The 20 Best Rock/Alternative Radio Hits of 2021
In some ways rock radio was mind-numbingly predictable in 2021, with Imagine Dragons and Twenty One Pilots and Foo Fighters dominating as usual, but then maybe the biggest rock song of the year was a baffling Four Seasons cover by an Italian band launched to stardom by Eurovision, so things can still be pretty unpredictable, for better or worse. Here's the Spotify playlist, and the other lists so far for pop and rap.
1. Willow f/ Travis Barker -
"Transparent Soul"
#7 Alternative Airplay, #9 Rock & Alternative Airplay, #76 Hot 100
The most tabloid famous member of the biggest pop punk band from the turn of the millennium, and a seasoned hip hop producer, Travis Barker was well positioned to be the ambassador of pop punk’s recent chart resurgence. But of all the records Barker has been a part of in the last couple years, my favorite is Willow Smith’s unlikely first Hot 100 hit in over a decade since “Whip My Hair” and its followup “21st Century Girl” positioned her as a pint-sized Rihanna.
2. Ayron Jones - "Mercy"
#1 Mainstream Rock Airplay, #13 Rock & Alternative Airplay
When I do these lists every year, I invariably poke fun at the “mainstream rock” chart, which despite the name covers far fewer radio stations than the ‘alternative’ chart, and has such little commercial relevance beyond the continually shrinking major label hard rock niche that the songs that hit #1 almost never crack the Hot 100 and are only occasionally by aging household names like AC/DC or Foo Fighters. But sometimes there are songs that make me glad I check that chart every week, like Ayron Jones’s “Mercy,” a big impressively sung anthem with an unexpected tempo change, and the first mainstream rock #1 by a Black man since Lenny Kravitz’s “Fly Away.”
#16 Alternative Airplay, #32 Rock & Alternative Airplay
The Maine (who are from Arizona, not Maine, of course) have been touring nationally, on the Warped Tour and as headliners, and charting pretty well on the Billboard 200 for over a decade, but I never even heard of them until this, their first minor radio hit. But true to its title, it had one of the stickiest choruses I heard this year, staying in my head after hearing it just once or twice.
4. Billie Eilish - "Therefore I Am"
#1 Alternative Airplay, #2 Rock & Alternative Airplay, #2 Hot 100
As I mentioned in my pop list the other day, most of Billie Eilish’s singles have done better on alt/rock radio than pop radio, with the surprising exception of Happier Than Ever’s guitar-driven title track. But “Therefore I Am” was her only total across-the-board pop and rock #1 of the Happier Than Ever singles campaign, not quite a “Bad Guy” sequel per se but still a banger in the context of Eilish’s muted, washed out aesthetic, and it had one of the best pandemic era music videos.
5. Halsey - "You Asked For This"
#19 Alternative Airplay, #49 Rock & Alternative Airplay
Halsey has always been kind of an ‘alternapop’ artist (her first hit, “New Americana,” peaked at #18 on alt-rock radio before she became a Top 40 fixture), but it still surprised me when she announced that she’d made an album with Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross of Nine Inch Nails. And as expected, the album’s rock radio single did a bit better than the pop radio single, although both songs felt a little too leftfield to get really big. The only song I really liked on the Machine Gun Kelly rock album was the Halsey duet, I wish that one got more of a radio push too.
6. The Pretty Reckless f/ Kim Thayil and Matt
Cameron - "Only Love Can Save Me Now"
#1 Mainstream Rock Airplay, #6 Rock & Alternative Airplay
Chris Cornell may have been the greatest male rock singer of his generation, and it was an inspired choice to have a number of women sing his songs at the 2019 “I Am The Highway” tribute concert, with Brandi Carlile going on to record and perform with the Soundgarden on multiple occasions afterwards. Another singer from that tribute concert, Taylor Momsen, invited half of Soundgarden to play on a song on The Pretty Reckless’s latest album, and gave them a big roaring 7/8 riff that sounds like it could’ve been on Badmotorfinger to tear loose on, and it’s just a delight to hear Thayil rip into that squealing solo.
