Round 2, Pt. 2: Who's The Worst ALTERNATIVE RADIO GOD?

Round 1, pt. 1 is here. Round 1, pt. 2 is here. Round 2, pt. 1 is here. After that last post, 311 is currently the front-runner for Worst Alternative Radio God with 8 Shit Points. But 12 more qualifying acts will have their chance to stink up the joint in...Round 2, pt. 2!

Remember: -1 Shit Points means I'm glad the song exists. 0 Shit Points means I don't really care, it's the radio, whatever. 1 Shit Point means I wish the song didn't exist. 2 Shit Points, or a DEUCE, means I wish it didn't exist, and it made the chart's Top 5. Inescapability definitely makes a bad song worse.

Foo Fighters
“Learn To Fly” (peak: #1, debut: 10/2/99) 2
“Stacked Actors” (peak: #25, debut: 2/12/00) 1
“Breakout” (peak: #8, debut: 4/1/00) -1
“Next Year” (peak: #17, debut: 9/9/00) 0
“The One” (peak: #14, debut: 12/22/01) 0
“All My Life” (peak: #1, debut: 9/14/02) -1
“Times Like These” (peak: #5, debut: 1/25/03) 2
Shit Points (Round 2): 3

A quarter-century later, it might be hard to appreciate how gratuitously banal the Foo Fighters' “Learn To Fly,” the first single from There Is Nothing Left To Lose, was in 1999. Trite lyrical (you tell those “angels,” Dave!) and tepid sonic choices (that echo at the end of lines!) added up to obscenely hokey, glossed-up midtempo cheese. It was real bodysnatchers business, so offensive in its inoffensiveness, and still earns a DEUCE after decades of normalization. “Stacked Actors” is reportedly directed at Courtney Love, as was the style at the time, and merely a snooze in comparison. “Breakout” was a bubblegum-grunge acne metaphor and a relative relief. The modest, if needlessly prolonged, farewell “Next Year” hints at the problem: Dave Grohl’s increased confidence and comfort in his pop gifts, just as the road dog’s life got a lot less interesting.

A swingin’ little kiss-off from the Orange County soundtrack, hooked around a groanworthy “feel like this”/“feel like shiss” rhyme, helped plug the gap until 2002’s One By One, an even more exasperated mix of romantic frustration and touring woes. The frantic, unpredictable arrangement makes “All My Life” a great song about serial not-quite-monogamy, but those jazzy little drum tricks and pedal hops fail to dignify the vain metaphors (“I’m a New Day Rising!” - dude, you’re barely a Black Sheets Of Rain) and audio echoes on “Times Like These,” even more of a DEUCE on principle than “Learn To Fly.” Every time Grohl slows the tempo, his self-importance increases, as if he decided his purpose on earth was to write post-hardcore Hallmark cards. 

Weezer
“Photograph” (peak: #17, debut: 11/10/01) -1
“Dope Nose” (peak: #8, debut: 3/23/02) -1
“Keep Fishin’” (peak: #15, debut: 7/13/02) -1
“Beverly Hills” (peak: #1, debut: 4/9/05) 2
“We Are All On Drugs” (peak: #10, debut: 7/23/05) 1
“Perfect Situation” (peak: #1, debut: 10/22/05) -1
“This Is Such A Pity” (peak: #31, debut: 4/8/06) -1
Shit Points (Round 2): -2

Despite my disdain for Dave Grohl’s middling in the mirror, there’s nothing wrong with post-hardcore bubblegum! Weezer was dropping truckloads of sweet, catchy nonsense in the early ‘00s: not only releasing 2002’s Maladroit exactly a year after The Green Album, but posting dozens of demos online for the diehards. Screw the label dictates! Rivers Cuomo knew he had an audience, and he was gonna deliver! Then, suddenly…he didn’t. Album number 5 fell off the schedule and the demos got pulled. Apparently, Cuomo had learned meditation from Rick Rubin, and wanted to take his time. Weezer was ready to get personal again.

