By Karen Glauber

No, I’m not. Well, not really. It’s the mantra I adopted at the beginning of the year when yet another conversation with a programmer commenced with, “Will [insert band name here] play my summer show?” A reasonable request if the station was already supporting the band, but not quite as welcome if said programmer had heretofore asserted that airplay would happen “over their dead body.”

I get it—there aren’t dozens of radio-show headliners falling from the skies this year. Or even two or three, if my sleuthing is correct. As months tick by, the quest for available bands that can sell tickets and aren’t bound by the radius clauses imposed by summer festivals is a panic-ridden proposition. There’s little comfort in knowing that your best-ever Christmas show is ahead of you, based on your label friends’ promises of what will be available in Q4.

Driven by an unrelenting desire to make YOUR life easier (hence the self-ascribed unicorn designation), I am in your corner, always. The role of “the messenger” isn’t a day at the beach either—we’re at the mercy of the worldwide schedules of the artists whose music we promote. Whatever influence we have is used to advocate on radio’s behalf. Don’t kill the messenger, please…

Correct me if I’m mistaken, but I am willing to assert that AJR’s #1 this week with “Sober Up,” following Alice Merton’s two-week reign at #1 with “No Roots” is the FIRST TIME two independent-label releases have had back-to-back #1s at Modern Rock! AJR’s success, which Ted writes about this week in his column, happened because YOUR AUDIENCE mandated the song’s success. They didn’t care about AJR’s previous at-bats at Pop radio. They weren’t overthinking the band’s “place” at Modern Rock (like you were). They just liked “Sober Up” and decided that it fit on their favorite radio station (yours). As someone who makes infinitely more money than I do once said in a playback session I attended, “Sometimes the best song is just the best song.”

We are infinitely grateful to our radio partners who helped AJR reach #1 this week—last Saturday was one of the most stressful (unnecessarily so) days of Ted’s career or my own—and we couldn’t have done it without you. Ted and I were raised in the major-label system to believe that “#2, #6, #11 = failure,” meaning that peaking at any of those chart positions is unacceptable. Imagine Dragons can sit at #1 for the rest of the year, for all I care, but the narrative is now in stone: For the past three weeks, independent label artists were #1 at Modern Rock…

The last time I sat in the KROQ music meeting, I played them Veruca Salt’s “Seether” on Minty Fresh Records, which they added that day. Yeah, it’s been a minute. This past Tuesday, I was fortunate enough to wrangle an invite to participate in the process. There is no better call on Tuesday afternoon than the KROQ call with an add. I was in the room when Kevin Weatherly called Amanda Dobbins to let her know they were adding Greta Van Fleet’s “Safari Song” (smash!), and when he called Gary Gorman with the news of an add on Cold War Kids’ “Can We Hang On?” (my favorite from their new record).

The highlight, however, was Kevin calling my cellphone (I was in the room, remember?) to inform me that KROQ was adding Cigarettes After Sex’s “Apocalypse,” which had scored more Top 5 votes in the music meeting than any other song. The other attendees in the room weren’t necessarily aware that the metrics for “Apocalypse” from Sirius Alt Nation and XMU airplay were huge, or that the band had already sold out two late-April shows in L.A. (the Ace Theater and the Fonda). Spotify streams of the song already exceeding 17.5 million without much terrestrial airplay wasn’t a factor, either. From mid-20s to mid-50s, everybody in the room agreed that “Apocalypse” was the best song of the week. This is Partisan Records’ first add at KROQ, and I hope there will be many “firsts” ahead for the label and the band!...

Will you be at SXSW? Tell me which band playing in Austin will change my life: [email protected]