genre rock
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Wake us up when New Years Rev hits theaters. Live Nation announced on Monday (Feb. 10) a new comedy film developed by Lee Kirk alongside Green Day. New Years Rev is a coming-of-age story starring Mason Thames, Kylr Coffman and Ryan Foust, as the trio’s characters head to Los Angeles under the false impression that […]
New York Dolls co-founder and punk icon David Johansen has revealed that he is battling a brain tumor and stage four cancer. The news came via a Sweet Relief Fund in his name seeking to raise money for the singer’s ongoing care in which his daughter, Leah Hennessey, revealed the extent of her 75-year-old father’s health issues.
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“Five years ago at the beginning of the pandemic we discovered that David’s cancer had progressed and he had a brain tumor,” Leah wrote. “There have been complications ever since. He’s never made his diagnosis public, as he and my mother Mara are generally very private people, but we feel compelled to share this now, due to the increasingly severe financial burden our family is facing.” She noted that in a further blow, the singer known for his outrageous, high-energy stage persona, fell down a flight of stairs after Thanksgiving and broke his back in two places.
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Following a week-long hospital stay and a successful surgery, Leah said her dad has been bedridden and incapacitated since then and “due to the trauma, David’s illness has progressed exponentially and my mother is caring for him around the clock.” Given the multiple health crises, Leah said that in order to continue treatment and give her dad the best chance at a full recovery he will need full-time assistance.
“As hilarious and wise as David continues to be, he is physically debilitated and his care exceeds what we are capable of providing without specialized professional help,” she wrote, adding, “David has worked continuously as a singer and actor for the better part of six decades, to the delight of his fans all over the world. However for the past five years, David has been unable to work as a performer. “
The non-profit Sweet Relief Musicians Fund was initially founded by singer Victoria Williams in 1994 to help her pay medical bills after a multiple sclerosis diagnosis and has since grown into a 501 (c)(3) that has helped raise funds for professional musicians in need of health or financial assistance.
In a statement, Johansen said, “We’ve been living with my illness for a long time, still having fun, seeing friends & family, carrying on, but this tumble the day after Thanksgiving really brought us to a whole new level of debilitation. This is the worst pain i’ve ever experienced in my entire life. I’ve never been one to ask for help but this is an emergency. Thank you.”
The organization’s executive director, Aric Steinberg, added in a statement, “Our Directed Artist Funds can provide a meaningful solution when the community rallies around the recipient, and we anticipate that David’s community will be eager to help here. His influence on the musical landscape with the New York Dolls is indelible, and his career as an actor and an artist has touched many people around the world. He’s been knocked down but we’re here to help him back up with the help of his family, friends and wider community of supporters.”
The family said that their most immediate needs are for full-time nursing, physical therapy and funding for day-to-day vital living expenses, aimed at helping Johansen regain “some mobility and independence.” Supporters can donate to the David Johansen Fund here, or buy a “luv” shirt benefitting Johansen’s fund here.
Johansen has long been a beloved figure on the New York scene, beginning with his time as the lead singer and provocateur of the gender-bending New York Dolls. That band — which also featured guitarists Johnny Thunders and Sylvain Sylvain, bassist Arthur Kane and drummer Jerry Nolan — emerged from the fertile underground New York rock scene in the early 1970s, releasing a pair of albums in 1973 and 1974 that helped set the template for the punk revolution and, later, inspired the lipstick and Aqua Net late 1980s hair metal scene.
After drugs and weak sales pushed the band’s members apart, Johansen went on to start his own solo band and then reinvent himself in the 1980s as the smarmy lounge lizard Buster Poindexter, through which he explored his love of the blues, jazz, swing and Latin music on such radio hits as “Hot Hot Hot.” He later formed the Harry Smiths, a group dedicated to early folk, blues and country music gathered by music historian Harry Everett Smith in the Anthology of American Folk Music.
In addition to the occasional reunion with the Dolls over the years, Johansen also hosted a freewheeling Sirius satellite radio show, David Johansen’s Mansion of Fun and acted in projects including the HBO series Oz and the movies Scrooged, Let It Ride, Freejack, Mr. Nanny and others.