Considering “personal” once meant baring the sexual and romantic neuroses of a hair metal/indie rock dichotomy, it was a sad surprise when “personal” turned out to be a rewrite of Steve Miller’s “The Joker” with extra Offspring-esque vocal samples, and facile lyrics about how Rivers always wanted to be glamorous, but now he just accepts he’s a dork. Great, man! Couldn’t you have just covered “The Joker” instead? While older fans cringed at this hollow DEUCE, younger ones made it a hit. But even bright-eyed millennials couldn’t get behind “We Are All On Drugs,” a Reefer Madness rewrite of “The Diarrhea Song” (the intentional '80s camp of “This Is Such A Pity” is the clever to “Drugs”’ stupid). Despite insipid “hero/zero” rhymes on the verse, the plaintive, wordless moans on “Perfect Situation”'s chorus still touched that vulnerable spot where Weezer hit so many ‘90s kids. Cuomo’s confusion about what people wanted may have led to pandering manchild shtick, like a nerdy Steven Tyler, but the hooks hadn’t left him entirely. Yet.

Blink-182
“First Date” (peak: #6, debut: 2/2/02) -1
“Feeling This” (peak: #2, debut: 10/18/03) -1
“I Miss You” (peak: #1, debut: 1/17/04) -1
“Down” (peak: #10, debut: 5/29/04) 0
“Always” (peak: #39, debut: 1/1/05) -1
“Not Now” (peak: #18, debut: 11/5/05) 0
“Up All Night” (peak: #3, debut: 7/30/11) 0
Shit Points (Round 2): -4

After one last explicitly youth-oriented hit, Blink-182 took some time to decide whether they’d sing about teenage boners forever, or admit they were circling thirty. The self-serious liner notes on their self-titled 2003 album chafed against an opening song about “feeling this,” but on the whole, they'd managed to achieve a hyperromantic uplift more abstract but still youthfully effusive, not unlike The Cure (whose Robert Smith sings on one track). Your mileage will likely vary when Tom DeLonge describes “the voice inside moy ‘ed,” like Bert the chimney sweep calling Mary Poppins in tears at 3am, and I wish the otherwise ideal “Always” hadn’t been the third weepy wail of woo in a row. But compare that last song to Bloc Party’s “This Modern Love” and wonder if that era’s vulnerable but propulsive Brit bands benefited from drummer Travis Barker’s influence.

DeLonge’s desire to sing about other worlds and states of being, represented in the album outtake “Not Now,” included on an ’05 Greatest Hits album, led him to quit the group and start Angels & Airwaves, a space-themed “multimedia project” so stratospherically ambitious he was either going to depart for Saturn or return to Blink to financially recoup. The latter predictably occurred with 2011’s “Up All Night,” about insomnia rather than a rager. While the song’s litany of universal concerns isn’t embarrassing, the limits of the power trio format make it hard to keep such grandiosity fresh.

Korn
“Alone I Break” (peak: #34, debut: 11/30/02) 1
“Did My Time” (peak: #17, debut: 7/12/03) 1
“Right Now” (peak: #13, debut: 10/25/03) 0
“Word Up” (peak: #17, debut: 9/4/04) 0
“Another Brick In The Wall” (peak: #37, debut: 12/25/04) 1
“Twisted Transistor” (peak: #9, debut: 10/8/05) 1
“Coming Undone” (peak: #14, debut: 3/25/06) 1
Shit Points (Round 2): 5

I called Jonathan Davis a humorless Mike Patton last round, right? Well, he kept that miserable mojo going in the ‘00s. I almost feel bad mocking this stuff, because anyone earnestly on board was really going through it. But was the trip-hop beneath Davis’ bellyaching on “Alone I Break” meant as a Massive Attack tribute? “Did My Time” could be a cruddied-up cover from Queen’s The Miracle. When the always “ow!”-prone Davis finally pays explicit tribute to ‘80s R&B, why is the arrangement less heavy than Cameo’s? Did they not know “Another Brick In The Wall” was already covered on alt-radio for The Faculty? Darkly, the outright abusiveness of “Right Now” is less dull than the agonized norm. 

