HRD Radio Report – Week Ending 5/5/18

 HRD Radio Report – Week Ending 5/5/18

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. The following is the Active Rock Mediabase Chart for the week ending 5/5/18. All exclusive HRD content is featured below the chart:

CHART	CHART	ARTIST	SONG TITLE	RADIO
POSITION	POSITION			SPINS
THIS WEEK	LAST WEEK
1	2	BAD WOLVES	“Zombie”	2123
2	1	SHINEDOWN	“DEVIL”	1976
3	4	GODSMACK	“Bulletproof”	1876
4	3	THREE DAYS GRACE	“The Mountain”	1618
5	5	FIVE FINGER DEATH PUNCH	“Gone Away”	1344
6	7	JONATHAN DAVIS	“What It Is”	1305
7	11	GHOST	“Rats”	1079
8	9	FOZZY	“Painless”	1042
9	8	RED SUN RISING	“Deathwish”	1027
10	6	NOTHING MORE	“Do You Really Want It?”	995
11	10	PEARL JAM	“Can’t Deny Me”	920
12	12	THEORY OF A DEADMAN	“Straight Jacket”	887
13	13	MUSE	“Thought Contagion”	878
14	17	ROYAL BLOOD	“Hole In Your Heart”	793
15	15	FEVER 333	“Walking In My Shoes”	757
16	16	FROM ASHES TO NEW	“Crazy”	701
17	14	BREAKING BENJAMIN	“Red Cold River”	692
18	20	DOROTHY	“Flawless”	525
19	22	SEVENDUST	“Dirty”	471
20	18	RISE AGAINST	“House On Fire”	445
21	25	STONE TEMPLE PILOTS	“Roll Me Under”	442
22	21	PARKWAY DRIVE	“The Void”	430
23	24	UNDEROATH	“Rapture”	417
24	19	A PERFECT CIRCLE	“Talk Talk”	390
25	26	SHAMAN’S HARVEST	“The Devil In Our Wake”	358
26	30	ESCAPE THE FATE	“Broken Heart”	339
27	28	BULLET FOR MY VALENTINE	“Over It”	307
28	39	FOO FIGHTERS	“The Line”	301
29	23	A DAY TO REMEMBER	“Same About You”	281
30	27	IMAGINE DRAGONS	“Whatever It Takes”	267
31	35	IN THIS MOMENT (f. Rob Halford)	“Black Wedding”	245
32	31	MESSER	“Make This Life”	241
33	29	TRIVIUM	“Endless Night”	234
34	32	STONE SOUR	“St. Marie”	230
35	48	FIVE FINGER DEATH PUNCH	“Sham Pain”	176
36	0	GUNS N’ ROSES	“Shadow Of Your Love (2018)”	174
37	44	SKINDRED	“That’s My Jam”	159
38	40	ASKING ALEXANDRIA	“Alone In A Room”	144
39	34	TREMONTI	“Take You With Me”	144
40	33	RED	“Gone”	142
41	37	BLACK STONE CHERRY	“Bad Habit”	126
42	36	BLACKTOP MOJO	“Dream On”	122
43	38	JACOB CADE	“What’s Your Problem?!”	90
44	45	LETTERS FROM THE FIRE	“Comfort You”	81
45	42	GRETA VAN FLEET	“Black Smoke Rising”	81
46	43	VYCES	“Thin Luck”	80
47	46	THE DEAD DASIES	“Rise Up”	72
48	47	NATHANIEL RATELIFF/NIGHTSWEATS	“You Worry Me”	70
49	58	PANIC! AT THE DISCO	“Say Amen (Saturday Night)”	65
50	60	JACK WHITE	“Over And Over And Over”	52

 

 

PUBLISHER’S PICK OF THE WEEK (By Adam Waldman)

GUNS N’ ROSES – “Shadow Of Your Love”

How does a song that is over 30 years old become a current radio hit?  The answer…when it is released by the band that should have been the biggest rock band in the world, but broke up long before that happened.  Of course, you can make an argument that they’ve achieved that status with their current reunion being (by far) the biggest attraction that rock and metal has seen in years.  But I digress.

The official video for “Shadow Of Your Love” was released this week to coincide with the announcement of their $999 Locked N’ Loaded box set.  At that price point, most fans will only hear the unreleased tracks on radio or in a streaming format.

Active Rock radio has already started spinning the song, which entered the chart at #36 this week.  I can’t help but wonder…why the sudden support for GNR?  It is reminiscent of when labels chased the grunge trend by signing any band that wore flannel shirts, a depressed look on their face, and played melancholic music.

Should GNR be played on Active Rock radio?  Absolutely!  However, the format has largely ignored bands like this in the past.  In fact, in recent years, Slash has had a number of great songs that should have been in heavy rotation, but most of them barely made a dent at radio.  A few gained some traction, but never as much as genre staple acts receive.

