Welcome to “Mason’s Observations”. Every week, we compile, analyze and seek your input on America’s pop hits and flops. Seeing the differences between Spotify streams and radio airplay versus our unique, honest and real-time request information from hundreds of radio listener calls, texts and DMs on the nationally syndicated Liveline night show allows us to compare and separate the real emerging songs with audience passion from over-hyped, audience killing record label priorities, often long before radio even adds them. Next week, our year-end wrap-up highlighting Christmas music dominating the charts, as well as the top songs and most-requested Golds of 2024.
Ariana Grande – Popular: Wicked must’ve had the largest promotional budget of any film in years. International landmarks were lit up in pink and green, they had their own Oreo flavor, and the stars appeared on all the biggest shows and interviews. People are calling it “the most important musical of the century.” Less than 3 weeks after its release, it tripled the $150 million production budget in the box office. Needless to say, Ariana Grande, Cynthia Erivo and Wicked are everywhere. That’s the film. Now onto the soundtrack:
What songs are really fitting and worth playing on the radio? Most programmers agree how Top 40 should hop on the trends and novelty songs, even if we know that it’ll be gone a month later. It makes you seem relevant, in-the-know and innovative, especially when something massive like Wicked comes along. It’s nice to see the majority of stations embracing “Popular” which is #35 in airplay as of this writing. Leaders include KMVQ/San Francisco (35x), WBLI/Long Island (29x) and four of the SummitMedia Top 40’s which have equally played it 29 times. The film’s Cynthia Erivo duets with Ariana on “Defying Gravity” which is streaming at #21* on Spotify, versus “Popular” at #43*. It should be noted that 27 of the top 50 Spotify streams are either Christmas or Kendrick Lamar’s new songs. This is always a hard time of the year to detect emerging songs as holiday music will soon dominate top 100.
The bad news? On Liveline, we’ve had absolutely no requests for any of the Wicked songs. It reminds me of the “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” scenario in late 2021 when the Encanto movie made a massive streaming hit out of a children’s song, but radio was very hesitant to give it full support. It was #1 most-streamed in the world for weeks, but something about it on Top 40 juuuussttt didn’t sound right.
Meghan Trainor – Criminals: It’s been three months now. Can someone please explain how or why this song has made it to #11 on Top 40? From a data standpoint, this song doesn’t matter to anyone in any country. It is nowhere in the Spotify Top 200 Global or USA. This week, it finally peaked at #100 on the Billboard Hot 100. She fits into the category of artists known for mid-chart stiffs. I am genuinely curious what Epic Records has been doing to get 9 years worth of her formula, forgettable and dispassionate music on radio stations, one single after another. The last time we ever got requests for any of her songs was 2022’s “Made You Look”. Aside from that, we’ve had maybe 1 oddball call for “All About That Bass” and that’s it. Her track record is horrible. It’s not a popular TikTok sound, it’s not from a movie and nobody is sharing it on social media. It makes no sense for this song to be doing so well on Top 40 spins when so many other massive titles and artists getting high streams are slipping by the radar, down low.
Confirming Our Observations
Over the past six weeks, we’ve called attention to multiple songs that we just weren’t seeing any reaction to, but also a few that seemed to be ignored by Top 40 despite massive streaming and Liveline request numbers. We are happy to report that our early indications of future hits like Gracie Abrams “That’s So True”, Gigi Perez “Sailor Song”, Chappell Roan “Pink Pony Club” and The Weeknd “Timeless” have all become the biggest Top 40 airplay gainers and blown up. As time goes by, you will truly begin to notice how this early request and streaming data translates to radio airplay to create solid hits, 9 times out of 10. Consider the high value of audience passion shown through requests as the real hit predictor…not because of opinion. Only facts!
