HRD Radio Report – Week Ending 1/18/15

HRD RADIO REPORT 

The HRD Radio Report showcases the weekly Active Rock Mediabase Charts (compiled by AllAccess.com), and appears every Tuesday on HardRockDaddy.com.  The HRD Radio Report digs deeper into the weekly Active Rock charts, providing commentary, reviews, recommendations and predictions.  It also features opinion pieces on chart action and the music business in general.

Many of the artists featured on the Active Rock charts have already been reviewed on HardRockDaddy.com.

Click on the hyperlinked song titles to read song reviews, and the hyperlinked artist names to read album reviews.

The following is the Active Rock Mediabase Chart for the week ending 1/18/15.  All exclusive HRD content is featured below the chart:

CHART POSITION THIS WEEK	CHART POSITION LAST WEEK	ARTIST	SONG TITLE	RADIO SPINS THIS WEEK
1	1	FIVE FINGER DEATH PUNCH	“Wrong Side Of Heaven”	2057
2	2	FOO FIGHTERS	“Something From Nothing”	2022
3	3	ROYAL BLOOD	“Figure It Out”	1828
4	4	THREE DAYS GRACE	“I Am Machine”	1781
5	5	SEETHER	“Same Damn Life”	1617
6	6	GODSMACK	“Something Different”	1322
7	8	PAPA ROACH	“Face Everything And Rise”	1221
8	9	ASKING ALEXANDRIA	“Moving On”	1082
9	7	POP EVIL	“Beautiful”	947
10	10	HELLYEAH	“Moth”	945
11	12	PRETTY RECKLESS	“Follow Me Down”	931
12	11	IN THIS MOMENT	“Sick Like Me”	920
13	13	NOTHING MORE	“Mr. MTV”	875
14	14	NICKELBACK	“Million Miles An Hour”	783
15	18	AC/DC	“Rock Or Bust”	722
16	16	SIXX A.M.	“Stars”	722
17	17	YOUNG GUNS	“I Want Out”	667
18	22	MARILYN MANSON	“Deep Six”	651
19	19	CHEVELLE	“An Island”	581
20	20	STARSET	“Carnivore”	570
21	0	HALESTORM	“Apocalyptic”	545
22	21	LINKIN PARK	“Rebellion”	465
23	31	ARCTIC MONKEYS	“R U Mine?”	429
24	25	BRING ME THE HORIZON	“Drown”	427
25	23	MOTIONLESS IN WHITE	“Reincarnate”	418
26	26	SLASH	“Bent To Fly”	394
27	27	OF MICE & MEN	“Feels Like Forever”	349
28	24	THEORY OF A DEADMAN	“Savages”	343
29	30	LIKE A STORM	“Wish You Hell”	310
30	39	ALL THAT REMAINS	“This Probably Won’t End Well”	308
31	28	RISE AGAINST	“Tragedy + Time”	261
32	34	3 YEARS HOLLOW	“For Life”	240
33	36	WE AS HUMAN	“Bring To Life”	238
34	35	LINKIN PARK	“Final Masquerade”	227
35	33	AC/DC	“Play Ball”	221
36	54	KID ROCK	“First Kiss”	217
37	29	SHAMAN’S HARVEST	“Dangerous”	208
38	38	NICKELBACK	“Edge Of A Revolution”	206
39	44	ISLANDER	“New Wave”	197
40	32	FALL OUT BOY	“Centuries”	196
41	41	BEARTOOTH	“Beaten In Lips”	190
42	48	AMARANTHE	“Drop Dead Cynical”	154
43	83	BLACK KEYS	“Weight Of Love”	148
44	45	SAVING ABEL	“Blood Stained Revolution”	134
45	49	HINDER	“Hit The Ground”	131
46	50	CAGE THE ELEPHANT	Cigarette Daydreams	121
47	47	LENNY KRAVITZ	“Dirty White Boots”	101
48	51	CHARM CITY DEVILS	“Karma”	91
49	53	YOU ME AT SIX	“Forgive And Forget”	86
50	58	SLIPKNOT	“Custer”	78

 

 

PUBLISHER’S PICK OF THE WEEK by Adam Waldman

 HALESTORM – “Apocalyptic”

Although there are certainly some real head-scratchers appearing on this week’s chart, Active Rock programmers deserve credit for jumping right on board with the “Apocalyptic,” the first single off of Halestorm’s upcoming album, Into The Wild Life (dropping the first week of April).  Given the tremendous radio success of the singles from the band’s previous album, The Strange Case Of…, it stands to reason that Active Rock radio would be chomping at the bit to add the first new Halestorm song in three years into heavy rotation.  The song rockets all the way up to the #21 position in its debut week, and it won’t be long before it provides a welcome challenge to the stagnant top of the chart.  Lzzy Hale and the boys pick up right where they left off with “Apocalyptic,” a heavy, melodic rocker with lyrics that show why Lzzy is considered a rock goddess by the masses.

 

 

THE BREAKDOWN by Jon Loveless

KING OF THE HILL

It looked iffy in the middle of the week, but Five Finger Death Punch had a strong airplay weekend to remain atop the Mediabase Active Rock airplay chart for a third straight week (and fifth week overall) with “Wrong Side Of Heaven.”  The stability is highlighted even more with the song recording exactly the same number of spins as the week before.  Not really surprising to see Foo Fighters’ “Something From Nothing” stay at #2 with a fractional gain, while Royal Blood’s “Figure It Out” remains at #3 with a fairly slight decline.   Hard to be surprised at this point, as this is the ninth consecutive week for that trio of songs to hold down the top three spots.

