It happens at least once a month on the Saturday afternoon thread devoted to listening to the SiriusXM ’70s on 7 reruns of American Top 40. Sometimes it will be a mid-charter that provokes the comment. Sometimes it will be a major hit, but typically one of the goofy mid-’70s songs that was a lightning rod even then. Eventually, somebody will declare that there must have been payola involved.
There’s a Canadian variant of that discussion. The provocation that led me to it was the daily “greatest Canadian song of all-time” competition staged on social media by Canadian History Ehx podcaster Craig Baird. When Trooper’s “We’re Here for a Good Time” — essentially Canada’s “Margaritaville” – beat out “Suzanne” by Leonard Cohen, followers reacted strongly. One suggested that Trooper wouldn’t have had a career without the Canadian Content regulations that keep radio playing 35-40% Canadian content even now.
It’s sometimes hard for music fans to accept when songs they don’t like become bigger than the ones they do. Sometimes the contempt for songs-one-doesn’t-like can often spread to the people who do like them. It certainly fueled the consumer-press hostility toward radio, at least until writers could segue from stories about radio having too much influence to having less power to set the agenda. The more central music is in your life, the more likely you may be to become indignant about Trooper beating out a national treasure.
Calculating the Lost Factor of hits that no longer endure at radio, and being part of the AT40 threads has shown me that there’s somebody who likes almost every song I don’t, particularly “Broken Wings.” In late 1985, Mr. Mister represented the end of CHR’s heyday and a return to the early ’80s yacht rock doldrums. I was a minority opinion then. Now as somebody who programs music for a Soft AC station, it’s one of the songs (along with “Africa”) that seemingly cannot play too often.
Time doesn’t just soften harder songs. It attaches high-school memories to them, too. I sometimes rate the AT40 songs each week and find it’s hard to channel the annoyance that 14-year-old Sean felt about certain songs. As someone who always bonds with strangers over music and radio, we can probably become friends if you like “Up in a Puff of Smoke” by Polly Brown, but it’s not a requirement. My wife likes Steely Dan more than I do, but I turn them up for her, particularly since she was so understanding about my workout playlist called “Mexican Bubblegum.”
I also take it for granted that my tastes will overlap perfectly with those of almost nobody else. If this were “never have I ever,” the Mexican Bubblegum list would instantly separate me even from most Ross on Radio readers. I’ve also found that ROR readers in general have different tastes. During the Lost Factor series, I was often asked by a reader how a song could be obscure now if they had just heard it on SiriusXM or, in one case, on relatively deep Internet oldies stations. Years of working in music research have shown me that most people don’t hear songs that way.
Those 20 years in music research were preceded by a like number of years working for trade publications. Without arguing the existence of actual payola, I can say that hype — the disproportionate amount of promotional emphasis given to those songs that didn’t seem to be hits — was very much a factor in getting songs to a certain point on the charts, usually mid-to-low 30s, but rarely in bringing them home as true hits. Very few of them are big enough to make the year-end Top 100, although Lost Factor has certainly identified a handful of No. 9 hits that were hyped just enough to be exposed when they were lost to time later.
Lots of factors impact what-becomes-a-hit including available product and what CHR feels like playing at the moment. It’s even more nebulous now that radio has been diminished and the question of “are these really hits” has been amplified. It has never been pure merit. But what would pure merit be? Would it be songs that the entire audience might have liked better under the circumstances? Or are we just back to the songs you like personally?
Polarizing hits are the ones most often dismissed as hype. So is anything from the time after somebody stopped liking pop music. I’ve seen older Facebook friends cast aspersions about Britney Spears and teen pop. But having been there in 1998, I can assure you that any hype wasn’t on behalf of Spears, but usually for the veteran big-name artists that she had just made less relevant. Same goes for those goofy ’70s novelties. They usually broke themselves. There was no conspiracy to force “Convoy” on to people who hated it.
When it comes to how songs endure, with the label promotional element removed, there’s a variety of stories. “(I Just) Died in Your Arms” by Cutting Crew, a relative trifle, has become a strangely durable hit song for the ages. “Walking on Sunshine” by Katrina & the Waves — a critically beloved band and personal favorite in the mid-’80s — has started to fade. Not only is Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” more enduring than any Smiths song, UK audiences seem to enjoy Astley singing Smiths songs more than Morrissey these days.
“We’re Here for a Good Time” benefitted for years not just from Canadian Content requirements but from other radio rules that required a certain number of songs that peaked below No. 40. But the same regulations applied to “Suzanne,” too, and for a minute after the regulations took hold, a now-forgotten cover of “Suzanne” by Tom Northcott became a radio hit across Canada.
As a fan of late-’70s Canadian rock, Trooper is a solid act with multiple decent singles and one rockier anthem, “Raise a Little Hell,” that endures almost as much as “We’re Here for a Good Time.” Meanwhile, it was Cohen’s “Hallelujah” that became the song for the ages. Around the same time, I saw a social-media discussion about whether “Hallelujah” should ever be used (as it now is) as a Christmas song. That one might make an even better (and more mainstream) column, but I’d rather be in the weeds than a minefield.
After a lengthy period in the late ’10s of hit music that I found unbearable, I was surprised to look at the CHR charts this morning and realize that I like nine out of the top 10 on some level and find myself merely indifferent to the 10th. That doesn’t mean that Top 40 is in a good place yet; some of those are songs that I’ve been burnt on for months. And there’s not much depth beyond the top 10, in part because label hype has almost entirely ended (at least when it comes to radio).
