Best #1 Modern/Alternative Rock Song of the Year: 2004

Cafe Society
21

Sure did, even before I read that WLIR wiki entry.
If you check the section label “WLIR/WDRE legacy” in that entry, from that section you can see where several other “famous” WLIR/DRE personalities ended up; names like Malibu Sue, “The Mighty Maximizer” (Oy!), Couzin Ed (he was always down in Philly, wasn’t he - some of my friends knew him personally in the 1990s), Lisa Ritchie and a number of other names that waft thru my memories of the LIR/DRE 80s and 90s.
Since I don’t subscribe to satellite, and since my usual introduction to new alternative music was during the morning and afternoon drive (and late night cruising to the dance clubs, of course) - well it sucked for me there were no real modern rock stations after LIR.

Mo’-Meta Contemplation. We have the Shark now (WWSK I believe) on Long Island, it’s not a bad station, so let me post it’s playlist over the last 2 hours:

Smoke Two Joints - Sublime
Spoonman - Soundgarden
Crazy Train - Ozzy Osbourne
River Of Deceit - Mad Season
Times Like These - Foo Fighters
Renegades Of Funk - Rage Against The Machine
Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This) - Marilyn Manson
Use Somebody - Kings Of Leon
Alive - Pearl Jam
Enter Sandman - Metallica
In Bloom - Nirvana
Simple Man - Shinedown
Shine - Collective Soul
You - Candlebox
Big Empty - Stone Temple Pilots
Kickstart My Heart - Motley Crue
I Miss The Misery - Halestorm
When I Come Around - Green Day
Would - Alice In Chains
Down - 311
You Really Got Me - Van Halen
Baker Street - Foo Fighters
Papercut - Linkin Park
Scar Tissue - Red Hot Chili Peppers
Stupify - Disturbed
Swallowed - Bush
Cum On Feel The Noize - Quiet Riot

Look at that list. Lots of Modern Rock songs we have discussed in these threads (and even some I voted for - Scar Tissue, Renegades of Funk); good decent Modern Rock songs…mixed in with Quiet Riot, Metalllica, Ozzy, Van Halen (not saying I don’t like those guys, I do), band definitely considered Rock (Metal, even)
Hmmm. This station is categorized as…Mainstream Rock.
Mainstream! Which, when you think about it - makes a heckuva lotta sense.

So, is it all Mainstream Rock? Is the division now Modern vs Classic Rock (I dunno, over 30 years old on a sliding scale - although Crazy Train on that playlist spoils that argument). Think old school Clash (“Death or Glory”) U2 (“A Celebration”), REM (“Driver 8”), Nirvana (pick anything), Stone Temple Pilots (“Interstate Love Song”), White Stripes (“Fell In Love With a Girl”), Franz Ferdinand (“Matiness”) - isn’t Modern Rock just Rock now (maybe it always was). Grunge was pretty much rock. What’s the division now, Indie Rock? New Wave, what (To be fair, I believe Woodstockbirdy has some ideas).

So, fellow Modern & Alternative Rock devotees, if Modern Rock simply became Rock - Did we…
…
…
…
Win?

Hell No, Country & Western music is kicking Rock’s butt without even breaking a sweat nowadays - and Latin ain’t far behind…

22

Well, they broke up in 2012, which may be part of why you haven’t heard much about them lately. They put out two more albums after the first one; I never heard their last one, but the second one is pretty good.

23

Billboard still maintains separate charts for “Alternative Rock” and “Mainstream Rock”, but there’s a pretty good deal of overlap between them in the last decade or so - “Something From Nothing” by the Foo Fighters is currently the #1 on both charts. In general, though, the mainstream chart tends toward the heavier stuff while the alternative chart tends towards more traditionally alternative music (how weird of a phrase is “traditionally alternative”?) In 2009 they established an overall Rock Songs chart, which combines data from the Mainstream, Alternative, and Adult Alternative charts. All three charts are based on airplay data collected from stations that identify themselves as playing rock/alternative/adult alternative music - the alternative chart tracks about 80 stations nationwide, and the AA chart 32. I’m not sure how many stations the mainstream chart tracks.

(For the record, the current AA #1 is “Stolen Dance” by Milky Chance, and the current overall Rock #1 is “Take Me To Church” by Hozier, which is also currently #3 on the Hot 100 and may very well reach #1 by the end of the year.)

So to answer your question… maybe?

24

Meanwhile, here’s a song whose melody actually does sound like “American Idiot.”

25

It’s not even that the songs sound kind of alike. It’s just a riff that’s somewhat similar.