 

 

NOTABLE CHART MOVEMENT

Halestorm returns with a bang as “Apocalyptic” narrowly misses debuting in the top 20 …

All That Remains continues their strong start with “This Probably Won’t End Well”…

Kid Rock picks up more believers for “First Kiss” – increasing spins over 200% …

Nearly two months after it began receiving airplay, “Forgive & Forget” by You Me At Six finally cracks the Top 50.  Whether that’s the tipping point for a song that would have been expected to fare better as the follow-up to a single (“Room To Breathe”) that spent three months in the Top 10 remains to be seen.

 

 

THREE UP & THREE DOWN

MOVING UP
Marilyn Manson – “Deep Six”
Halestorm – “Apocalyptic”
All That Remains – “This Probably Won’t End Well”

 

DROPPING DOWN
Godsmack – “Something Different”
Pop Evil – “Beautiful”
Shaman’s Harvest – “Dangerous”

 

 

JL’s PICK OF THE WEEK

MARILYN MANSON – “Deep Six”

Not being particularly a fan of one of rock’s more polarizing artists, this isn’t something I would have expected to name as one of the catchier songs at a given moment, but I suppose it goes to show that you just never know.  Brooding & lively at the same time, Manson has cited both post-punk and classic blues as influencing his more recent work, but for me in this case, it’s the guitar work that sells the song.

 

 

I CALL B#LL$HIT!

Good news/bad news again this week.   I’d be far more excited to see “Gotta Get Away” exit the Active Rock chart if it weren’t replaced immediately by another song by The Black Keys.  It’s amazing how anyone can call this song, or Arctic Monkeys or Cage The Elephant song “active rock” with a straight face.   By comparison, Fall Out Boy seems downright legitimate … but only by comparison.  Around 900 spins were thrown away by the format this week on those four songs alone.

 

 

JON’s THREE CENTS

Sometimes a rant can be good for the soul…cathartic.  I sure hope that’s the case, because it’s increasingly difficult to avoid becoming angry at the deep funk that Active Rock radio, and by extension as well as by design the Active Rock chart, has fallen in to.  I’m sure that it’s been hard to miss in my comments, but it’s hard to hide when I’m ready to pound my keyboard in sheer frustration.  Maybe if I just let a few things out I’ll feel better, so here goes…

There’s no excuse for lazily pounding listeners over the head with the same songs week after week after week…there just isn’t.  There’s no shortage of airplay-worthy material right now.  If anything, there’s a significant glut of it. At any given moment over the past year or so, there are roughly 2x-3x the number of current (less than 90 days old) singles available than any station could reasonably and effectively play.  That’s just the number that I can identify from my vantage point in the cheap seats; the true total is certainly even higher.  There may, however, be some reasons that playing the same songs over and over, week after week is becoming increasingly common.

 

1) Too few radio decision-makers seem to have a clue as to what “Active Rock” means.  To paraphrase the famous quote about obscenity, when trying to identify songs from the ill-defined genre…“I know it when I hear it.”  More important though, is an ability to know what it isn’t when you hear it.  This is the basis for the “I Call B#ll$hit!” segment of the HRD Radio Report, an idea that predates my presence, but one that I wholeheartedly endorse.

Programmers who are intent on playing “alternapop” artists like Black Keys, Arctic Monkeys and the like ad nauseam, should just get the hell away from Active Rock and take those artists and songs with them.

 

2) Too few decision-makers seem to have an interest in actually being Active Rock.  It feels as though many are simply frustrated that they aren’t working for an Alternative station somewhere, and take their frustrations out on the listeners by shoveling pile after steaming pile at them to satisfy their own tastes instead of living up to the format.  The business desperately needs to find, and then empower, people who WANT to program the format, instead of sticking square pegs into round holes.

 

3) And finally…consolidation.  The two problems that I mentioned first are then multiplied and magnified by a consolidation of ownership.  This leaves stations under the same ownership playing largely the same songs at the direction of “consultants” or “vice-president in charge of programming” or whatever lofty title was handed off to whatever power players that were able to position themselves into a high-paid job.

Quite literally, one person / one chain / one group acting with a single mind can almost instantly create a “hit” today, at least in terms of chart position.  From a business standpoint, the joint ownership makes sense and really isn’t the issue I’m raving about; it’s the internal decision to treat every market and every audience as generically as possible that creates the problem.

All things in music seem to be cyclical, so maybe this is simply another cycle.  The problem that I have with this particular cycle, and the concern that it creates, is that it could be the sort of cycle that leads to the death of a format/genre.  It’s eerily similar to what is seen on the Mainstream Rock chart, where songs move at a glacial pace, with little semblance of rhyme or reason as to what hits or doesn’t hit.

The Mainstream Rock format is at such a low point that it probably shouldn’t even continue to exist in its current state.  Of course, if you are amongst those who believe that five nationwide spins per week is worthy of being referred to as a Top 50 song, and you like hearing the same songs played repeatedly in heavy rotation for six to nine months at a time, then you probably still believe in the format.

There!  Rant over….for now…

 

 

FUTURES REPORT

In the next HRD Radio Report, we’ll likely see how long radio can beat the same dead horses.   At this point anything else might be cause for celebration with supersized fonts.

 

 

WRAP-UP

That’s all for this week.  Tune in to HardRockDaddy.com every Tuesday for the HRD Radio Report. \m/