I wish I could give it up for “Twisted Transistor,” one of those earnest “music makes the world better” songs (co-written by Avril Lavigne’s pals in The Matrix!), but for fart-metal. Unfortunately, the pop-pro collaborators further streamline a sound that was already starving for novelty. “Coming Undone” ironically sounds far more put together than they did in the ‘90s, and far less excited about claiming otherwise.

Linkin Park
“Faint” (peak: #1, debut: 5/17/03) -1
“Numb” (peak: #1, debut: 10/4/03) -1
“Lying From You” (peak: #1, debut: 2/28/04) 0
“Breaking The Habit” (peak: #1, debut: 6/26/04) -1
“What I’ve Done” (peak: #1, debut: 4/21/07) -1
“Bleed It Out” (peak: #2, debut: 6/30/07) -1
“Shadow Of The Day” (peak: #2, debut: 10/20/07) -1
Shit Points (Round 2): -6

Off the top of my head, I struggle to think up a sophomore album that was less of a slump than Linkin Park’s Meteora. Their debut, Hybrid Theory, went Diamond off the idea that rap-metal could be just as pop as Depeche Mode. Meteora confirmed the premise with hit after hit after hit, subtle variations on “In The End”s hybrid (hiyo!) of decades of adolescent angst and rebellion. “Faint”’s techno-mosh with string sample, “Numb”s Alice Cooper ballad with or without Jay-Z interpolation, “Breaking The Habit”’s post-anime new wave intensity. Even if you recoiled from the maudlin teenage poetry of it all, only “Lying From You” could be honestly taken has “more of the same.” What compares? Led Zeppelin II? Even Britney’s Oops! fell off after the third single. And Thriller’s not really a sophomore album.

Despite a producer credit for Rick Rubin, 2007’s Minutes To Midnight wasn’t an attempt to cross over further, but an attempt to figure out a core self they could forever riff off. Honestly, kind of a Led Zeppelin III. “What I’ve Done” was subtly grander than Chester Bennington’s earlier therapy breakthroughs, Mike Shinoda harmonizing rather than playing Flavor Flav. Between “Done” and the NSYNC-meets-The Joshua Tree schmaltz triumph of “Shadow Of The Day” was “Bleed It Out,” a hip-hop handclap screamo hootenanny unlike anything I’ve ever heard before. The infectious oddity suggests how sincerely these guys must have loved crafting I’m Not OK Odelay.

Papa Roach
“Take Me” (peak: #23, debut: 5/7/05) 0
“To Be Loved” (peak: #14, debut: 8/19/06) -1
“Forever” (peak: #2, debut: 2/3/07) 2
“Time Is Running Out” (peak: #17, debut: 8/18/07) 1
“Lifeline” (peak: #3, debut: 1/31/09) 0
“I Almost Told You That I Loved You” (peak: #35, debut: 7/4/09) 1
“Kick In The Teeth” (peak: #18, debut: 7/10/10) 0
Shit Points (Round 2): 3

“Take Me” was too generic a hard rock heartbreaker to either offend or successfully follow the crossover nadir of “Scars,” but “To Be Loved” - the first single from 2006’s The Paramour Sessions - was Papa Roach’s best single since “Last Resort.” The campy mix of woah-oh punk, frantic rapping and hair metal flash reaches Rebel Yell levels of delirious, bad-boy absurdity. Technically, the you’re-too-good-for-me divorce drama of “Forever” is just as dramatically bananas, but the second verse’s detailing of tang addiction (“another girl, little dirty girl…you’re my heroin”) turns my whiplash smile into a gas face. DEUCE. “Time Is Running Out,” Jacoby Shaddix promising to "slap you in the face" before begging “catch me when I fall,” is another unwelcome missive from Billy Idol’s darkest timeline. 