7. Foushee - "Deep End"
#10 Alternative Airplay, #9 Rock & Alternative Airplay
“Deep End” is one of those songs that had a fascinating and complicated path to becoming a hit. In 2019, then-unknown New Jersey singer Foushee uploaded hundreds of recordings of her voice as a sample pack on the open source production platform Splice, and when Brooklyn rapper Sleepy Hallow used one of her hooks for his breakout TikTok hit “Deep End Freestyle,” she initially didn’t get any credit or royalties for the song. Eventually it was worked out and the Sleepy Hallow version charted on the Hot 100. But when Foushee released her solo version of the song, it took off on rock radio, becoming the first top 10 hit by a Black woman on alternative radio since Tracy Chapman over 30 years ago.
8. Bleachers - "Stop Making This Hurt"
#9 Alternative Airplay, #18 Rock & Alternative Airplay
Jack Antonoff is up for Producer of the Year, Non-Classical for the third year in a row at the Grammys, and his writing/production work (for Lorde, Taylor Swift, Lana Del Rey, St. Vincent, Clairo and Sia in 2021 alone) has totally eclipsed the fact that he also fronts a moderately successful alt-rock band. But the first Bleachers album in 4 years made a decent amount of noise with a Bruce Springsteen guest appearance and another radio hit, and I generally just really like the Bleachers sound.
9. Foo Fighters - "Making A Fire"
#6 Alternative Airplay, #1 Mainstream Rock Airplay, #1 Rock & Alternative Airplay
Foo Fighters have enjoyed the longevity they have in part because they’re an unabashed singles band that makes sure the first couple singles from every album sound snappy on the radio. But the first two singles from Medicine At Midnight felt like one of the first times Foo Fighters got indulgent and released lower energy songs first, and if nothing else it did feel like it made the album cycle last longer when they finally released a big, catchy uptempo song as the third single.
10. Wolf Alice - "Smile"
#19 Alternative Airplay, #40 Rock & Alternative Airplay
Wolf Alice’s third album Blue Weekend was one of 2021’s best major label rock albums, one of those moments where it felt like a relatively young band really challenged themselves and went all out trying to make their masterpiece. “Smile” wasn’t really one of my favorite tracks on the album and I was a little disappointed when it became their American radio single, but there is a certain charm in how Ellie Roswell switches from staccato quasi-rapped verses to these huge harmonies on the chorus that weirdly remind me of The B-52’s.
11. Bastille - "Survivin'"
#21 Alternative Airplay, #31 Rock & Alternative Airplay
Bastille has surprisingly grown on me a lot in the last few years, although it never seems to be with their biggest singles – I’m always wishing that “Good Grief” got more radio play than “Pompeii” or that “World Gone Mad” was bigger than “Quarter Past Midnight” or that “Survivin’” got as many spins as its follow-up “Distorted Light Beam.” But they’ve gotten really good at capturing a certain dystopian mood in the air, and “Survivin’” is one of those songs that’s kind of synonymous with the pandemic in my mind now, even if it has this kind of gentle upbeat groove.
12. Weezer - "All My Favorite Songs"
#1 Alternative Airplay, #1 Rock & Alternative Airplay
Weezer originally scheduled their hard rock-themed album Van Weezer to come out in spring 2020 to coincide with their stadium dates with Green Day and Fall Out Boy for the Hella Mega Tour. Green Day had already released their album by the time Covid hit and the tour was delayed for a year, but Weezer decided to push back Van Weezer twelve months. During that year, Rivers Cuomo recorded an entire other album with a very different chamber pop sound and released it a few months before Van Weezer, and the quiet and piano-driven “All My Favorite Songs” wound up being a bigger radio hit than anything from the band’s designated stadium rock album. My local rock station favored the AJR remix of “All My Favorite Songs” after it was released, but I really hated that.
