As of early 2005, the Mainstream Rock Tracks record was Fuel’s “Hemorrhage (In My Hands)” with 56 weeks; on Modern, it was Linkin Park’s “In The End” at 44. I’m pretty sure the Modern Rock record has changed since then, but Mainstream may have stood—I haven’t stayed updated in recent years.

Interestingly, from 1991-1992, Van Halen’s “Top of the World” spent 51 weeks on the Mainstream Rock chart, a record that stood for nine years, all the more impressive because its run predates the conversion to BDS tracking system.

Currently descending down the lower reaches of the chart is Eddie Vedder’s sleeper hit, “Hard Sun,” which has done pretty well for a song off the soundtrack to a low-grossing Sean Penn movie

I’m continually amazed at how a song from even a tiny movie or TV show can score big sales and/or airplay. It’s a constant reminder to me how much smaller the threshhold for a “hit” is in the music world. A million tickets or 3 million viewers are considered virtual flops in movie land and TV land, respectively; but a label exec would be overjoyed with sales like that.

Not that the Pearl Jam frontman doesn’t have a long track record of success on rock radio, but a cover of obscure Canadian singer-songwriter Indio featuring Sleater-Kinney’s Corin Tucker is certainly one of the unlikelier hits of his career.

After Pearl Jam scored the biggest Hot 100 hit of their careers with a cover of a ’60s teen-tragedy pop record, nothing Vedder scores with on the charts surprises me anymore.