Fall 1993: The Year Without a CHR Begins

Recently, I retweeted a Radio & Records CHR chart from October 1993. Two things were impressive.

The supply of songs we now recognize as hits was actually still pretty good in fall ’93, which is interesting when you consider that Mainstream Top 40 was in free fall at that moment, having become an industry punchline as Alternative, Country, and Hip-Hop/R&B all flourished. In many markets, the format was relegated to a rimshot signal, or gone altogether. But that week, there was a good range of hits:

• Mariah Carey, “Dreamlover” (the No. 1 song that week)
• Haddaway, “What Is Love”
• SWV, “Right Here/Human Nature”
• Blind Melon, “No Rain”
• Janet Jackson, “If” (the rock/rhythmic fusion hit, peaking) and “Again” (the Diana-esque ballad, climbing)
• Meat Loaf, “I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That)”
• Inner Circle, “Sweat (A La La La La Long)”
• Billy Joel, “The River of Dreams”
• 2Pac, “I Get Around”
• Aerosmith, “Cryin’”
• Salt ‘N’ Pepa, “Shoop”
• Ace of Base, “All That She Wants” (the week’s fastest-breaking song)
• Toni Braxton, “Another Sad Love Song” (peaking) and “Breathe Again” (breaking)
• Gin Blossoms, “Hey Jealousy”

How you feel personally about these songs now probably tracks with how you feel about the prospects for a ‘90s-based gold format. Not every artist became a core act— or even a brief Ace of Base-type phenomenon. Some of the hits were from veterans in their career’s extra innings. But 80% of these are songs we recognize as real hits many years later.

But then I noticed that when I got further down on the list (you can see the entire issue here), there were a few songs I had forgotten, and many I didn’t know outright. The forgotten pile included En Vogue’s “Runaway Love” (No. 6 that week); Earth, Wind & Fire’s “Sunday Morning” (No. 20, after peaking at No. 18); Taylor Dayne’s “Send Me a Lover” (No. 39). I was happy to rediscover songs by Juliana Hatfield Three (“My Sister”) and Matthew Sweet (“Time Capsule”) that were lurking below the chart.

The mind-blower was the list of songs I’m not sure I’d ever known. John Waite became a solo artist (“In Dreams”) again after Bad English? Big Country (“The One I Love”), Midnight Oil (“Outbreak of Love”), Ocean Blue (“Sublime”), and The The (“Love Is Stronger Than Death”) all had songs that got enough airplay to “make print” (show up receiving below-the-chart airplay) that fall?

There was a reason that so many Alternative acts were there. Earlier that year, WHTZ (Z100) New York had finally moved away from Michael Bolton and Amy Grant to become, briefly, the MTV-like mix of new wave, R&B/rap, and hip pop that a few other CHRs had attempted and failed. In summer ’93, Z100 was playing both OMD and Onyx; it was one of my favorite Top 40 radio moments ever.

1993 had already begun with the Spin Doctors’ breakthrough and Duran Duran’s comeback, two bands Mainstream CHR needed, even if they were borrowed from Alternative. At that moment, grunge was exploding in youth culture, but pre-Nirvana acts were still much of the Alternative chart, and easier for Top 40 to relate to. That’s how Tears for Fears and New Order had their own comeback hits. It’s also how acts like Toad the Wet Sprocket and Soul Asylum broke through in the days before Triple-A. So why not a work a CHR single for The The? (Of course, they’d been thinking “This is the Day” for a while.)

There was also a reason I didn’t know these songs. A month earlier, I had moved from New York to Chicago to program R&B oldies WGCI-AM. For the first time in nearly a decade, I had no access to CHR record service (by then, I was relying heavily on the trade-publication samplers and TM Hit Discs that I got on my previous label-A&R job).

Beyond that, for the first time since childhood, I didn’t have much access to Top 40 on the radio. WBBM-FM (B96) was 90% R&B and Hip-Hop at that moment, aiming for market-leader WGCI-FM. Suburban WBUS Kankakee, Ill., was pop, but idiosyncratic in what they did and didn’t play, so I couldn’t count on them to know every song. They also ran “Future Hits,” if I woke up early enough on Sunday to hear it. Alternative WKQX (Q101) was phenomenal at the moment, but I don’t remember hearing some of those tertiary Modern Rock hits even there. To put things in perspective, a suburban FM went R&B Oldies just before I got to Chicago; we had a Classic Soul format war, but no Mainstream CHR to speak of.