Johansen was the subject of the 2020 Martin Scorsese and David Tedeschi-directed Showtime documentary feature Personality Crisis: One Night Only, which told the singer’s life story and chronicled one of his freewheeling shows at New York’s Café Carlyle.
“My mother’s favorite acronym for God is ‘Grace Over Drama,’” Leah Hennessey wrote. “Together we have endured crisis after crisis, but with the support of our community we hope to carry on laughing and loving our way through this most trying of times. Thank you for embracing our family, and for your love and generosity.”
Check out some of Johansen’s most beloved moments below.
Morrissey has announced tour dates for the U.K. and Ireland, his first since 2023. The former Smiths singer shared the news of the upcoming shows on his official social media accounts.
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The post said that these were the only concerts he would “perform in Ireland, Scotland and England in 2025,” and will see him play in Dublin, Glasgow and Manchester in May and June.
Morrissey has played a number of shows in North America in recent years, and will tour the region again in 2025. He last played in the U.K. in 2023 with shows in London, Aylesbury, Liverpool and more.
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In November 2024, the “Suedehead” singer claimed that his unreleased album Bonfire of Teenagers has been shelved because of his various controversies. “As you know, nobody will release my music anymore,” Morrissey told a crowd in New Jersey. “As you know because I’m a chief exponent of free speech. In England at least, it’s now criminalized.”
“You cannot speak freely in England. If you don’t believe me, go there,” he continued. “Express an opinion, you’ll be sent to prison. It’s very, very difficult.”
In 2019, Morrissey expressed support for the far-right Britain First political party, and has not released an album since 2020’s I Am Not a Dog on a Chain. His Bonfire of Teenagers LP was scheduled to be released in February 2023, but it was pulled months before its release date, with Morrissey claiming its “fate is exclusively in the hands of Capitol Records (Los Angeles.).”
The album was reportedly made in 2021 and featured contributions from Iggy Pop, Miley Cyrus and producer Andrew Watt. News followed that Cyrus had requested her vocals to be removed from the record. Its title track references the Manchester Arena bombing at an Ariana Grande concert in 2017, which killed 22 attendees and injured hundreds more. One song from the record “Rebels Without Applause” has been issued as a single, with others performed live.
In February 2023, Morrissey issued another statement claiming he was “too diverse” for Universal Music Group. He has since stated that he has recorded an additional album titled Without Music the World Dies, which remains unreleased. He has offered the album to “any record label or private investor [that] has interest in releasing this project,” following his split from Capitol.
See Morrissey’s U.K. & Ireland 2025 tour dates below:
May 31 – Dublin, Ireland @ 3Arena
June 4, 5 – Glasgow, Scotland @ O2 Academy Glasgow
June 7 – Manchester, England @ Co-Op Live
Ticketmaster has begun cancelling thousands of tickets for Oasis’ upcoming reunion tour in a crackdown on bots.
Passes for the shows in the U.K. and Ireland went on sale in August 2024, but the on-sale process was marred by long delays and the use of dynamic pricing model, which meant that ticket prices were higher for some fans than expected.
Reports said that over 50,000 tickets ended up on resale sites, despite efforts to restrict touts re-selling tickets at inflated prices.
A statement issued by promoters Live Nation and SJM Concerts at the time read: “Ticket resale is permitted at no more than the price you paid (face value + booking fees). Please only use the official resale partners Twickets and Ticketmaster. Selling tickets through unauthorised resale platforms will breach these T&Cs and those tickets may be cancelled”.
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Now, Ticketmaster have been contacting some ticket holders to inform them that their tickets have been refunded as “it has been identified that bots were used to make this purchase,” meaning they “violate the tour’s terms and conditions.”
“These terms were specifically established to limit resale of tickets on unauthorised ticketing platforms for profit,” the message says. “Fans have been strongly advised by all parties not to purchase tickets from unauthorised resale sites, to protect them from fraud or refunding.”
However some Oasis fans have reported on social media that their tickets have been wrongly cancelled in the efforts, despite abiding the rules of the on-sale process. “If 2025 could actually get any worse – now I don’t even have this to look forward to any more,” wrote one fan on X (formerly Twitter) on Friday (February 7) showing a message from Ticketmaster saying that their tickets had been cancelled.
