The Right Station for Summer 2021

Often, the station of the summer was the one in my backyard. The WRQX (Q107) vs. WPGC Washington, D.C., battle in 1980. Ten-share KIIS Los Angeles in the height of CHR’s comeback in 1984, but also KDAY at the birth of Hip-Hop radio. KPWR (Power 106) two summers later, when you could go for a run without a Walkman and still know every song they played for an hour as they blared from passing cars.

Three different stations defined New York radio for me in three consecutive summers. WQHT (Hot 97) in 1995, when the real hits were on R&B/Hip-Hop radio and not on Top 40, where that format even existed. In the “Macarena” summer of ’96, it was WKTU, proving that dance music still mattered in New York. In 1997, it was WHTZ (Z100), making Top 40’s resurgence official.

Recently, my station of summer has been the one encountered out-of-town, doing something contrarian for Top 40. CKOI Montreal became a favorite again in 2017, thanks to a half-hour stretch that included Imagine Dragons, “Thunder” (months before U.S. CHR), Shawn Mendes, Canadian rapper Sonreal, Euro-dance’s Offenbach, and “Owner of a Lonely Heart” by Yes. Last summer it was just-slightly-adult-leaning WKRZ Wilkes-Barre, Pa., which was powering “Rain on Me” by Lady Gaga & Ariana Grande, just as it was faltering elsewhere, and not playing “Blinding Lights” in power for six more months.

If CHR is going to have a comeback, it’s going to begin this summer. It needs to begin this summer. Some will read this and say it’s already in process. A few stations have three-share ratings that camouflage impressive 18-34 stories. Many are merely doing a little better than the 2.5 of two months ago. I hope April is as promising as March, but the eight-share CHRs that dominated from 16 to 54 a decade ago aren’t such a distant memory. So unless you don’t want that, don’t call it a comeback, yet.

Some people say CHR is just a spin of the format cycle from a resurgence. Some don’t think Top 40 can ever rebound with young-end listening so siphoned off, leaving behind only the 18-24s who want to hear the Classic Rock they encounter while gaming. In his much-discussed article of a few weeks ago, Jason Kidd thinks it will happen when CHR courts the young end and acknowledges the next “WAP.” I have suggested that moms, when they’re again inclined to model the station for their daughters, will be the first adapters. It’s entirely possible that both those statements are true.

What gives CHR a chance in the next few months is America’s determination to have the summer that was wrested from us in 2020. In 2009-10, the relief of America not descending into a second Great Depression was enough to empower dozens of party-rock anthems. If better times are on the way this year, radio has a chance to be their soundtrack. If good times do not materialize, then we really need radio to be their surrogate.

What would that sound like? And how can we get there with the music we have now, especially when the mid-to-downtempo music coming from TikTok and the piano ballads coming from the artist’s bedroom are our most undeniable hits? The rare “Blinding Lights” or “Levitating” proves that there’s still a demand for tempo and energy. Other uptempo mainstream titles struggle between No. 15 and No. 10, upstaged by the next mid-to-downtempo Justin Bieber or Ariana Grande song.

The right station for summer 2021 can play Olivia Rodrigo and Tate McRae, but not next to each other.

The right station for summer 2021 should play Masked Wolf and “Montero,” but maybe not next to each other and not punctuated only by “You Broke Me First.” 

The right station for summer 2021 will deliver on the promise of CHR (or any hot current-based format) as a renewable source of ongoing excitement. It will not keep the winter’s hits in power throughout the summer because there is nothing else. I’d like to cite this year’s counterpart to “Sucker” or “Blinding Lights,” but with the possible exception of “34+35” we don’t really have one. In part, that’s because we were still too busy with “Blinding Lights” to develop another one.

The right station for summer 2021 could have a substantial dance/pop component. It’s the music with which WKTU gave New Yorkers permission to exhale 25 years ago. It’s also the uptempo music that is most readily available and ratified elsewhere in the world. In the U.S., there are two producer-driven dance/pop songs in the top 30. In the U.K., where CHR sounds better already, there are three in the top 10 and eight in the top 20, and that doesn’t include uptempo pop that just happens to be danceable, like “My Head or My Heart.”

The right station for summer 2021 will be charged with cultivating a certain amount of music, songs that can be nurtured through their chart doldrums to get the sound it wants. Many decades ago, it was “Moonlight Feels Right” by Starbuck that kicked around for months until called upon for summer duty. I hear Nelly & Florida Georgia Line’s “Lil Bit” as that record this year. I hear left-field candidates on SiriusXM Hits 1 (Lil Huddy, “The Eulogy of You and Me”) or Hot AC (Elle King & Miranda Lambert’s “Drunk [And I Don’t Want to Go Home].” There are many more songs available to us if we are willing to champion them, rather than waiting for Spotify’s Today’s Top Hits to sort it all out.

The right station for summer 2021 will not be jockless. We are all starved for company and conversation again. They will share the good times if they come. They will distract us if they don’t. In summer 2020, it was notable when a station like WKRZ could provide that, amidst radio’s other crises. We are all a year more practiced now at keeping-on-keeping-on. The right station for summer 2021 will be a showcase for radio.

Will it be enough? In summer 1982, some of the best CHRs in America were on AM. KFRC San Francisco played the R&B hits that most CHRs would not. So did KKBQ (79Q) Houston, but it also played “Bad Reputation” by Joan Jett & the Blackhearts and oddball bopper-gold like “The Night Chicago Died.” 79Q did well enough to secure a place on FM six months later. KFRC hung on a few more years, then it was fragmented out of the format by new FM competition.

But between 1980 and 1984, having KFRC in the format was better than not. When the next great Bay Area radio station, KMEL, came along, it was more than informed by KFRC. In its six months, 79Q made a case not only for bringing the station along to the next platform, but for the CHR format itself. In a future that’s uncertain on every front, what we can do now is create the stations we want to hear now.