13. Turnstile - "Blackout"
#35 Mainstream Rock Airplay
It’s been really cool to watch Turnstile grow from this respected band on the Baltimore hardcore scene to an internationally loved band that plays festivals all over the place and records for longtime major label hard rock outpost Roadrunner Records. But it still totally took me by surprised to check out the Mainstream Rock chart while doing my weekly rounds looking at the Billboard site and to see that Turnstile had a radio hit on their hands. And really, once you get back the little tick-tock drum machine sounds on “Blackout,” it is a pretty sturdy 98 Rock anthem.
14. Olivia Rodrigo - "Brutal"
#29 Alternative Airplay, #12 Hot 100
I would say “Good 4 U” is genuinely one of the best rock songs of the year, and a worthy addition to the canon of rock songs by pop stars, and I was a little disappointed that alternative stations didn’t pick up on it. However, the opening track from Sour did get a brief run on rock radio, and that one kicks ass too, sort of has a '90s Veruca Salt vibe.
15. Mammoth WVH - "Distance"
#1 Mainstream Rock Airplay, #9 Rock & Alternative Airplay
I’ll be honest, I wasn’t really checking for Wolfgang Van Halen’s debut single. But when this unfamiliar song came on the radio, it was good enough that I bothered to Shazam it and was pleasantly surprised that the second generation rock star put out a pretty moving song about the late Eddie Van Halen.
16. Clairo - "Sofia"
#5 Alternative Airplay, #8 Rock & Alternative Airplay, #98 Hot 100
The pipeline from critical acclaim and Pitchfork year-end lists to actual hit songs on alternative rock radio has gotten narrower and narrower over the last couple decades. Modest Mouse scored their third alternative #1 this year, and it still seems kind of surreal to me that they were the rare band that made that jump, while “Kyoto” stalled at #25 when iHeart Radio decided to give Phoebe Bridgers a big push after the Grammys. This year Clairo did make that jump, though with an older song, which makes sense because "Sofia" from her 2019 album is a lot catchier than anything on her Jack Antonoff-produced major label debut.
17. Guns N' Roses - "Hard Skool"
#10 Mainstream Rock Airplay, #24 Rock & Alternative Airplay
This year the former biggest band in the world released their first two new songs with Slash and Duff McKagan in decades to relatively little fanfare. The first, the absurd “Absurd,” wisely wasn’t promoted to radio, but the more conventional GNR rocker “Hard Skool” was, and did just okay on the Mainstream Rock chart (for comparison, Slash has had 7 songs with Myles Kennedy peak higher on the same chart in just the last decade). But I have to admit, I grew up on this band and I was happy to hear them in something resembling a return to form after the Chinese Democracy debacle.
18. Cannons - "Bad Dream"
#18 Alternative Airplay, #29 Rock & Alternative Airplay
I felt vindicated that “Fire For You” by the L.A. trio Cannons went to #1 on alternative radio in January, a few weeks after I put it high on my 2020 year-end list. Their next single didn’t do as well but maintained their hazy synth pop aesthetic, looking forward to their next album.
19. Twenty One Pilots - "Shy Away"
#1 Alternative Airplay, #1 Rock & Alternative Airplay, #87 Hot 100
I’m alright when Twenty One Pilots do songs without any rapping, “Shy Away” kind of sounds like if the Dismemberment Plan stayed together and mellowed out into a bland radio band.
20. Coldplay - "Higher Power"
#4 Alternative Airplay, #4 Rock & Alternative Airplay, #53 Hot 100
Coldplay have gone to lengths even U2 never dreamed of to remain one of the biggest bands in the world, including collaborations with the Chainsmokers and a whole host of rap and R&B superstars. This year they made an entire album with Swedish pop mastermind Max Martin, and I thought the lead single was pretty good, but it just did okay on alternative radio by Coldplay standards and never really crossed over to pop radio. But then they took things a step further and collaborated with BTS for an absolutely terrible song that predictably gave Coldplay their first #1 in over a decade.