Another wrote: “So what’s this complete sh-tshow? Sat on my laptop for hours on general sale day to secure just TWO tickets for ONE gig and you’re telling me I’m a bot and a tout!” The post is accompanied by pictures of his ticket buying set-up which includes one device but with multiple tabs.
Reports in the BBC and The Guardian have identified fans who have also had their tickets cancelled, with one telling the former that “it just feels like my dreams have been completely crushed.”
Billboard UK has approached Ticketmaster for comment. On the Oasis Refunds FAQ page, a message reads: “For ticket purchasers who believe they have had tickets refunded in error, refer to the email sent by the relevant agent when informed.”
Following the original on sale, the band responded to the news that tickets had been on-sale on resale sites for upwards of £10,000 ($12,412)
“We have noticed people attempting to sell tickets on the secondary market since the start of the pre-sale. Please note, tickets can ONLY be resold, at face value, via Ticketmaster and Twickets.
“Tickets sold in breach of the terms and conditions will be cancelled by the promoters.” Twickets shared Oasis’s statement and added their own: “Don’t buy tickets over face value. Official resale will be available on our website/app at face value only.”
Oasis’ reunion tour will kick off at the Principality Stadium in Cardiff, Wales on July 4, before heading to Manchester, London, Edinburgh and Dublin across the 19 dates. The tour will then head to North America, Latin America, Australia and Asia later this year.
If you’re planning to see Jack White and hoping for a marathon effort from the musician, it might be time to temper your expectations.
White took to Instagram on Saturday (Feb. 8) to reflect on the attitudes he’s noticed regarding the lengths of the sets he has performed. According to sites such as Setlist.fm, White has an average performance time of 90 minutes, with recent sets ranging from 16 to 22 songs.
“Been hearing a lot of chatter throughout the year of this glorious electric touring about how long our sets are ‘supposed to be’ on stage,” he began. “As if the length of a show determines how ‘good’ it is. I know that we’re living in a current era where people like to say ‘so and so played for 3 hours last night!’, and brag about it the next day hahaha, I’ll let our fans know now that my mind has no intention of ‘impressing’ y’all in that context.
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“The Beatles and Ramones played 30 minute (ish) sets, and If I could, I would do the same at this moment in my performing life,” he added. “That’s actually the kind of show I’d like to put on right now. But there becomes this chatter that the cost of a ticket ‘entitles’ people to some kind of extra long show…uh…ok (hahaha) so I’m bridging the gap. I’m not sure y’all are knowing (or maybe remembering?) what a real rock or punk show is like though if you’re thinking that way, I think you’re talking about an arena laser light show with pyro, huge screens with premade videos, singers flying over the crowd, t shirt cannons, etc, that’s not the kind of shows we’re performing.”
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White’s own history as a touring musician has been peppered with shows of varying lengths. Famously, on July 16, 2007, as a member of The White Stripes, Jack and Meg White performed the shortest show of their career so as to fulfill their goal of playing every province and territory of Canada. The one-note show in St. Johns, Newfoundland was denied inclusion into the Guinness Book of Records, sadly.
However, this short concert is in line with White’s own critique of expectations from audiences. While artists such as Bruce Springsteen may average three-hour sets, and Phish and Dead & Company might be creeping towards four hours on average, White explains it’s all about what best suits the audience gathered before him.
“I’ve seen a plethora of rock and roll gigs that lasted 45 minutes and blew my mind and inspired me beyond belief,” he explained. “Read the room, leave everyone exhausted and inspired (hopefully) and most of all wanting more, without needing 3 hours to do it. That’s like saying a film is supposed to be better cause they spent 300 trillion making it, well I’ve never seen that movie.
“Love to all of our fans, I see your faces every night and you can be assured I’ve never phoned it in in my life, whether its 20 minutes or 2 hours, I’m giving the room what the room is prompting me to do and share and that doesn’t mean if people cheer louder it’s going to be longer either! haha. There’s no setlist, and it’s not a Marvel movie, or a Vegas residency, it’s rock and roll and it’s a living breathing organism.”