“Lifeline” sounds like Buckcherry with a Joshua Tree hammer-on lick on the chorus, and I guess it’s the latter that makes these guys more “alternative” than, I don’t know, late Bon Jovi. “I Almost Told You That I Loved You” opens by announcing “you know I love it when you’re down on your knees” and gets uglier, which might be why it went 15 spots higher on the mainstream rock chart. “Kick In The Teeth,” a #2 over there and a #18 here, similarly suggests Black Keys fans found these creeps increasingly gauche. But the Gary Glitter chorus hook just couldn’t be denied entirely, I guess.

Coldplay
“Speed Of Sound” (peak: #5, debut: 5/7/05) 0
“Fix You” (peak: #18, debut: 8/27/05) -1
“Talk” (peak: #5, debut: 11/19/05) 0
“Violet Hill” (peak: #9, debut: 5/17/08) 0
“Viva La Vida” (peak: #1, debut: 6/21/08) -1
“Lost!” (peak: #10, debut: 9/27/08) -1
“Life In Technicolor II” (peak: #21, debut: 2/28/09) -1
Shit Points (Round 2): -4

Whatever 2005’s X&Y represented to kind-hearted alt-rockers and chart-minded rock writers after A Rush Of Blood To The Head and before Viva La Vida Or Death And All Her Friends, it’s just the album with “Fix You” on it today. I won’t bother sharing what sociocultural event made the song a tearjerker for the rest of my life, as you probably have your own. And if you don’t? Good for you. You and your lack of candlelight vigils.

When I first saw these guys prancing around like Les Miserables extras for the “Violet Hill” video in 2008, I thought maybe they’d finally gone over a pretentious cliff. But “Viva La Vida” merited those pretensions and then some, an almost biblically gorgeous reflection on the inevitability of change from a deposed king’s point of view. There couldn’t have been a better song for the end of the Bush dynasty, and those Les Mis associations have helped it survive the Obama age: the song’s symphonic swells aren’t heralding a new messiah, but juxtaposed with an ex-despot’s regret. It’s the first (only?) Coldplay song that isn’t beautiful in spite of itself, and I can hardly imagine what Flowers For Algernon scenario explains its creation. The following singles were pretty, though.

The Killers
“Shadowplay” (peak: #19, debut: #11/3/07) -1
“Human” (peak: #6, debut: 10/11/08) 1
“Spaceman” (peak: #8, debut: 12/27/08) 0
“A Dustland Fairytale” (peak: #36, debut: 6/20/09) 1
“Runaways” (peak: #7, debut: 7/8/12) 1
“Miss Atomic Bomb” (peak: #23, debut: 11/17/12) 0
“Shot At The Night” (peak: #20, debut: 10/12/13) -1
Shit Points (Round 2): 1

The Killers’ Joy Division cover, hypothetically promoting the biopic Control and tacked onto the very end of its credits, is the best kind of baffling. It’s nearly as ramshackle as the original, but festooned with extra hooks (synth lines! backing “hoo-hoo”s!) and Brandon Flowers shrieking “WOW!” before the coda. It’s not irreverent, so much as enthusiastic beyond the confines of historical logic. Between that and the equally odd, non-charting Lou Reed duet “Tranquilize,” I was pretty excited for the band’s third album. Then came “Human,” with its notoriously inane chorus (“are we human or are we dancer?”) settling once and for all whether these guys were shmucks. Of course, that was far less my problem than the song sounding like Alphaville’s “Forever Young,” only less hysterical. Hysteria was the Killers’ saving grace!

“Spaceman” is at least a little more batty than Peter Schilling, but “A Dustland Fairytale” confirmed the deathly fact that Brandon Flowers could now afford to play Springsteen right, all the timpani and melodrama where it’s supposed to be. Yawn! But where ‘80s acts would quickly flash out of the pan, nu-wavers like The Killers were encased in amber, playing to cults and keeping their festival status as long as they maintained their shtick. So when Battle Born offered yet more Limahl & The E Street Band in 2012, it didn’t matter if “Miss Atomic Bomb” was an overwrought “Video Killed The Radio Star” anymore than if Springsteen’s “Radio Nowhere” was an overwrought “867-5309/Jenny.” At least they got Anthony “M83” Gonazlez - well established as a master of John Hughes phantasmagoria - to gussy up “Shot At The Night,” the rare new single for a hits comp more deserving of inclusion than the “hits" that preceded it.

