Top 40 music was better in 2019.
Top 40 music was barely better in 2019.
Post Malone, “Circles,” proved that a medium-weight, up-tempo pop/rock record could still be a legitimate hit, after a few years when similar songs stalled somewhere in the top 20 — which is to say as soon as they hit the callout research buzzsaw. But Niall Horan’s “Pleased to Meet Ya” did exactly that. And at the end of the year, the most exciting new record was Arizona Zervas, “Roxanne,” which showed that there was still an appetite for the type of record that Post Malone used to make.
There were a number of CHR hits that didn’t break new ground — usually what I’m looking for in the “Songs That Made a Difference” article each year — but provided enough tempo to make the format listenable again. “If I Can’t Have You” could have been a Shaun Mendes record from a few years ago. So, for that matter, could Jonas Brothers, “Sucker.” But they both gave the format a boost of energy at the same time. And having Mendes in a better mood, after “In My Blood,” was significant, too.
In general, there were just enough listener reminders that tempo and energy mattered. Ava Max, “Sweet but Psycho,” a song that programmers were seizing on a year ago, turned out to be a real hit, and not just something radio wanted to play. Taylor Swift, “You Need to Calm Down,” looked like another example of Swift not being able to put a song in power rotation anymore at CHR. Then it became a real hit at Adult CHR and, in doing so, also reinforced that Hot AC listeners wanted pop records, not just CHR’s procession of EDM ballads four months after Mainstream CHR played them.
There were up-tempo hits that did bring freshness to Top 40. Billie Eilish, “Bad Guy,” and Tones and I, “Dance Monkey,” are not yet the up-tempo records that reignite the mother/daughter coalition. There’s still a lot of “I don’t get it” among my friends and in my feeds; I’ve been spectacularly unsuccessful so far in my attempt to sell Tones to my peers as the Cyndi Lauper of 2019. But a more immediate version of the indie pop that has lingered at Alternative for the last decade still has significant potential for CHR, and I have to remind myself that not everybody liked “Don’t You Want Me” right away in 1982.
There were positive indicators that Top 40 was willing to play songs differently than it had in recent years: there were multiple hits happening simultaneously from Jonas Brothers, Mendes, Ed Sheeran, and at year’s end the Weeknd. That reflected both the influence of streaming and the subsequent willingness of labels to work more than one song from an artist. With Lizzo’s “Truth Hurts” and “Good as Hell” (and perhaps “Water Me”) there was the willingness to go back to a previous album for songs that weren’t previously on radio’s radar. Then again, without a change in what was being promoted, that probably would have happened, as evidenced by radio only playing one Lizzo song at a time.
There were more songs that broke through CHR’s quandary of “what are all these viral Hip-Hop songs and what do we do with them?” and they weren’t all ridiculously late when radio acknowledged them. Often, they were the genre’s most obvious novelties — “Hot Girl Bummer” and “Old Town Road.” But “Panini” may be the more telling Lil Nas X record — a far-less-phenomenal title in which radio has invested nearly six months to create a “B.”
Evidence of CHR’s glacial pace is still clear on the year-end charts, too. Songs that were legitimate consensus hits take you to about No. 30 on the list of most-played songs at CHR, although I remember the cutoff being in the low 20s for the last few years. Malone’s “Psycho,” more than a year old, is the No. 51 most-played song at CHR according to Nielsen BDSRadio. The most-played AC song of the year is Maroon 5’s “Girls Like You,” a CHR hit in summer ’18. The seventh most-played Alternative song is Foster the People’s “Sit Next to Me,” which peaked at that format in March ’18. Chris Stapleton’s “Tennessee Whiskey,” resisted by Country radio four years ago, received considerable “bringback” this year, in part because music research showed it to be stronger than so many more recent songs.
There were interesting things happening in Active Rock in 2019. In between the heritage acts (Shinedown, Five Finger Death Punch, Godsmack), there was Highly Suspect’s poppier “16,” two hits from Glorious Sons, and any number of acts channeling Classic Rock in diverting ways, not just Greta Van Fleet but Ghost and Volbeat, too. Black Keys once represented the type of act that separated Active Rock from the Alternative format. This year “Lo/Hi” was the No. 6 Active Rock song of the year.
If there is indeed an appetite for more up-tempo pop/rock, there’s a lot that might have come over from Active this year, but it’s far-fetched in terms of how things work. Active Rock doesn’t give its currents a lot of spins, or have the presence in many major markets to do so. Other formats don’t provide lateral support. Labels don’t put them on CHR’s radar.
Even among pop artists, it is telling that Harry Styles gave us viable up-tempo contenders in “Lights Up” and “Watermelon Sugar,” and yet the song worked to CHR (and quickly embraced) was the less adventurous “Adore You.” But that song’s fine, too. And it’s tempo. I’m writing this over the holiday in South Florida, and between three CHRs, I’m a lot happier with my choices this year. But sometimes I find myself punching from “In My Blood” to “Elastic Heart.”
What happens with CHR and current-based formats overall in 2020 becomes a dance between labels and radio, informed by streaming. Programmer enterprise isn’t entirely gone, as evidenced by the Cox CHR’s playing the Weeknd’s throwback “Blinding Lights” at year’s end. But it’s hard for those decisions to reach critical mass as easily as a week’s inclusion on Today’s Top Hits. So without label decisions on what to work, the product won’t improve. Without more support for tempo, and more songs seized on when listeners care about them, the label priorities won’t improve. The makings of an upswing or a continued doldrums are generally present at most times, and never more than as 2020 begins.