White is currently in the midst of a lengthy global tour that began in 2024 in support of his latest solo album, No Name. Much like the length of his live sets, White had initially planned for the majority of his touring plans to be relatively impromptu, though a more concrete run of dates was detailed in November.
Primus has found a new drummer.
About four months after the abrupt departure of longtime percussionist Tim “Herb” Alexander, the veteran band revealed their new timekeeper following a global open call for auditions.
“Hoffington!!! Welcome aboard! @johnhoffmandrums,” Primus singer and bassist Les Claypool wrote on Instagram Friday (Feb. 7), alongside a photo featuring Claypool with new drummer Hoffman and guitarist Larry LaLonde.
Primus announced on Oct. 29 that Alexander had resigned suddenly on Oct. 17 via email, citing a “loss of passion for playing” — a reason that Claypool and LaLonde admitted “came as a complete shock.”
Following Alexander’s departure, Primus announced they would be holding auditions for a new drummer. “Taking submissions from all points in the universe for the position of Primus drummer/percussionist,” the band wrote, adding, “Flashy chops are wonderful, but groove, pocket, and the ability to listen, react, and contribute to the musical conversation is a must.”
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Primus took to social media again in late December to warn applicants of scammers who had begun contacting hopefuls ahead of in-person auditions.
Hoffman, a drummer from Shreveport, La., documented his preparation for the audition on YouTube.
“Luck is when preparation meets opportunity,” the drummer wrote on Instagram in late January. “I came and did my thing the way I do it. It went as well as I could have hoped. Maynard James Keenan was sitting directly in front of me and watched my entire audition. He gave me this towel. It’s been one of the most incredible days of my life. I love you all. We did this.”
Primus’ first show since Alexander’s final appearance in August took place as part of the band’s New Year’s Eve celebration at the Fox Theater in Oakland, Calif., on Dec. 30. The night began with sets from Claypool’s other projects, Holy Mackerel and Frog Brigade, and concluded with a six-song performance by Primus, featuring Bryan “Brain” Mantia on drums.
Check out Primus’ new drummer announcement on Instagram here.
Twenty One Pilots lead Billboard’s Alternative Airplay chart for the first time in three years, reigning on the Feb. 15-dated list via the 2-1 rise of “The Line.”
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The song marks the duo’s 11th No. 1 and first since “The Outside” ruled for three weeks beginning in January 2022.
Since then, the band had notched three chart entries, including two No. 2-peaking tracks in “Overcompensate” and “The Craving” in 2024.
With 11 rulers, Twenty One Pilots, who first led with “Stressed Out” in 2015, rank as the act with the sixth-most No. 1s since Alternative Airplay began in 1988.
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Most No. 1s, Alternative Airplay:15, Red Hot Chili Peppers13, Green Day13, Linkin Park12, Cage the Elephant12, Foo Fighters11, Twenty One Pilots8, U28, Weezer7, The Black Keys7, Imagine Dragons
Of the band’s 11 No. 1s, two have now come from soundtracks to TV or film. “The Line” is featured on the soundtrack to Netflix’s Arcane, which premiered its second and final season in November, while “Heathens” was heard in the 2016 movie Suicide Squad.
Concurrently, “The Line” ranks at No. 17 on the all-rock-format, audience-based Rock & Alternative Airplay chart with 2.4 million audience impressions in the week ending Feb. 6, according to Luminate. It reached a No. 14 high in December.
The song appeared at No. 28 on the most recently published multimetric Hot Rock & Alternative Songs tally (dated Feb . 8, reflecting data accumulated Jan. 24-30); it hit No. 13 in December. In addition to its radio airplay, “The Line” earned 2 million official U.S. streams in that span.
The soundtrack to Arcane’s second season peaked at No. 24 on the Billboard 200 in December and has earned 220,000 equivalent album units to date.
All Billboard charts dated Feb. 15 will update Tuesday, Feb. 11, on Billboard.com.
This might have been the year that both The Beatles and The Rolling Stones won Grammy Awards, but older demographics who watched the show are wondering why rock music had such a low profile during the televised ceremony.
