year release. Noah Kahan. No, the top tracks are only -released before Summer rotation and the most popular alternative rock tracks in the nation.
Linkin Park's Meteora exists in rotation forever, so the special-release just GOOSED the insane amount of times that song is played. I feel like 101.9fm sounds like the synthesizer sample in Meteora.
I'll stop complaining about Linkin Park for a second, though: The rest of the top 10 are pretty recent, and mostly great tracks. "Just Pretend" by Bad Omens is also played endlessly - I think because the DJs don't remember playing it. It doesn't say "Just pretend" very loudly. Almost none of them would have cracked my own top 10, except...
- Beach Weather - "Sex Drugs Etc." This was the vibe I had while I was "dating" Lindsey. I was staying as chill as possible, and this song was on every twenty minutes. I just floated on that low-key vibe.
- Foo Fighters - "Rescued" All of the singles for new Foo Fighters have been fantastic. If you don't know yet, go find out.
And a special complaint goes to:
Blink 182 - "Edging." The song sounds pedestrian, and I'll be surprised if it returns to rotation anytime soon. It was far from the "triumphant" return song of Tom Delonge, so they were wise to actually make the "big reveal" song come out near the album's release. "One More Time" is the most played song on alt rock radio, hands down, even pushing down Green Day and Fall Out Boy. It's a better song than Edging, by FAR.
If you need songs that deserved to be there we have:
Blue October - "Run Away to Mars", The Beaches - "Blame Brett," Iration - "Day Trippin", Fall Out Boy - "Hold Me Like a Grudge,"
And Green Day has enough airplay now that it should be on next year's 10-most-played. It grew on me: "The American Dream is Killing Me."