What's NEW? And the TOP 10 Songs in ALTERNATIVE MUSIC? (Week of August 1)

Let's do it again.  Here's the top 10 songs from this week's Alternative 40 chart, as calculated from YouTube and Spotify streams, as well as selected blogs, shows, and playlists focusing on new alternative and indie music (source: https://www.youtube.com/c/NewAlternative40Chart).

1. Big Red Machine (feat. Robin Pecknold & Anaïs Mitchell) - Phoenix
2. Bleachers (feat. Lana Del Rey) - Secret Life
3. James Blake - Say What You Will
4. Jungle - Truth
5. The War On Drugs - Living Proof
6. Big Red Machine (feat. Taylor Swift) - Renegade
7. Angel Olsen - Safety Dance
8. Turnstile - Blackout
9. Chvrches - Good Girls
10. Parcels - Comingback

Big Red Machine (Aaron Dessner of The National and Justin Vernon of Bon Iver) has captured the No. 1 spot this week with help from Robin Pecknold (Fleet Foxes) and Anaïs Mitchell (writer of the Broadway musical Hadestown).  The song moved up from the No. 8 spot last week, while Big Red Machine's Renegade featuring Taylor Swift, last week's No. 2, dropped down to No. 6.  Two other Big Red Machine songs, The Ghost of Cincinnati and Latter Days, dropped off the Alternative 40 chart altogether this week.

This week's No. 2 is the song Secret Life by Bleachers featuring indie pop singer Lana Del Rey. Bleachers is songwriter and producer Jack Antonoff, who's also part of the band Fun.  His production work is much in demand, and he's worked with Del Rey as well as Taylor Swift, Lorde, St. Vincent, and the Chicks. Secret Life is from Bleachers' new album, Take the Sadness Out of Saturday Night, and this is the song's debut on the charts.  

James Blake's Say What You Will, last week's No. 4, moves up to the No. 3 spot this week, while British electronic band Jungle debuts as the new No. 4 with Truth.

Jungle has another song, Romeo, featuring rapper Bas, at the No. 12 spot this week.  

The War on Drugs' Living Proof stayed at the No. 5 spot and, as previously mentioned, Renegade, Big Red Machine's collaboration with Taylor Swift, dropped from No. 2 to No. 6.  

Angel Olsen's cover of Men Without Hats' Safety Dance, which I posted here on Thursday along with some other cover songs, debuts on the charts at the No. 7 spot.  Olsen has a new, all-covers album in the works and her cover of Laura Branigan's Gloria is this week's No. 37 song.  By the way, that Thursday post also included Matt Berringer's cover of the Velvet Underground's I'm Waiting for the Man, which debuts at the No. 39 spot this week.  Kurt Vile's cover of the Velvet's Run Run Run dropped off the Alternative 40 chart this week.

Blackout by Baltimore punks Turnstile debuts on the charts at the No. 8 spot and is arguable the best song in the Top 10 this week.

Last week's No. 1 song, Good Girls by Chvrches, drops to No. 9 this week, and the No. 10 song in this week's chart is Comingback by the Australian electro-pop band Parcels.  

What happened to everybody else?  Last week's No. 3 song, Cherry Flavored Stomach Ache by Haim, dropped all the way down to No. 33.  Last week's No. 6, Sufjan Stevens and Angelo de Augustine's Reach Out, is now No. 13.  Soccer Mommy's rom com 2004, last week's No. 7, is now at the No. 22 spot.  Meanwhile, Courtney Barnett's Rae Street fell from No. 9 to No. 15, and the Tycho and Ben Gibbard collaboration, Only Love, fell from No. 10 to No. 28. Caroline Polachek's Bunny Is A Rider, which I posted here last Wednesday, fell off the Alternative 40 chart this week.

As you can probably tell, I'm not wild about this week's Top 10.  Too much sugar, not enough grit.  At least for my tastes.  On a positive note, I do like that The Linda Linda's Oh! moved up from No. 35 to No. 18.  I'm looking forward to the new Grouper album, Shade, coming out in October, and the first single, Unclean Mind, debuted at the No. 24 spot this week.  The always good Arlo Parks has a song, Too Good, at No. 36, but the remix by Unknown Mortal Orchestra debuted this week at No. 17. Meanwhile, the Alternative 40 includes songs by Lord Huron (Love Me Like You Used To at No. 29) and Yves Tumor (Crushed Velvet at No. 32).  And the always exciting Amyl and the Sniffers have two songs, Security and Guided by Angels, on the chart at No. 35 and 40, respectively.

My theory on Top 40 music in any category - indie, pop, hip-hop, country, etc. - is that music is like hamburgers.  You don't become McDonalds by making the best hamburgers in the country.  You become McDonalds by making hamburgers that the least number of people find objectionable.  Mass acceptance doesn't require perfection - it instead rewards blandness.  Similarly, the Top 40 songs aren't the boldest, the badest, the most interesting, or the most artistic.  They're the songs that don't alienate or offend the majority of people, and therefore reach the largest audience.  

The charts don't celebrate perfection.  These songs aren't the best.  Virtually by definition, they are the middle of the road.