Artist · chart history · #282 in alternative artist polls
The Crystal Method
Band Las Vegas Formed 1993
The Crystal Method formed in 1993 in Las Vegas. The Crystal Method has 62 chart appearances on 58 radio countdowns from 18 stations on RockLists, spanning 1997–2024. The most successful song on radio countdowns is “Busy Child”, which appears on 24 lists with a best position of #17. The station that charted The Crystal Method most often is WBER (Rochester, NY), with 14 appearances. The artist’s biggest year on year-end countdowns was 1998.
Two guys, a rack of gear and a rock band's appetite for noise: that was the Crystal Method, the duo of Scott Kirkland and Ken Jordan, who teamed up in 1993 and went on to be counted among the pioneers of breakbeat. Their tracks hit with the swagger of big beat, all fat drums, snarling bass lines and sirens, and they sounded as at home next to guitar bands as they did on a dance floor.
Vegas, the 1997 debut, is where it all came together. "Busy Child" lurches and pounces, "Keep Hope Alive" and "Trip Like I Do" churn with the same dark, pumping momentum, and the album kept selling long enough to go platinum a full decade later, in 2007. Tweekend followed with "Name of the Game", then Legion of Boom and "Born Too Slow" pushed the electronic-rock crossover harder still. Divided by Night and a self-titled record came after, and all along their music kept turning up in films, TV shows, video games and commercials.
Jordan retired from music in 2017, and Kirkland carried on alone, keeping the Crystal Method name for himself.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
Songs by The Crystal Method on radio countdowns
| # | Song | Strength | Lists | Best | #1s | Peak year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Busy Child | 24 | #17 | – | 1998 | |
| 2 | Born Too Slow | 12 | #12 | – | 2004 | |
| 3 | Name of the Game | 9 | #29 | – | 2001 | |
| 4 | Drown in the Now | 2 | #7 | – | 2009 | |
| 5 | Act Right | 1 | #23 | – | 2022 | |
| 6 | Emulator | 1 | #41 | – | 2014 | |
| 7 | Keep Hope Alive | 2 | #64 | – | 1998 | |
| 8 | The American Way | 1 | #81 | – | 2005 | |
| 9 | Ghost In The City | 1 | #33 | – | 2019 | |
| 10 | Moment Of Truth | 1 | #26 | – | 2020 | |
| 11 | Turbulence | 1 | #47 | – | 2019 | |
| 12 | Let's Trip Out | 1 | #55 | – | 2023 | |
| 13 | (Can't You) Trip Like I Do | 1 | #603 | – | – | |
| 14 | Trip Like I Do | 1 | #524 | – | – | |
| 15 | Friction | 1 | #70 | – | 2023 | |
| 16 | You Know It's Hard | 1 | #161 | – | 2001 |
Albums with charting songs
Where each song was first released, from MusicBrainz.
Featured on
Songs by other artists credited with The Crystal Method as a guest.
Year-end chart timeline
Combined year-end countdown points per year. Taller bars mean more songs placing higher across more stations.
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