Even on weekend travels, Top 40 was elusive. WLUM Milwaukee was, at that moment, rhythmic. (It would briefly go Mainstream CHR again on its way to Alternative next year.) WZOK Rockford, Ill., was Hot AC (it evolved back just as I left town again in early 1995). When I did hear CHR somewhere on a weekend trip, it was usually unremarkable. (One exception was the late Joe Dawson’s KLYV Dubuque, Iowa, which played some of the B96’s left-field dance and rap titles not typically heard in smaller markets.)

America wasn’t really hearing Mainstream CHR either. When I try roughing out now what I could have played on a CHR in fall ’93, I can come up with about 25 legit songs — an acceptable number, but certainly not 1966 or 1984. To get to that number, you would have had to play both 2Pac’s “I Get Around” and Nirvana’s then-new “Heart Shaped Box” (never even worked to Top 40 at the time). Even Z100 wouldn’t have played both songs, and many markets were without CHR at all.

Plus, Z100 was evolving too. By the time I went home at Thanksgiving, the non-rock titles were down to a trickle. With each trip back east, it was rocking a little harder. I came back to NYC in spring 1995 and remember the year that followed as marked by some surprisingly aggressive rock titles (“Violet” by Hole, “Bullet With Butterfly Wings” by Smashing Pumpkins) with just a few outliers (Coolio, “Gangsta’s Paradise”; Mariah Carey’s “One Sweet Day”). I think of myself as having been without CHR for a year, but was at least until WKTU New York launched in early 1996 that I had access to anything close.

Top 40 in late 1993 had almost enough hits, but it had no depth. Some of the format’s big names were there, but not with their best work. A lot of acts who had uptempo summer titles were out now with their ballads. Worst of all, even when CHR had something to play, it had nothing to own. New Kids on the Block were still blamed for the format’s travails. Teen pop was allowed only in the guise of Boyz II Men-type R&B vocal harmony acts. (On the fringes, there were a few acts like Jeremy Jordan and Joey Lawrence, who seemed only to prove how irrelevant teen pop had become.)

1993-94 is considered a great time for music–a watershed time in which the robust R&B/Hip-Hop and Alternative formed a soundtrack for many–almost never on the same stations but often in the same tape decks. Recently, I tried my Lost Factor calculations on the hits of 1993-94 and found that in many cases the trajectory between “hit then” and “obscurity now” was relatively low. Billboard’s Hot 100 was by then based on monitored airplay and sales. The chart was mostly rhythmic, but mostly real.

I expected the R&R year-end charts to have more stiffs, but R&R’s CHR panel included many of the Hip-Hop/R&B stations that self-identified as “Rhythmic CHR,” such as B96, KMEL San Francisco, and WPGC Washington, D.C. (Without those stations, there would have been no CHR section.) R&R’s year-end chart didn’t look much softer than Billboard. It was only seeing the New & Active section of songs below the chart in early October that showed the obscurest of the obscure.

CHR’s fall 1993 problems are a different set of challenges from 2020. Our 3-4-share CHRs have a place in their clusters and aren’t going anywhere. Those stations are currently trying to triage an endless number of secondary titles, driven by TikTok and other streaming stories. What they don’t have is many songs worthy of power rotation. We do know that there are likely hits hiding in plain sight, because there were a few of those in 1993 (and at almost every other time). But PDs have little impetus now to look.

As in 1993, CHR is narrowly drawn. At the time, Top 40 was focused on a mix of veteran acts and the most accessible possible rhythmic records. Now, “Savage Love” by Jawsh 685 x Jason Derulo ticks both boxes and is Tik Tok-compliant as well. Alternative and R&B radio are now niches themselves (despite Hip-Hop’s not-since-1995 cultural sway). In 1993, Country was just peaking but CHR would barely acknowledge Country crossovers; now, Country is the most durable of our formats that plays current music, and is also sending over a few hits every year. With the growth of streaming in Country, that will likely expand.

There are definitely Ross On Radio readers who remember the early ‘90s fondly, as evidenced by the Facebook group, “Oh Damn . . . That Song!” It is deeply depressing now — for reasons beyond radio — to look back at any doldrums, then realize that things could and did get worse. For that reason, it is important to note that things could and did get better. It took 3-1/2 years for that to be fully apparent, but the green shoots were first noticeable at CHR around spring ’95, as both Alternative and R&B sent over more songs that fit, then teen pop and other mainstream pop took center stage, which made playing “all the hits” work better. Label boss/A&R veteran Steve Greenberg recently recalled that era for Radioinsight. This week, he discusses it at greater length on his Speed Of Sound podcast.

I’ve made two playlists of October 1993 music. One is uptempo and mostly hit-driven; it’s called “Hot 93.” The other is softer and has a lot of the truly lost songs of the era; check out “Easy 93.”