When Maryland pop-punk veterans All Time Low (Alex Gaskarth, Jack Barakat, Zack Merrick and Rian Dawson) released their eighth studio album
Wake Up, Sunshine in April 2020, they couldn’t have predicted it would turn out to produce the biggest radio hit of their career.
In September 2020, ”Monsters” became All Time Low s first No. 1 on any airplay chart when it topped the Alternative Airplay listing and parked there for 18 nonconsecutive weeks, tying with Foo Fighters’ The Pretender for the third-longest reign at No. 1 in the chart’s 32-year history. Four months later, “Monsters” broke out of the alternative sphere and became ATL’s second-ever Hot 100 chart entry, reaching No. 67 “Damned If I Do Ya (Damned If I Don t)” being their sole entry in 2009 where it’s peaked at No. 64, as of this week s Feb. 13-dated chart.
Laura Ohls, senior editor, folk and AAA, Spotify: I’ve always thought of “alternative” as referring to any artist creating music that challenges what’s being popularized in the mainstream, across all genres. In the ’90s, rock music was still very much at the core of popular music culture, and as a result, “alternative” [was more] guitar-driven in sound. Fast forward to 2020, where hip-hop, pop and Latin are the titans of genre, and you’ll find that the class of artists defying what’s expected are doing so within these genre spaces. As a result, there is an amalgamation of genres that make up modern “alternative” sounds.