Twenty-three years is a long time to wait for an encore, but A Perfect Circle has finally taken rock radio’s top spot again. The band’s single “Starless” reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock Airplay chart dated Oct. 3, 2026, and then held the top spot for a second consecutive week on the chart dated Oct. 10, according to BMG. For a group that formed in 1999 and built its reputation on patience — long gaps between records, meticulous studio work, no visible hurry — the return to No. 1 reads less like a comeback stunt and more like the latest turn in a very slow, very deliberate career.
The numbers behind the moment are striking. “Starless” is only the band’s second No. 1 on Mainstream Rock Airplay. The first was “Weak and Powerless” in 2003, which also held No. 1 for two weeks. Between those two peaks sit 22 years and 11 months — the second-longest wait between No. 1s in the chart’s 45-year history, BMG reported. Only Pearl Jam waited longer, going 26 years between “Given to Fly” in 1998 and “Dark Matter” in 2024. That A Perfect Circle now keeps that kind of company says something about both the band’s longevity and the loyalty of the rock radio audience that kept requesting and spinning its music across two very different eras of the format.
Eight trips up the chart in between
The gap was not silence. In the years between “Weak and Powerless” and “Starless,” A Perfect Circle charted eight more times on Mainstream Rock Airplay without returning to No. 1. The closest call came quickly: “The Outsider” reached No. 3 in 2004, close enough to suggest a second chart-topper might arrive soon. It did not. Singer Maynard James Keenan did top the chart in the interim, but with a different band — Tool’s “The Pot” reached No. 1 in 2006 — which only underlined how elusive the feat had become for A Perfect Circle itself. Keenan’s parallel life fronting Tool and Puscifer, and guitarist Billy Howerdel’s own projects, meant A Perfect Circle often existed in the spaces between other commitments. Radio, it turns out, kept a place for them anyway.
“Starless” is doing more than topping one chart. The song also climbed to No. 10 on Billboard’s Rock & Alternative Airplay chart with 2.9 million audience impressions in the tracking week ending Sept. 24 — the band’s first top 10 on that chart, improving on a previous best of No. 26 for “By and Down” in 2014. It reached No. 12 on Hot Hard Rock Songs and drew 229,000 chart-eligible streams in the frame. Taken together, the figures describe a single that is performing like a current rock record, not a legacy act’s victory lap: strong at the format that made the band, newly competitive on the broader rock and alternative tally, and finding an audience on streaming as well.
A song written fast, against type
Part of the story is how uncharacteristically quickly “Starless” came together. Written by Keenan and Howerdel, the song was released on May 27, 2026 as a standalone single, and it was written quickly in early 2026 despite the band’s reputation for years-long gestation. It is the band’s first single since 2024’s “Kindred,” which appeared on the Sessanta E.P.P.P. alongside Puscifer and Primus. Drums on the track come from Josh Freese, and Howerdel produced the recording at his Lankershim Ranch Studio in Studio City, with Matty Green mixing. The credits read like a band working in its own house, at its own pace — except that this time the pace was fast.
Critics heard both sides of the band in it. NME described “Starless” as moving between gritty guitar-driven riffs and ethereal, heartfelt tenderness, a pairing that has defined A Perfect Circle’s best work since the beginning. Revolver named it the best new song of its release week and read its lyrics as questioning the morality of modern authority figures. That tension — heavy and weightless, accusatory and mournful — is the band’s signature, and programmers at rock radio evidently heard a record that could sit comfortably in a current rotation while still sounding unmistakably like its makers.
A live video from two sold-out London nights
The freshest development is visual. The band has now released an official video for “Starless” built from the song’s live debut during two sold-out nights at O2 Academy Brixton in London on June 3 and 4. The footage was filmed by Jon Vulpine and Justin Jones and edited by Jake Johnston, capturing the moment the song moved from a brand-new single to a live fixture in front of a London crowd that had sold the room out twice over. Attentive viewers will notice one absence: guitarist James Iha is not in the footage. He was stateside with Smashing Pumpkins, and Greg Edwards toured in his stead — a reminder that this band has always operated as a constellation of musicians with other gravitational pulls, held together by the Keenan–Howerdel core.
Physical collectors have been served, too. A 7-inch edition of “Starless” was released on Sept. 18 in foil-numbered runs of 1,000 copies with an etched B-side — a small, deliberate artifact for a single that has turned into the band’s biggest radio story in more than two decades.
What comes next: an album question and a busy road
The obvious question is whether “Starless” points toward a full album. Howerdel confirmed in June that the band is working on a new album, though whether “Starless” will appear on it remains unconfirmed. The band’s last studio album, Eat the Elephant from 2018, debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 and has earned 292,000 equivalent album units — respectable numbers that nonetheless belong to a different chapter. The catalog behind it is compact and heavy: Mer de Noms (2000), which reached No. 4 on the Billboard 200 and was the highest-charting debut rock album of its time; Thirteenth Step (2003); and eMOTIVe (2004). A new record would be only the fifth studio album in a career that now spans more than a quarter century.
The road, at least, is certain. The next tour leg starts Nov. 25 in Mexico City with Puscifer, and an April North American tour with The Cult and Puscifer is already announced, along with an appearance at Sonic Temple on May 14. For fans who discovered the band through “Weak and Powerless” in 2003 and have waited through every long silence since, the present moment offers something rare: a No. 1 single on the radio, a live video from London, and a calendar full of dates. Twenty-two years and 11 months after the last time A Perfect Circle topped this chart, “Starless” has made the wait itself part of the story — and, for two weeks in October, the biggest song on rock radio.