Buried Treasures of the Week
Coldplay – Viva La Vida & Yellow: Chris Martin and the boys of Coldplay have secured the title of “Highest-Grossing Rock Tour” of all time, making over one billion dollars. They are currently the seventh most-streamed artist globally on Spotify with “Viva La Vida” and “Yellow” each racking up about 2.5 billion streams, in addition to another half-dozen songs with over a billion. In 2008, “Viva La Vida” became a global success peaking at #1 in multiple countries including America where it also topped the AC, Hot AC and Alternative airplay chart… but only making it to #12 on Top 40. In the past month, we’ve had a over a dozen requests for it (which is a lot for an “obscure” song like this). It’s currently #75 on the Spotify Top 200 and would be much higher if you subtracted the dozens of Christmas songs above it. What absolutely blows my mind is that not a single Top 40 station is playing it and only three Hot ACs have played it in the last 7 days. Today’s successful Top 40s are essentially a slightly hotter Hot AC to attract the 25-44 audience who still listen to radio (unlike the 12-24 demo who find radio unrelatable).. It is ultra-familiar, catchy and has broad demo appeal.
Their first American hit, 2001’s “Yellow” is a much different story. It peaked at #48 on Billboard, #22 on Top 40 airplay, #2 on Alternative and #11 on Hot AC. What revived this song as a Gen Z favorite remains a mystery, but Liveline has received another dozen calls for it in the past month from mostly younger women; a 22 year old girl from Tallahassee FL said “It’s just got a really nostalgic and chill vibe. Literally all my friends listen to it“. To which I replied, “This was a hit before you and I were even born” and she said “yeah but I feel like the year doesn’t matter anymore. We just wanna hear good songs and it’s new to a lot of people but good for the parents”. I say, let’s put her in charge of a Top 40 station!!! Right now, it’s #55 on the Spotify Top 200 (#39 if you subtract all the holiday music). No Top 40 or Hot AC stations have played it in the past 14 days.
Shaggy, RikRok – It Wasn’t Me: An all-time classic which has always gotten great response on the request line. It was #1 on Billboard, Top 40 and Rhythmic, later being listed the twelfth biggest song of 2001. While this isn’t necessarily a “buried breasure” in terms of obscurity, relevance or popularity, it actually receives more current airplay on Hot AC than Top 40. This week, WKQI/Detroit, KUDL/Sacramento and WXLK/Roanoke each played it 5 times, while WBZZ/Pittsburgh (13 spins) and WXKB/Ft Myers (11 spins) still play it in heavy gold rotation. Overall, this novelty reggae-rap record about sleeping with the girl next door is one of our 20 most-requested throwbacks of 2024.
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Omg Mason, you really went IN for Meghan, it was bad for her, but I have to agree (although you were more brutal than me). Reality is payola doing wonders on Pop radio’s weakest phase this century. No reason for a song like “Criminals”, not only dated-sounding, but also with zero interest from the public to be charting at #11. Radio programmers (not all but majority) are showing themselves are very out-of-touch with how they are making their decisions. Ms Trainor has never been known for making good music, she had a very good era of success back in 2014-2016, but that’s it. Oh, and we had “Made You Look”, which was a fluke after years of trying. There is no excuse for programmers to give a Meghan single such attention. I believe it is going to be dropped after the iHeartRadio Jingle Ball events occur, oh how unpredictable this i$.
Potential hits like “Timeless”, “Pink Pony Club” and “Sailor Song” are still very overlooked by programmers, yes, they are rising, but at such a slow pace.
I’ve been out of A/C radio for a while but remember 1977 to 1981. A couple of us would sit in the office, play the new 45s and maybe dropped the needle on some albums to FIND THE HITS. We listened, like with our actual ears! And we listened to the R&B station from 50 miles away on scratchy AM and the college station too. I had a record store nearby I used to shop and asked the clerks what sounded catchy. From all of this we figured out what to add. Our little station always has great music because we actually listened to (and genuinely loved) what we were playing. And those songs are timeless, That’s how we discovered songs like Elvis Costello (Alison), Ian Gomm (Hold On), The Pretenders (Brass in Pocket), The Whispers (And the Beat Goes On), Shalamar (A Night to Remember), and Doobie Brothers (Album track Minute by Minute) among many others. Of course, listener response was critical! When you simply listen — with your ears — you can hear what will work MOST of the time. I appreciate your posts because you focus on doing what works regardless of the hype.