Rise Against
“Audience Of One” (peak: #4, debut: 1/17/09) 0
“Savior” (peak: #3, debut: 7/4/09) -1
“Help Is On The Way” (peak: #2, debut: 2/5/11) -1
“Make It Stop (September’s Children)” (peak: #6, 6/18/11) 0
“Satellite” (peak: #7, debut: 11/26/11) -1
“Wait For Me” (peak: #14, debut: 7/7/12) 0
“I Don’t Want To Be Here Anymore” (peak: #13, debut: 6/28/14) 0
Shit Points (Round 2): -3

Despite the same production team as the previous album, 2008’s Appeal To Reason was glossier and more melodic than before, a noble enough experiment that unfortunately made Rise Against sound less like boisterous young Bad Religion fans and more like an unfunny Bowling For Soup. “Savior,” likely the band’s biggest hit, not only brings the intensity back, but might be the only alt-airplay song about amicably ending a codependent relationship (“I don’t hate you!”). 

The singles from 2011’s Endgame are ironically devoid of finality today, offering more spirited melodic punk recorded at Bill Stevenson’s Blasting Room, anthems against bullying and ecological damage guaranteed to encourage earnest kids, and parents who have albums Stevenson drummed on. The faster the better as far as I’m concerned, with “Satellite” in particular deserving a manic moshpit (or kickline). Three years later, devoid of crossover dreams, they remained Bad Religion fans who didn’t understand why the world had to be so cruel. Fair!

Muse
“Resistance” (peak: #1, debut: 1/2/10) 0
“Neutron Star Collision (Love Is Forever)” (peak: #14, debut: 6/5/10) -1
“Undisclosed Desires” (peak: #4, debut: 8/21/10) 0
“Madness” (peak: #1, debut: 9/8/12) -1
“Panic Station" (peak: #2, debut: 2/2/13) 0
“Follow Me” (peak: #19, debut: 7/27/13) 0
“Psycho” (peak: #39, debut: 4/4/15) -1
Shit Points (Round 2): -3

Now established as international rock gods (among the global citizenry that still wanted rock gods), Muse clearly didn’t feel the need to rock so hard. That or they were eager for a pop crossover. Either way, the singles after “Uprising” on 2009’s The Resistance, while still vocally operatic, were more musically mundane. I do enjoy “Neutron Star Collision (Love Is Forever),” the love theme from Twilight: Eclipse, which sounds like its meant for Highlander: Requiem.

“Madness” is pop power ballad perfection on their own terms, Matt Bellamy shuddering and sighing over an instrument I’ll forever call “dubstep guitar,” somehow not spooked by the sudden bursts of “Bohemian Rhapsody” harmony behind him. The song itself could be Eric Carmen’s, but the arrangement is all Muse. While admirably hammy, the horned-up “Panic Station” and the Moroderized “Follow Me” could be from Danny Elfman's Another Nightmare Before Christmas soundtrack. I'm sure younger fans had no problem with that, but I'll always prefer rock to rock cabaret. One reason why “Psycho,” co-produced by Mutt Lange, was a welcome return to power trio pyrotechnics. 

