Robbed hit of the week 8/21/23 - System Of A Down's "Aerials"...

 

 

"Aerials" - System Of A Down

from the album Toxicity (2001)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #55 

 

This week's "robbed hit" comes from the nu-metal band System Of A Down, whose second album Toxicity had given them a big hit on rock radio that lingers in the bottom quarter on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 for five months, "Chop Suey". The title track "Toxicity" was put out as the follow-up, and did a little better on the list at #70, while spending a week at #3 on Billboard's Alternative Rock airplay chart and #10 on the Mainstream Rock counterpart. 

The third and final single released from the record was "Aerials", another complex experimental track written by the group's Serj Tankian and Daron Malakian, who both produced the song with Rick Rubin. The lyrics are more poetic and descriptive than storytelling, with the titular plane stunt serves as a metaphor for taking chances in life. Serj and Daron's voices swirl around each other like a mantra as the power of the production pumps behind them, and in effect the post-grunge movement shows strong in this one. The music video tries to whittle a story down to a seemingly alien-born circus freak that's thrust into the inner city fashion life, which is a choice, but I'm more mesmerized by the band than the makeup used. In return the band scored their biggest hit from Toxicity as MTV played the hell out of this....

While "Aerials" topped both the Alternative (3 weeks) and Mainstream (1 week) Rock radio charts, the song stopped under the halfway mark on the Hot 100 in September of 2002. Internationally, the single reached the top-40 in the United Kingdom (#34), Ireland (#35), and Australia (#36). At the Grammy Awards in 2003, "Aerials" was nominated for Best Hard Rock Performance, losing to Foo Fighters for "All My Life".

(7/10)

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Here's the band performing "Aerials" in concert in Australia in 2002....

and lastly at a festival in the Netherlands in 2017...