Rolling Stone's Hot Issue Spotlights Coldplay's AROBTTH

Rolling Stone’s 2008 Hot Issue spotlights acts like Band of Horses and Vampire Weekend (more on that here). For the next week, we’ll be taking a look at Hot Issue hits and misses from the past twenty-one years (because nobody’s cultural thermometer is accurate all the time).

Hit: In 2002, just before the release of A Rush of Blood to the Head, Rolling Stone caught up with Coldplay as they toured small clubs for perhaps the last time, and named the group Hot Band. It was a pretty accurate assessment. Rush went platinum four times; its follow-up, X&Y, sold more than two million copies. Perhaps fueled by his Hot List status, Chris Martin went on to wed Oscar-winning actress Gwyneth Paltrow, Rolling Stone’s Hot Actress of 1994, in 2003.

Miss: It was the year of Nirvana’s Nevermind. Pearl Jam’s Ten. Primal Scream’s Screamadelica. So many bands to choose from, yet we chose Chicago rockers Enuff Z’Nuff as “The Hot Band” of 1991. Maybe it was their faux-GN’R spirit that blinded us. In the end, the music of Pearl Jam and Nirvana resonated throughout the Nineties, while the only evidence of Enuff Z’Nuff’s existence, outside of that Hot Issue, is their cover of “Happy Holiday” that appears on the Monster Ballads X-Mas promo we just got in the mail.