Listen to the New Asking Alexandria Song – It Will Drive the Idiot From Trapt Nuts!
Guys, this Twitter bullshit with Trapt frontman Chris Taylor Brown has left us in a weird position. See, normally, I would say that Sumerian Records — like most, if not all, labels — has some good artists and some bad ones. Makes sense, right? No two people will ever have completely identical tastes, so of course any given label is going to sign bands that I, an over-opinionated blogger, both like and dislike.
Having said that, Brown is… what’s the phrase I’m looking for? Ah, yes: a big dumb dummy. And Sumerian has become one of the top targets in his ongoing online rants.
Which brings us to the new Asking Alexandria single, “Down to Hell.” Folks, I loathe this band. So much so that I’m not even gonna listen to the song. The chances that I like it are one in a bajillion, and I have better shit to do with 3+ minutes of my life.
HOWEVER…
Asking Alexandria are on Sumerian. And Brown is obsessed — OBSESSED — with the monthly play counts for his and other bands on Spotify and Pandora. He seems to think that is the sole metric by which any given artist’s level of success can be measured. And while Trapt have far more listeners than Asking Alexandria on Pandora (2.4 million Trapt listeners vs. 372K AA listeners) — presumably because all of their fans stopped following popular trends circa 2002 — Asking Alexandria absolutely smoke Trapt on Spotify (2.4 million AA listeners vs. 1.8 million Trapt listeners).*
You probably see where I’m going with this.
Although I would never normally make such a recommendation, I think everyone should listen to Asking Alexandria on Spotify as much as they possibly can for the next few weeks.
You don’t even have to actually listen to them. Whenever you’re not using Spotify, just put Asking Alexandria on, turn the Spotify volume all the way down, and let it play. Keep it on repeat while you’re sleeping. I don’t care. Just keep pushing those AA numbers up as high as you can, and relish in the thought that it’s making Brown so sad he can’t even bring himself to put product in his hair. OH, THE HUMANITY!!!
*Brown doesn’t seem interested in YouTube listens, but the numbers there largely favor Asking Alexandria, too — the band has 340K subscribers, and their video for “The Black” has 47 million views, versus Trapt’s 50 million views for “Headstrong” and… we don’t know how many subscribers because it’s not listed. Asking Alexandria routinely rack up substantial views for other videos, too, like “A Prophecy” (36 million views), “I Won’t Give In” (35 million views), and “Into the Fire” (27 million views), which dwarfs the number of the views for the next most popular Trapt videos, “Love Hate Relationship” (11 million views), “Bring It” (1.3 million views), and “Living in the Eye of the Storm” (also 1.3 million views). Incidentally, all three of those songs came out in 2013, even though the band also released an album in 2016, called DNA. I’m saying the band hasn’t had a hit in awhile.
