Congrats to Nick Petropoulos and everyone at Glassnote for going #1 this week with Mumford & Sons’ "Believe." It's been an amazing launch, as Mumford reaches the top spot after only four weeks. Mumford will play the song on Saturday Night Live this weekend; rumor has it they’ll also perform the highly anticipated track "The Wolf.”
NEW MUSIC APRIL
We’ve been talking about all the marquee artists that have released music so far in 2015. Let's shift our attention to some new songs that very much deserve your attention. Capitol's In The Valley Below has been battling with the big boys now for eight weeks with "Peaches." This brewing track has risen all the way to #22, with glowing callout from Alt Nation, KRBZ ,WLKK and KKDO. The phones are now ringing with #4 requests from KBZT and #6 at WBRU, to name a few.
This week, iTunes put "Peaches" into their New Music Artist Spotlight, and causing a sales spike that rocketed the song to the upper reaches of the Alternative singles chart. "The record is just getting going" says the label's Bill Carroll, “and the potential we’re seeing tell us it could be really special.”
RCA's Dennis Blair has been having a year to remember, with three consecutive #1 singles; he now has another hotshot entry on his hands in U.K. band Wolf Alice. "The buzz coming out of SXSW has been something I haven't seen in quite awhile," says Blair—and from the look of things, that buzz is entirely justified. The early airplay on "Moaning Lisa Smile" before impact date has been impressive, with KNDD, KYSR, KXRK, WEQX, WWCD, WKQX and KRBZ on board, among many others. The sizzling track will make a big move this week and looks to quickly rise up the Alt chart.
The busiest promotion execs in Modern Rock are Republic's Ron Cerrito and Amanda Dobbins. The label currently has eight records charted—that’s a staggering 20% of the chart. One of their entries is the buzzing James Bay with "Hold Back The River." The captivating single, which made its chart debut last week, has already moved up to #31 and boasts an ever-expanding list of stations including KROQ, WROX, KDKB, and KITS. James' new album Chaos & The Calm sold 20k copies first week, good for a #12 retail debut.
You don’t often see real tastemakers gushing about how much they like a song. We have that happening with Downtown's Cold War Kids. The band’s new single, "First" is getting the type of reaction usually reserved for acts like Foo Fighters and Muse.
I’ve always said everything sounds better on the radio, and "First" screams like a smash every time I hear it on the air. I ran into KROQ's Lisa Worden the other night and told her that “First” feels like the kind of track the station will break wide open, as they’ve done with so many records in the past. If I haven't said it enough: Thank you to everyone in radio who hears something, likes it and just decides to put it on. The label's Mark Czarra told me, "I’ve been doing this for such a long time, and when we played it for KROQ and they took it out of my hands, ran down the hall, and put it on the air, it was by far one of the most special experiences I’ve ever had." These are the stories we love to tell…