26

Missed the edit window: Best as I can find via Google, the mainstream rock chart is comprised of airplay data from stations identified as “active rock” and “heritage rock”, the former being stations that mostly play new music with some older songs, and the latter being stations that mostly play older music with some newer songs and which includes some “classic rock” stations that have been playing a similar format since the AOR days of the '70s. (Active Rock and Heritage Rock used to have their own Billboard charts, but they have since been discontinued and the distinction is only maintained for the purpose of the Mainstream Rock chart formula.) Billboard tracks 59 active rock stations and about 250 heritage rock stations to compile the Mainstream Rock chart data.

(PS: If nobody else jumps on it in the meantime, I think I may run the Mainstream Rock #1s as a poll series following the conclusion of my Hot 100 retrospective.)

27

I hate Green Day. I’m not even sure why, but they just annoy me. American Idiot would be right at the top of their worst.

And yet, Boulevard of Broken Dreams is on the same darn album and it does something right that earns it my vote for this year’s best. Maybe someone else wrote it for them? :stuck_out_tongue:

(For the record, I can also listen to Holiday. So there are *two *Green Day songs that don’t make me change the station.)

28

Don’t forget hip-hop either along with female teen-oriented pop. In fact, it could be argued Rock in all its forms is in the same position in terms of general popularity as Jazz was about 40 years ago (i.e., shifting from mainstream to niche).

29

I wouldn’t say I hate Green Day, but I do recognize them for what they are. If I wanted to listen to pop punk that had lyrics which are the punk rock equivalent to stereotypical hippie lyrics, I could listen to Green Day or 7 Seconds, the only real difference between them is that 7 Seconds did it when I was a kid. It’s not really my thing, so I don’t regularly listen to either.

Neither is really playing the same sport that the Dead Kennedys were playing. Jello sang lyrics with ideas that still are pretty shocking, with poetry and delivery to match. What Green Day song comes even close to “Holiday in Cambodia” for its auditory and lyrical experience? I would guess that Green Day has nothing to compare to it’s horrifying look at a horrible problem, and nothing comes close sonically. That song is at the accessible end of the Dead Kennedy’s repertoire, and they’re just the beginning of a set of bands that leads to harsher things like The Crucifucks, and the Butthole Surfers’ early work.

Bascially, “Punk Rock” isn’t a very good umbrella to group these bands under. Green Day has more to do with the Beatles than DK, and DK is more closely associated with the Monks than anything more poppy from the early days of rock than the Doors.
Oh, and for the poll, I voted for the Beastie Boys. How could I not against that group?

30

[quote=“scabpicker, post:29, topic:706427”]

Neither is really playing the same sport that the Dead Kennedys were playing. [/q

31

I don’t see anyone in this thread saying they are. I consider them more power pop than old school punk, but their classification is kind of irrelevant to me. They wrote some fun teenaged music early in their career (Dookie is a classic album by any standard, IMHO), then followed that later in their career with some attempts at political import while maintaining their somewhat mainstream pop sensibility, and I think they did a good job with that. I personally don’t own or have any Green Day albums, but of that California punk pop scene (or whatever you want to call it), they were great.

32

I don’t hate Green Day (what a waste of energy if I did!), and I generally agree with your assessment of them as an OK power pop band. But this is pretty close to calling them interchangeable:

And no, people and bands are far from interchangeable. I’d generally lose a bunch of respect for DK for putting out a dumb pop song. It would be completely out of character for them.

33

Are you acknowledging that you dismiss Green Day, or trying to claim that you don’t, but don’t value what they do? :wink:

To be clear: they write super-accessible songs in the Punk genre. To folks who think of Punk as an ethos, distinguishing between being truly Punk vs. just sounding that way really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really matters.

Since I can’t claim to being part of the Punk ethos, I can’t comment on whether Green Day are truly Punk. Which is for the best, since I really, really, really don’t fuckin’ care. When they get it right, the songs are good.

ETA: and, to be clear, Billie Joe seems way too high drama for my taste. The saga of how American Idiot got created, and the whininess of the Broadway version, and his bout with rehab - I get it; he’s more of a douche than he should be. Doesn’t change good songcraft.

34

I’m saying they work in style that I used to like at one time, and I’m just not interested in that style at all these days. By the time Green Day hit the scene, my Descendents records were already gathering dust. They’re just fine at that style, though.

Aside from the fact that trying to delineate genres is a fools game, I’m not sure I’m interested in who’s truly “Punk”. Especially since there are many bands who’d probably fall under the “True Punk” banner that are truly awful, meaningless bands. But when a genre spans from Blink 182 to Feeders, it’s not really that meaningful a description. It just doesn’t tell you that much about the bands. It’s become as general a term as Jazz or Classical. Other than the venues you’re likely to hear the performers in, there’s not much indication of how that group is going to sound from those descriptors.

Yeah, I wouldn’t want to be friends with a majority of my musical heroes. That doesn’t make me like their music any less.

35

Voted for the Beasties. One of their great later songs.