“Shadow Of Your Love” is no better fit than any other GNR or Slash song, but it’s part of a bigger news story.  Is it a great lost track from the band?  Not especially.  It’s a solid tune that is in the vein of other Appetite songs, but not quite up to the ridiculously high bar that was set by one of the best rock albums of all-time.  Musically, it definitely has its moments, but if you listen to the lyrics, the song falls short of the rock and roll swagger of the rest of the album.  Truth be told, the lyrics are kind of generic and immature.  Axl Rose sounds good on the song, but not nearly as good as he does on the rest of Appetite.

This is not meant to slam GNR in any way.  In a vacuum, “Shadow Of Your Love” is far superior to much of what is regularly featured on the Top 50 chart.  However, it pales in comparison to a classic album that has stood the test of time with flying colors.

 

 

PUBLISHER’S PREDICTIONS (By Adam Waldman)

I’m not too proud to admit when I’m wrong.  Last week, it was starting to look like Bad Wolves would peak at #2 with their cover of “Zombie,” just as Five Finger Death Punch did with their cover of “Gone Away.”  Aside from the fact that one is from (arguably) the biggest modern band in rock/metal, the fate of these two songs is probably different because of fan passion.  “Gone Away” is another in a long line of FFDP songs that ran up the chart, while “Zombie” is an incredibly hot track that put a band on the map.

Bad Wolves clearly had a lot more left in the tank than the trends showed last week.  While Shinedown continued to moderately increase their spins this week, “Zombie” soared to the top of the chart on nearly 7x the amount of spins that “DEVIL” received this week.

Will Shinedown be a one-week wonder, or will they battle back to the top?

Will both recent chart-toppers begin to drop and make room for Godsmack to rise to #1?

The answers to both of these questions will be revealed in the next few weeks.  What looks like a virtual lock is that Bad Wolves, Shinedown, and Godsmack will be in the top 3 for the next few weeks.  Eventually, it looks like the next battle may be between Ghost and Jonathan Davis.
 

 

HRD SPIN CONTROL (by Adam Waldman and Jon Loveless)

Each week, we will share the songs that we think should be added to rotations, alongside the songs that we feel should be dropped from rotations, either because they are a bad fit for the format, or because they have run their course and it’s time for a new single from the artist.

SPIN IT…

WAYLAND – “Ghost”

KOBRA AND THE LOTUS – “Velvet Roses”

ACE FREHLEY – “Bronx Boy”

NO RESOLVE – “What You Deserve”

THE LAZYS – “Nothing But Trouble”

THE WILD! – “Another Bottle”

BLACK LABEL SOCIETY – “A Love Unreal”

ROYAL BLISS – “Devil With Angel Eyes”

 

DROP IT…

Panic At The Disco –“Say Amen”

Jack White – “Over And Over And Over”

Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats – “You Worry Me”

Imagine Dragons – “Whatever It Takes”

The Fever 333 – “Walking In My Shoes”

Muse – “Thought Contagion”

Pearl Jam – “Can’t Deny Me”

Red  – “Gone”

 

 

THE BREAKDOWN (by Jon Loveless)

NOTABLE CHART MOVEMENT

The strength of the lead single from Ghost remains clear, reaching the Top 10 in just its fourth week on the chart…

Sevendust has the only new entry in this week’s Top 20…

A 200% increase in spins week over week is more than enough to make Foo Fighters this week’s only new arrival in the Top 30…

This week’s Top 40 has three songs that weren’t include last week, among them the week’s highest charting debut single, a sort-of “lost track” from Guns N’ Roses.  Also making a nice jump this week is the first single from the upcoming Five Finger Death Punch album…

One other song debuts in the published chart this week, while another makes a re-entry after premiering eight weeks ago.   The former belongs to Panic At The Disco while the latter is from Jack White. 

 

 

THREE UP & THREE DOWN

RISING
Royal Blood – “Hole In Your Heart”
Ghost – “Rats”
Bad Wolves – “Zombie”

 

FALLING
Five Finger Death Punch – “Gone Away”
Nothing More – “Do You Really Want It?”
A Day To Remember – “Same About You”
 

 

 TRENDS AND OBSERVATIONS

With relatively few songs getting any airplay at all in the current radio climate, the ability for songs to move quickly seems to be enhanced.  If you hit, you can often hit big and quickly. Ghost reaches the Top 10 in its fourth week on the chart, but that’s not exactly exclusive company at the moment.  Of the current top five songs on the chart, three of them accomplished that same feat in equal or even less time.  Shinedown hit #10 in its second week, Godsmack reached #8 by its third week, and Three Days Grace was #9 on its fourth week.