Sure, rock music had a token presence during the telecast: The show began with an uplifting performance from Dawes covering Randy Newman’s “I Love L.A.,” backed by an all-star band consisting of Brad Paisley, John Legend, Sheryl Crow, Brittany Howard and St. Vincent as a tribute to the people of Los Angeles who are still trying to recover from the devastating wildfires in January. Also, the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Anthony Kiedis and Chad Smith presented the best pop vocal album Grammy to Sabrina Carpenter for Short n’ Sweet, while the alternative band Khruangbin played a very abbreviated segment of their shoe-gazing song “May Ninth”; and Coldplay’s Chris Martin played a ballad during the In Memoriam section.
But the awards for best rock album, best metal performance and best alternative music album, among others, were relegated to the non-televised afternoon Grammy Award presentation.
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Why weren’t there any artists from that genre rocking out during the telecast? After all, rock music still dominates the live show marketplace. And while there are many ways that various genres can be measured against one another, Luminate’s audio consumption album units genre report shows rock music is still the second biggest genre at 22.3%, Billboard calculates, when unassigned albums are deducted from the total. That’s almost two and a half times as large as Latin, which has an 8.3% market share; and slightly more than twice as large as country, which has a 10.4% market share.
In album units, rock is 50% larger than pop music, which has a 14.8% market share, but pop was featured prominently during the show. As was R&B/hip-hop, which is still the biggest genre at a 27.8% market share.
But even though rock may have a big presence collectively, it also has some missing ingredients that probably make it difficult to include it in the televised Grammy Awards these days.
Age is a factor — not only the demographics of the Grammy show viewers, which undoubtedly plays a role in what artists and music are featured on the TV broadcast, but the age of the rock music that makes up those market share numbers. Luminate tracks releases in two age brackets: current, which counts all sales and streaming activity in the first 18 months after a song or album is released; and catalog, which counts everything older than 18 months.
That is one of rock’s biggest issues: By the catalog category — again using audio consumption units minus activity from titles unassigned to a genre — its 25.5% of the market is comfortably No. 2 in the industry, still behind R&B/hip-hop. But by current releases, rock slips all the way to fourth, at 11.9%, behind R&B/hip-hop (27.2%), pop (18.7%) and country (14.8%) and barely ahead of Latin (10.6%).
And the Grammy Awards are all about current music; in fact, current music is literally written into the eligibility criteria of which music releases can be considered for its awards. For the 2025 Grammys, the Recording Academy only considered recordings released from Sept. 16, 2023, to Aug. 20, 2024. Mathematically speaking, all the releases that meet that criteria to be eligible for a Grammy Award, and thus to be included in the show, would be current releases.
But there could be another, more significant factor as to why rock music wasn’t front and center during the televised portion: The sales and streams for the nominees in the rock categories paled in comparison to those of other genres. Big sales and streaming activity clearly indicate widespread popularity and TV shows are all about drawing big viewing audiences. And the nominees in the rock categories turned in the weakest collective performance when it came to sales and streaming activity among the genres highlighted on the show.
Of the albums nominated for album of the year, only Billie Eilish’s Hit Me Hard and Soft could be remotely considered rock — and alternative at that, or more accurately dark pop. The other albums, not so much: Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department, Chappell Roan’s The Rise and Fall of A Midwest Princess and Carpenter’s Short n’ Sweet got pop covered; Charli XCX’s Brat represents electro-pop; and Andre 3000’s New Blue Sun and Jacob Collier’s Djesse Vol. 4 are R&B and jazz, with smatterings of funk thrown in. In fact, Beyoncé’s country album, Cowboy Carter, has been cited for bringing other genres into the mix.
Collectively, the eight albums nominated for album of the year averaged 2.043 million album consumption units in 2024, even with the Andre 3000 album only hitting 44,000 units and the Collier album lower, at 33,000 units.
