Weezer Reaches No. 1 on Alternative Airplay With "We Might as Well Be Strangers"
Weezer's "We Might as Well Be Strangers," featuring Wednesday, has climbed from No. 2 to No. 1 on Billboard's Alternative Airplay chart dated Oct. 31, 2026, according to Billboard. It is the band's ninth No. 1 on the chart.
The Alternative Airplay chart ranks songs by how often they are played on US radio stations that focus on alternative rock. The ranking is based on plays tracked by Luminate, the data company that counts music consumption for the industry. The song gained 7% in plays in the tracking week of Oct. 16 to 22, which was enough to take the top spot.
That makes Weezer the seventh act in the chart's 38-year history to collect at least nine No. 1s. The band now sits alongside some of the genre's biggest names on the list. Red Hot Chili Peppers lead with 15, followed by Cage the Elephant, Linkin Park and Twenty One Pilots with 14 each, Green Day with 13, Foo Fighters with 12 and Weezer with nine.
The song was released on June 3 through Crush Music, Reprise and Warner Records. It entered the chart in July, when it was Weezer's 36th career entry on Alternative Airplay. It is also the first charting title from the band since it signed with Reprise and Warner earlier in 2026.
The track appears on Weezer's 20th studio album, also called Weezer (Gold Album), which came out in August. The album reached No. 6 on the Alternative Albums chart and No. 35 on the Billboard 200, the main US album chart. On Alternative Albums, it was the band's 13th top 10 entry, tying Pearl Jam for the most in that chart's history.
Radio chart success is a different measure from album sales, which are counted in units that combine purchases, downloads and streams. An Alternative Airplay No. 1 shows how often a song is being played on the radio, not how many copies are sold. Still, for a band that has spent decades on the chart, a fresh No. 1 counts as a milestone.
For the band, the news is a reminder that a song can keep finding listeners months after its release. For anyone who heard it on a rock station this autumn, it is the reason the song kept coming back on the dial.