Cage The Elephant
“Come A Little Closer” (peak: #1, debut: 8/24/13) 0
“Take It Or Leave It” (peak: #12, debut: 4/5/14) -1
“Cigarette Daydreams” (peak: #1, debut: 9/13/14) -1
“Mess Around” (peak: #1, debut: 11/14/15) 2
“Trouble” (peak: #1, debut: 4/30/16) 0
“Cold Cold Cold” (peak: #5, debut: 1/28/17) 0
“Whole Wide World” (peak: #6, debut: 7/15/17) 1
Shit Points (Round 2): 1

While I think the Black Keys are mediocre mush compared to the White Stripes, their influence was welcome on Cage The Elephant, who’d gone from hillbilly hipster mugging to soft-focus guitar-pop in the five years between their self-titled debut and 2013’s Melaphobia. “Take It Or Leave It” even recalls the quirky clatter-pop of OK Go, an evolution almost unthinkable when singer Matt Shultz was hooting about the preacher-man on “Ain’t No Rest For The Wicked.” Had I still been a scamp comparing radio-fare to crit picks in 2013, I might have said Cage The Elephant was Deerhunter’s drowsy, refracted rock done right.

I wouldn’t have said that about 2015’s Tell Me I’m Pretty, though, with the songwriting straightening out and Shultz a drawling hambone once again. “Mess Around,” a too-cute twist that could actually be The Black Keys, is a dull, grating DEUCE. “Trouble” might be as excruciating if Shultz wasn’t hidden behind echo & twinkle, and “Cold Cold Cold” almost could be mistaken for an actual mid-‘60s curio revived for a Wes Anderson movie. Tragically, Cage overloads their Wreckless Eric cover with Spectoresque chintz, trying to turn a ‘70s classic into a ‘60s tribute and winding up with a rejected Target ad. 

twenty one pilots
“Heavydirtysoul” (peak: #2, debut: 12/31/16) 0
“Jumpsuit” (peak: #1, debut: 7/21/18) 0
“My Blood” (peak: #2, debut: 9/8/18) -1
“Chlorine” (peak: #1, debut: 2/09/19) 0
“The Hype” (peak: #1, debut: 7/27/19) -1
“Level Of Concern” (peak: #1, debut: 4/18/20) -1
“Christmas Saves The Year” (peak: #32, 12/19/20) -1
Shit Points (Round 2): -4

“Heavydirtysoul,” the last alt-radio hit from Blurryface, reminded me I forgot to include Moby in their older sibling’s CD binder last round. But with the world now aware just how many sounds a midwestern millennial could surround his neuroses with, what would 21 Pilots do for an encore? Perhaps unsurprisingly, the answer on 2019's Trench was to get a little heavier, a little more ominous, in the tradition of Pink Floyd and Radiohead. Pop radio wasn’t impressed, but alternative was all-in on the echo-fest, from the rap-metal “Paranoid Android” of “Jumpsuit” to the dark disco of “My Blood” to the poison party metaphor “Chlorine” to the cautiously optimistic synth-psychedelia of “The Hype.” Singer-songwriter Tyler Joseph’s eternally adolescent, adenoidal voice was a guaranteed deal-breaker for many ‘90s survivors. Still, not just Beck fans, but Todd Rundgren fans, are sleeping on these guys. 

21P's devotion to consoling kids was confirmed when the band dropped a dance-jam for lovers in lockdown by April 2020 (“would you be my little quarantine?”), followed by a soulful yuletide greeting in December, complete with sleigh bells and “bum-ba-bum-bum.” If Stevie Wonder had put “Christmas Saves The Year” out, people would have lost their minds. I went into this project with the most ghoulish of intentions, and now I’m thinking I need to hear more tattooed ProToolers of today. You pulled me back in, alternative airplay charts! You pulled me back in!

THE FOUL FIVE
311 (2 Rounds): 8 Shit Points
Papa Roach (2 Rounds): 7 Shit Points
Korn (2 Rounds): 6 Shit Points
Cage The Elephant (2 Rounds): 4 Shit Points
The Foo Fighters (2 Rounds): 1 Shit Point

To sum up, Korn, Papa Roach and Cage The Elephant all acquired shit points for the second round in a row, but 311 still holds the lead. And none of them have as many songs left to squirt as The Foo Fighters, who’ve already bellowed their way out of the negative numbers. What will come as we reach...Round 3?!

If you have a different question, or something else to say, send it to anthonyisright at gmail dot com.