Sales and streaming activity was also a likely distinguishing factor in determining if the big awards of the Latin, pop, country and R&B genres were featured on the televised show. Let’s take best pop vocal album, with the Grammy nod going to Carpenter’s Sweet album, which garnered 2.504 million U.S. album consumption units. Collectively, the five nominees in that category averaged 3.01 million album consumption units, with Swift’s Tortured Poets leading the way with 6.962 million.
In best rap album, Doechii’s Alligator Bites Never Heal won the Grammy, despite having the second-lowest sales/activity of the nominees at 133,000 album consumption units. Collectively, the five nominated albums averaged 712,000 units, led by Future & Metro Boomin’s We Don’t Trust You at 2.046 million units and Eminem’s The Death Of Slim Shady (Coup De Grace) at 1.01 million album consumption units.
In best country album, the Grammy nominees collectively averaged 856,000 album consumption units, with a pair of artists new to the genre leading the way in Post Malone’s F-1 Trillion, with 1.598 million units, and winner Cowboy Carter, with 1.42 million album consumption units.
Shakira, who performed and was acknowledged for her historic role in bringing Latin music to the masses, won best Latin pop album with her Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran album, which had 306,000 album consumption units. Collectively, her activity combined with the other four nominees for best Latin pop album averaged 171,000 album consumption units.
Even dance/electronic music, which ranks sixth with 3.8% in U.S. market share as calculated by Billboard based on Luminate data, made the cut for the televised portion of the show. While its overall market share is meager compared to rock, its collective current album consumption units were bolstered by Charli XCXs Brat album, which garnered 1.159 million album consumption units. In total, the five nominees in the category earned a collective average of 273,000 units.
Rock, in comparison, is a different story. The Rolling Stones won the best rock album award with 91,000 album consumption units for its Hackney Diamonds, while Green Day, which was the category leader, had 158,000 units. Collectively, the rock category nominees averaged just 81,000 units, by far the smallest of the bigger genres.
There may be plenty of reasons why rock was relegated to the back burner at this year’s Grammy Awards — the Stones and the Beatles, after all, are not the hottest names with kids these days. But the numbers certainly tell at least part of that story.
Linkin Park lands its 12th No. 1 on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock Airplay chart, as “Heavy Is the Crown” lifts a spot to the top of the tally dated Feb. 15.
The song is the band’s fourth No. 1 in as many tries dating to 2023, when “Lost” reigned for eight weeks. “Friendly Fire” followed for a week last April and “The Emptiness Machine” ruled for six frames beginning in October.
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With 12 total Mainstream Rock Airplay No. 1s, the sextet ties Disturbed for the eighth-most leaders in the chart’s history (which dates to 1981). Of those, 10 came with vocals from late singer Chester Bennington or rapper/singer Mike Shinoda, while new vocalist Emily Armstrong has taken the reins of the two most recent rulers alongside Shinoda.
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Most No. 1s, Mainstream Rock Airplay:19, Shinedown18, Three Days Grace15, Five Finger Death Punch14, Foo Fighters14, Metallica13, Godsmack13, Van Halen12, Disturbed12, Linkin Park
Linkin Park first led Mainstream Rock Airplay in 2003 with “Somewhere I Belong.” The group first appeared on the survey in 2000, when “One Step Closer” debuted; it peaked at No. 4 in January 2001, marking the band’s first of 21 top 10s.
Concurrently, “Heavy Is the Crown” rises 13-12 on Alternative Airplay. On the all-rock-format, audience-based Rock & Alternative Airplay chart, it reigns for a fourth week via 5.3 million audience impressions in the week ending Feb. 6, according to Luminate.
On the most recently published Hot Hard Rock Songs list (dated Feb. 8, reflecting the Jan. 24-30 tracking period), “Heavy Is the Crown” ranked at No. 2; “The Emptiness Machine” led for 21st week. In addition to its radio airplay, the former drew 1.7 million official U.S. streams, up 3%.
“Heavy Is the Crown” is the second single from From Zero, Linkin Park’s eighth studio album and first with Armstrong and drummer Colin Brittain. The set launched at No. 1 on the Top Rock & Alternative Albums chart in November and has earned 287,000 equivalent album units to date.
All Billboard charts dated Feb. 15 will update Tuesday, Feb. 11, on Billboard.com.