Perhaps that means that I should gracefully accept the decisions by TikTok users about what songs have the potential to become hits. Right now, they befuddle me and much of radio. Lesley Gore was a great artist with a surprisingly deep catalog, and users chose her album filler version of “Misty”? But very few of TikTok’s eccentricities have achieved enough critical mass to make the current version of AT40. And at this writing, Universal Music has pulled its product, including Lesley Gore, from TikTok. Radio and the industry still need a better way to determine what listeners really like now. But when they do, I’m willing to abide by the decision.
Just a quick reminder that Lesley Gore belongs in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I think everyone reading this would agree,
Great column, Sean! Back in the day, I always had my doubts about music research as it was done then. Sure, you want to satisfy P1’s as much as possible. However, what about the P2”s and P3’s who could become P1’s with the right music to attract them? I’m not saying you attune all your music to those lower Preference-level listeners but don’t discount them totally, especially if nearly your entire aqh is due to P1’s. Enlarge your tent some.
In fact, Lesley Gore’s catalog is so huge that she’s had a Bear Family boxed set released. Bear Family is the famous German reissue label known for reissuing not only lots of vintage, long out of print German recordings and such but especially huge archival boxed sets of many artists in traditional and early country music such as the complete recordings of early country pioneer Jimmie Rodgers, the Carter Family, multiple archival Marty Robbins boxed sets, much Rosemary Clooney reissued in boxed sets, archival boxed sets of earlier Johnny Cash, the Everly Brothers Cadence and Warner catalogs in multiple boxed sets, much of Ernest Tubb’s catalog in multiple boxed sets, Bill Haley’s catalog in multiple boxed sets, Merle Haggard’s catalog, a lot of early Willie Nelson RCA recordings in a boxed set, etc., the complete catalog of Lefty Frizzell in a boxed set, the complete Imperial recordings of Fats Domino in a boxed set, boxed sets documenting music of Vietnam including many otherwise rare recordings, most of the albums of the cast of Bonanza in a boxed set, etc.
Another variation is why one song by an artist ends up so much higher on the charts than another song by the artist that you like better. My example: I like Keith’s “Ain’t Gonna Lie” much better than his “98.6.” But Lie barely made the Top 40 while the other was Top 10. So, I think order of release can affect a song popularity and wonder if their rankings would have flipped if Lie had come out after 98.6 . . .
“Ain’t Gonna Lie” has a beautiful bridge/instrumental hook coming out of each chorus. I think it was just too cool for the room. It needed a piano or guitar lick and maybe horns to bring out the rich harmonics because there were no background singers. A missed opportunity for sure.
Can’t tell you how many Facebook posts I saw from PDs/OMs who resented playing Kate Bush – despite the fact that it was streaming upwards of 40M per week (and NOT just on TikTok). When they finally got around to playing it, many played the badly-edited 2 1/2 minute version. If someone LIKES that song – they would, most likely, stick around for all 5 minutes putting them at an advantage in the PPM World – Where you’re only credited for 5 minutes of contiguous listening. Makes no sense to edit songs down to barely nothing – especially when the metrics are there to back up airplay. If I only programmed songs I LIKED, my playlist would be even tighter than it already is!
Ironic because I remember how in 1985, PDs were genuinely excited to have an uptempo, mainstream(ish) Kate Bush song they could play, but the audience was indifferent.
Yet, Kate Bush has always been a critics darling and there are audio shows that have used her recordings as test material considering how much of her stuff is very well recorded and produced. The Red Shoes being THE one album that is so digitally compressed using the digital master that many audiophiles hate it as much as they love the rest of her catalog. The analog tape master of The Red Shoes is much better sounding so on those rare times that she records new material, she insists on analog material and having the dynamics intact.
The Smiths recordings also continue to be critics darlings and The Queen Is Dead is one of their albums frequently on these “Greatest Albums of All Time” lists.
Your comment about readers perceiving songs as “not being obscure” because they hear it on “we play anything, even if it wasn’t REALLY a hit” sources (yes, that is a critique of SiriusXM) rings true.
Most people indeed do not hear songs on those sources … but the ones that do are the same ones who can’t understand why terrestrial radio doesn’t have deeper playlists. I’d be interested, Sean, to know how many of those readers use verbiage such as “but it’s one of MY personal favorites, so EVERYONE would love to hear it.” (I bet it’s a lot.)
I can’t tell you how often stations get the “ don’t play ___ anymore cuz everybody I know hates it!” calls Or “ why don’t you play ____. Everybody I know loves it!” calls.
That is part of the reason music research companies exist. I programmed multiple formats in a number of markets for 40 years and I haven’t got a clue about why some songs are hits and some not. And neither does anyone else. Just move one letter and “hits” becomes …you know
It’s a personal world these days. Lots of songs are exposed to people that wouldn’t have made it in the former “AM/FM” world. We remember the days of “the bomb barrel” – that place where the thousands of discards went. Many of them are making the streamers’ websites and apps-which will add to and create more to talk about what’s good and what’s not. But that makes the world we live in. After all if we all thought the same way WABC and KHJ would still be #1 and we’d all want to date Taylor Swift.
In regard to the “burn” factor, for me the most popular song of the summer of 1983 “Every Breath You Take” by the Police burnt out by early August, 1983 but I am sure my opinion is a minority one!
The songs that are hardest for me to sit through on the radio are often the ones that I didn’t care for much in the first place. Certainly, “Don’t Stop Believin'” and “Every Breath You Take” have gone from “like-at-least-somewhat” to “I’ll be back in four minutes.” Sad to say that “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” might be joining them. But these are not songs whose popularity surprises me.