The 10 Worst Rock/Alternative Radio Hits of
2021:
1. Maneskin - "Beggin'"
2. Glass Animals - "Heat Wave"
3. Imagine Dragons - "Follow You"
4. Lorde - "Solar Power"
5. Ghost – “Hunter’s Moon”
6. Milky Chance - "Colorado"
7. AJR - "Way Less Sad"
8. The Band Camino - "1 Last Cigarette"
9. Nessa Barrett f/ Jxdn - "La Di Die"
10. Greta Van Fleet - "My Way, Soon"
#7 Alternative Airplay, #9 Rock & Alternative Airplay, #76 Hot 100
The most tabloid famous member of the biggest pop punk band from the turn of the millennium, and a seasoned hip hop producer, Travis Barker was well positioned to be the ambassador of pop punk’s recent chart resurgence. But of all the records Barker has been a part of in the last couple years, my favorite is Willow Smith’s unlikely first Hot 100 hit in over a decade since “Whip My Hair” and its followup “21st Century Girl” positioned her as a pint-sized Rihanna.
#1 Mainstream Rock Airplay, #13 Rock & Alternative Airplay
When I do these lists every year, I invariably poke fun at the “mainstream rock” chart, which despite the name covers far fewer radio stations than the ‘alternative’ chart, and has such little commercial relevance beyond the continually shrinking major label hard rock niche that the songs that hit #1 almost never crack the Hot 100 and are only occasionally by aging household names like AC/DC or Foo Fighters. But sometimes there are songs that make me glad I check that chart every week, like Ayron Jones’s “Mercy,” a big impressively sung anthem with an unexpected tempo change, and the first mainstream rock #1 by a Black man since Lenny Kravitz’s “Fly Away.”
#16 Alternative Airplay, #32 Rock & Alternative Airplay
The Maine (who are from Arizona, not Maine, of course) have been touring nationally, on the Warped Tour and as headliners, and charting pretty well on the Billboard 200 for over a decade, but I never even heard of them until this, their first minor radio hit. But true to its title, it had one of the stickiest choruses I heard this year, staying in my head after hearing it just once or twice.
#1 Alternative Airplay, #2 Rock & Alternative Airplay, #2 Hot 100
As I mentioned in my pop list the other day, most of Billie Eilish’s singles have done better on alt/rock radio than pop radio, with the surprising exception of Happier Than Ever’s guitar-driven title track. But “Therefore I Am” was her only total across-the-board pop and rock #1 of the Happier Than Ever singles campaign, not quite a “Bad Guy” sequel per se but still a banger in the context of Eilish’s muted, washed out aesthetic, and it had one of the best pandemic era music videos.
#19 Alternative Airplay, #49 Rock & Alternative Airplay
Halsey has always been kind of an ‘alternapop’ artist (her first hit, “New Americana,” peaked at #18 on alt-rock radio before she became a Top 40 fixture), but it still surprised me when she announced that she’d made an album with Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross of Nine Inch Nails. And as expected, the album’s rock radio single did a bit better than the pop radio single, although both songs felt a little too leftfield to get really big. The only song I really liked on the Machine Gun Kelly rock album was the Halsey duet, I wish that one got more of a radio push too.
#1 Mainstream Rock Airplay, #6 Rock & Alternative Airplay
Chris Cornell may have been the greatest male rock singer of his generation, and it was an inspired choice to have a number of women sing his songs at the 2019 “I Am The Highway” tribute concert, with Brandi Carlile going on to record and perform with the Soundgarden on multiple occasions afterwards. Another singer from that tribute concert, Taylor Momsen, invited half of Soundgarden to play on a song on The Pretty Reckless’s latest album, and gave them a big roaring 7/8 riff that sounds like it could’ve been on Badmotorfinger to tear loose on, and it’s just a delight to hear Thayil rip into that squealing solo.
