Chart Chat Introduction
On modern rock, chart-topping hits, and Trik Turner
Welcome to “Chart Chat: Modern Rock Tracks,” a *hopefully* weekly review of every No. 1 hit cataloged over the past nearly 35 years from the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart. There are a lot of things I hope to review and discover as I attempt this Substack experiment, but I should probably begin with the song that started it all…
Trik Turner’s “Friends & Family” might be the most unlikely inspiration for a newsletter. Really, it might be the most unlikely inspiration for almost anything music related. But when it hit me, it seemed like the obvious starting point for this.
To be fair, the idea was percolating for some time. A proto version of this Substack, in which I wax poetic on my musical interests, exists on my personal Facebook page and occasionally on Twitter, engaging a mostly quiet following of friends and family. I’ve spent hours chronicling songs I’ve loved throughout my 40-plus years, venturing out as far as hits from the 1950s and ‘60s, an era of music I deeply appreciate thanks in large part to my late father. He indirectly provided me with the soundtrack of my youth by perpetually replaying the soundtrack of his youth for most of my formative years.
Like most people, though, my deepest musical interest lies within my own lifetime, especially during my teens and 20s. In a really dedicated display of affection to my junior and senior years of high school, I spent more than 100 days in 2021 posting insights and thoughts on songs from 25 years prior: 1996. My goal was to inform a mostly rapt audience of peers and acquaintances about one of my favorite years in music, and what I believe to be a formative and transitional year for both pop and alternative rock. From “No Diggity” to “Macarena,” from “Just a Girl” to Everything But The Girl, there’s a lot to love about that year.
I spend a lot of time thinking about pop hits, about rock songs, about cultural movements and songs that made their way onto mix tapes, iPod playlists and, eventually, on dozens of unique streaming playlists on the likes of Spotify and YouTube Music. But my goal here is to focus on Billboard’s Modern Rock Tracks (MRT) chart, the No. 1 songs on that chart throughout its history, and some of the songs that never made it to the top, but still left an indelible mark. Most importantly, I want to learn more about songs I don’t know, and share tidbits about songs that may have been forgotten along the way.
And that brings me back to Trik Turner.
Alternative rock has changed significantly over time, embracing a number of different styles and forms. During the late 1990s, modern rock was shifting from a focus on Seattle-based grunge into more of a punk and/or emo styling, spearheaded by bands like Blink 182, Rancid, Green Day and Offspring, among others. Creed was coming into their own as a polarizing rock outfit, and into the 2000s bands like Papa Roach and Everclear brought stylistically different takes on the difficulties of family life growing up.
So it’s weird that, in the middle of this seismic shift from punk rock to the emo wave initiated by Jimmy Eat World and later taken to stratospheric heights by bands like Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance and Panic! At The Disco, a little known rap/rock band called Trik Turner scored a top-10 hit on the MRT chart with a song about how one’s friends and family can lift you up and make you a better person, even when you’re at your lowest.
I don’t know much about Trik Turner, and to be honest, I completely forgot about the song not long after its chart run ended. It peaked at No. 7 on the MRT chart the week ending April 13, 2002, the same week Jimmy Eat World’s blockbuster “The Middle” topped the same chart for the first time. It was out of the top 40 by June, and quickly lost to time. To underscore that point, “Friends & Family” has been streamed on Spotify just over 2.1 million times as of early January 2023, whereas “The Middle” has been streamed over 634 million times. Indeed, all 11 tracks from Jimmy Eat World’s “Bleed American” album have been streamed more often than Trik Turner’s biggest hit.
For most people, a track like “Friends & Family” would be lost to time. But the song stuck with me. Maybe once every four or five years, something in my mind would trigger my memory of that song and I’d play it a few times before it settled again into mental dormancy. And then, just recently, it popped back up again. And it got me thinking.
Lots of music critics focus on the successes found by musicians on the Billboard Hot 100 chart; indeed, my inspiration for this newsletter comes from Stereogum magazine’s Tom Briehan, author of a very enjoyable “The Number Ones” column, and Chris Molanphy, the talent behind Slate Magazine’s terrific “Hit Parade” podcast (a podcast I was honored to be a part of in September 2021). Both of these writers do wonderful work breaking down the most popular songs throughout history, and occasionally dive into areas of the Billboard charts outside of that zone. My goal is to take what they’ve done and attempt to do the same within the scope of Billboard’s Modern Rock Tracks chart … which was rebranded the Alternative Songs chart in 2009 … and then rebranded again in 2020 into what is now called the Alternative Airplay chart.
I intend to explore and revisit every No. 1 song from the inception of this chart, starting with chart for the week ending September 10, 1988, when “Peek-A-Boo” by Siouxsie & The Banshees led the way among the growing subgenre of “modern rock.” I’m doing this because I want to rediscover so many of the top chart hits that I grew up with, but also learn more about songs and bands I know next to nothing about, starting with Siouxsie & The Banshees. I’ve never listened to a single note performed by the band, and when it comes time for my next installment, I hope to have a reasonably informed opinion on the band, the song, and its place in the pantheon of modern rock.
But how does Trik Turner factor into this? Very simply put, I want to invest time in not only the chart topper for a particular period, but also look at the rest of the chart and find some highlights or “diamonds in the rough” that never found much staying power on compilation playlists or throwback alternative radio stations. For every Jimmy Eat World hit still played ad nauseum on adult contemporary and 2000s-era rock stations, there are tracks like “Friends & Family” that never see the light of day anymore. And make no mistake: “Friends & Family” is a solid track, worthy of its place historically as a top-10 modern rock hit. It just strikes me as odd that the only attention it seems to get, outside of perhaps some die-hard Trik Turner fans, is when it is resurrected from my brain at random.
My hunch is, even based on the relatively small – but still sizable – number of streams on Spotify, there are people out there who view songs like this in the same way. And that’s who I’m reaching out to: the people, like me, who love modern rock in all its iterations and share in my enthusiasm for the history of alternative music. Along the way, I hope to learn a lot more about the music that came before my formative teenage years and discover new tracks to add to my collection of favorites.
My thanks to Trik Turner and to all the musicians I plan to discuss here, for giving me the inspiration to talk about this subgenre of music, to reminisce about good times, and to be able to share my thoughts with the world. Because “all I need is the air that I breathe and my friends and family to believe in me.”
I look forward to this journey, my friends and family. Let’s have some fun!
–MATT