#10 Alternative Airplay, #9 Rock & Alternative Airplay
“Deep End” is one of those songs that had a fascinating and complicated path to becoming a hit. In 2019, then-unknown New Jersey singer Foushee uploaded hundreds of recordings of her voice as a sample pack on the open source production platform Splice, and when Brooklyn rapper Sleepy Hallow used one of her hooks for his breakout TikTok hit “Deep End Freestyle,” she initially didn’t get any credit or royalties for the song. Eventually it was worked out and the Sleepy Hallow version charted on the Hot 100. But when Foushee released her solo version of the song, it took off on rock radio, becoming the first top 10 hit by a Black woman on alternative radio since Tracy Chapman over 30 years ago.
#9 Alternative Airplay, #18 Rock & Alternative Airplay
Jack Antonoff is up for Producer of the Year, Non-Classical for the third year in a row at the Grammys, and his writing/production work (for Lorde, Taylor Swift, Lana Del Rey, St. Vincent, Clairo and Sia in 2021 alone) has totally eclipsed the fact that he also fronts a moderately successful alt-rock band. But the first Bleachers album in 4 years made a decent amount of noise with a Bruce Springsteen guest appearance and another radio hit, and I generally just really like the Bleachers sound.
#6 Alternative Airplay, #1 Mainstream Rock Airplay, #1 Rock & Alternative Airplay
Foo Fighters have enjoyed the longevity they have in part because they’re an unabashed singles band that makes sure the first couple singles from every album sound snappy on the radio. But the first two singles from Medicine At Midnight felt like one of the first times Foo Fighters got indulgent and released lower energy songs first, and if nothing else it did feel like it made the album cycle last longer when they finally released a big, catchy uptempo song as the third single.
#19 Alternative Airplay, #40 Rock & Alternative Airplay
Wolf Alice’s third album Blue Weekend was one of 2021’s best major label rock albums, one of those moments where it felt like a relatively young band really challenged themselves and went all out trying to make their masterpiece. “Smile” wasn’t really one of my favorite tracks on the album and I was a little disappointed when it became their American radio single, but there is a certain charm in how Ellie Roswell switches from staccato quasi-rapped verses to these huge harmonies on the chorus that weirdly remind me of The B-52’s.
#21 Alternative Airplay, #31 Rock & Alternative Airplay
Bastille has surprisingly grown on me a lot in the last few years, although it never seems to be with their biggest singles – I’m always wishing that “Good Grief” got more radio play than “Pompeii” or that “World Gone Mad” was bigger than “Quarter Past Midnight” or that “Survivin’” got as many spins as its follow-up “Distorted Light Beam.” But they’ve gotten really good at capturing a certain dystopian mood in the air, and “Survivin’” is one of those songs that’s kind of synonymous with the pandemic in my mind now, even if it has this kind of gentle upbeat groove.
#1 Alternative Airplay, #1 Rock & Alternative Airplay
Weezer originally scheduled their hard rock-themed album Van Weezer to come out in spring 2020 to coincide with their stadium dates with Green Day and Fall Out Boy for the Hella Mega Tour. Green Day had already released their album by the time Covid hit and the tour was delayed for a year, but Weezer decided to push back Van Weezer twelve months. During that year, Rivers Cuomo recorded an entire other album with a very different chamber pop sound and released it a few months before Van Weezer, and the quiet and piano-driven “All My Favorite Songs” wound up being a bigger radio hit than anything from the band’s designated stadium rock album. My local rock station favored the AJR remix of “All My Favorite Songs” after it was released, but I really hated that.
#35 Mainstream Rock Airplay
It’s been really cool to watch Turnstile grow from this respected band on the Baltimore hardcore scene to an internationally loved band that plays festivals all over the place and records for longtime major label hard rock outpost Roadrunner Records. But it still totally took me by surprised to check out the Mainstream Rock chart while doing my weekly rounds looking at the Billboard site and to see that Turnstile had a radio hit on their hands. And really, once you get back the little tick-tock drum machine sounds on “Blackout,” it is a pretty sturdy 98 Rock anthem.
#29 Alternative Airplay, #12 Hot 100
I would say “Good 4 U” is genuinely one of the best rock songs of the year, and a worthy addition to the canon of rock songs by pop stars, and I was a little disappointed that alternative stations didn’t pick up on it. However, the opening track from Sour did get a brief run on rock radio, and that one kicks ass too, sort of has a '90s Veruca Salt vibe.
#1 Mainstream Rock Airplay, #9 Rock & Alternative Airplay
I’ll be honest, I wasn’t really checking for Wolfgang Van Halen’s debut single. But when this unfamiliar song came on the radio, it was good enough that I bothered to Shazam it and was pleasantly surprised that the second generation rock star put out a pretty moving song about the late Eddie Van Halen.
#5 Alternative Airplay, #8 Rock & Alternative Airplay, #98 Hot 100
The pipeline from critical acclaim and Pitchfork year-end lists to actual hit songs on alternative rock radio has gotten narrower and narrower over the last couple decades. Modest Mouse scored their third alternative #1 this year, and it still seems kind of surreal to me that they were the rare band that made that jump, while “Kyoto” stalled at #25 when iHeart Radio decided to give Phoebe Bridgers a big push after the Grammys. This year Clairo did make that jump, though with an older song, which makes sense because "Sofia" from her 2019 album is a lot catchier than anything on her Jack Antonoff-produced major label debut.
#10 Mainstream Rock Airplay, #24 Rock & Alternative Airplay
This year the former biggest band in the world released their first two new songs with Slash and Duff McKagan in decades to relatively little fanfare. The first, the absurd “Absurd,” wisely wasn’t promoted to radio, but the more conventional GNR rocker “Hard Skool” was, and did just okay on the Mainstream Rock chart (for comparison, Slash has had 7 songs with Myles Kennedy peak higher on the same chart in just the last decade). But I have to admit, I grew up on this band and I was happy to hear them in something resembling a return to form after the Chinese Democracy debacle.
#18 Alternative Airplay, #29 Rock & Alternative Airplay
I felt vindicated that “Fire For You” by the L.A. trio Cannons went to #1 on alternative radio in January, a few weeks after I put it high on my 2020 year-end list. Their next single didn’t do as well but maintained their hazy synth pop aesthetic, looking forward to their next album.
#1 Alternative Airplay, #1 Rock & Alternative Airplay, #87 Hot 100
I’m alright when Twenty One Pilots do songs without any rapping, “Shy Away” kind of sounds like if the Dismemberment Plan stayed together and mellowed out into a bland radio band.
#4 Alternative Airplay, #4 Rock & Alternative Airplay, #53 Hot 100
Coldplay have gone to lengths even U2 never dreamed of to remain one of the biggest bands in the world, including collaborations with the Chainsmokers and a whole host of rap and R&B superstars. This year they made an entire album with Swedish pop mastermind Max Martin, and I thought the lead single was pretty good, but it just did okay on alternative radio by Coldplay standards and never really crossed over to pop radio. But then they took things a step further and collaborated with BTS for an absolutely terrible song that predictably gave Coldplay their first #1 in over a decade.
1. Maneskin - "Beggin'"
2. Glass Animals - "Heat Wave"
3. Imagine Dragons - "Follow You"
4. Lorde - "Solar Power"
5. Ghost – “Hunter’s Moon”
6. Milky Chance - "Colorado"
7. AJR - "Way Less Sad"
8. The Band Camino - "1 Last Cigarette"
9. Nessa Barrett f/ Jxdn - "La Di Die"
10. Greta Van Fleet - "My Way, Soon"
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