For decades, programmers have wondered if there would ever be a hybrid Pop/Country format. It’s a hole that a few broadcasters have talked about over the years, sometimes when Country radio and music is at its hottest, but not always. In Canada, it was successful for several years in Calgary. Typically, though, stations eventually defaulted to pop or Country outright.
The discussion arose again in the mid-’10s, prompted by the post-Florida Georgia Line explosion of younger listening at Country radio, then cooled when Country music did too. Cable TV provider MusicChoice has offered the Pop & Country format for several years.
Now, to some extent, the Country/Pop hybrid has already taken shape, especially at the medium- and smaller-market CHRs that were already friendly to both crossovers and a steadily growing number of Country/Pop collaborations. Records like Nelly & Florida Georgia Line’s “Lil Bit” or Morgan Wallen’s “Wasted on You” were powers for many of those stations before serious discussion of a Country crossover boom began for most PDs.
WIXX Green Bay, Wis., has a long history with both types of records. Last week, four of its five powers were Country: Post Malone & Wallen’s “I Had Some Help”; Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy)”; Dasha’s “Austin”; and Kane Brown & Marshmello’s “Miles on It.” All four are songs embraced by Country radio, but as is increasingly typical now, all were developed at both Country and CHR/Hot AC simultaneously. Two of the four are songs by new artists that radiated out to both formats after developing a streaming story.
If Country crossovers have been daunting to PDs who weren’t used to playing them, they have presented some challenges even at Country-friendly stations. Even in “Country lifegroup” markets, about 25-30% of the market typically does not like Country. PDs report getting calls from listeners who wanted to use the CHR to escape Country, even if that would logically be part of an “all-the-hits” radio station.
Despite that, Country-friendly CHRs are often in clusters with major Country stations. WIXX; Bristol Broadcasting’s clusters in Johnson City, Tenn.; Charleston, W. Va; and Paducah, Ky.; WKRZ Wilkes-Barre, Pa.; and WVAQ Morgantown, W. Va., are all among those stations where cluster strategy hasn’t led to stations being forcibly separated musically as they might be elsewhere.
WIXX PD Corey Carter says, “I feel like Wisconsin culture, at least in our area, is country music. I just think of all the little country dive bars in our area, and the songs that are played the most are the country-crossover songs. Our local research shows they are always our highest-testing songs.
“Our problem becomes when to finally drop [Country crossovers] off the playlist, because the test scores never die,” Carter says. “We do want to retain our identity as a mass-appeal station without leaning too much in one direction.”
In the course of most daytime hours on September 17, WIXX typically played three songs that were Country or CHR chart collaborations with Country artists, such as MGK & Jelly Roll’s “Lonely Road.” In a few hours, there was only one. In the 9 p.m. hour, it was as many as five. Country songs were typically 15-20 minutes apart, although it was possible to hear one next to, say, “Stick Season” by Noah Kahan, a pop hit by a Triple-A-based artist that still reads as Country sonically.
Despite that, the Country presence on WIXX never became overwhelming. Like many CHRs now, WIXX has a strong gold and throwback component, which contributed to its stylistic balance. Here’s WIXX just before 1 p.m., Sept. 18 with middayer Andy Gardner.
- Teddy Swims, “The Door”
- Miley Cyrus, “Flowers”
- Hozier, “Too Sweet”
- Lewis Capaldi, “Forget Me”
- Billie Eilish, “Birds of a Feather”
- Morgan Wallen f/Ernest, “Cowgirls”
- Lady Gaga, “Born This Way”
- John K, “Lost”
- Daughtry, “It’s Not Over”
- Kane Brown & Marshmello, “Miles on It”
- Mark Ambor, “Belong Together”
- Maneskin, “Beggin’”
- Miley Cyrus, “Used to Be Young”
- Benson Boone, “Beautiful Things”
- Post Malone, “Circles”
- Flo Rida f/Sia, “Wild Ones”
Seeing the Country/Pop hybrid come into being is a lot like looking at Top 40 in the early ’10s when the “turbo-pop” of the CHR rebound gave way to even more aggressive EDM crossovers. Advocates of dance music had been wondering if that format would finally find a radio foothold. Instead, Top 40 became mostly a dance format itself for several years. Arguably it becomes a format with any genre that dominates for a while.
The Country influence at CHR isn’t likely to fade as long as Jelly Roll is the collaborator of choice for artists in multiple genres. CHR and Country are the only two formats with any critical mass at the moment, particularly when it comes to influencing Billboard’s Hot 100 chart. (Until the CHR rebound, it was the Hip-Hop/R&B radio/Rhythmic Top 40/CHR wedge that resulted in the biggest multi-format hits. Now, only Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” fits that model.) If Country fades, it will likely remain a significant part of some of the stations that are closest to being hybrids now. Those stations will just be choosing from slightly fewer records.
When I was a little fella growing up in LA listening to top 40 radio like KHJ and TenQ, there was a true variety that included rock, dance, pop, soft, and yes, even country. We didn’t care what style of music it was. We just liked good music.
Top 40 /CHR radio seemed to have lost its way. It’s good to hear rock, and country being played again on CHRs.
Remember. Listeners are not as narrow-minded as we in radio make them out to be.
That’s what top40 was like in the 60s and 70s it was all those types of songs we didn’t differentiate between country or pop or anything we just put red colour on the hot ones vs green and blue and round they played. Then we got scientific.
Australia (Dave’s home) was particularly great for Country crossovers and in a few cases covers of Country hits from America. In that case, it helped that those songs didn’t have their own format to be shunted off to, although during the ’70s, there were no niche formats yet.
Beyoncé gave Country the opportunity to regain a foothold in hit radio, provided the market is right. Where the pop mainstream is at any particular time, of course, is the most important consideration. For example, in the 1970s, artists like the Eagles, America, Linda Ronstadt, etc. could work in either format. And it went both ways: I worked at a country station in that era (WIXZ/Pittsburgh) that called what it played “hit music” and included a lot of Top 40 crossovers. Even “Lay Down Sally” by Eric Clapton worked, though we didn’t ever mention the artist’s name on the air.
In the 1950s and early 1960s, before what was then called “modern country” became a bold new option for struggling stations, country music was a cornerstone of the Top 40 format. In 1962 it seemed there was mote of it on the charts than there was rock and roll — even Ray Charles, Little Esther and Nat Cole were doing it! But that, of course, is ancient history.
Yes, Lay Down Sally was a Top 40 country chart hit on Billboard.
A lot of times in later years of an artists career, when pop artists do country albums, it is often a signal that their time on CHR formats is over and done with. Back in the 1960s-1970s, had done it as a daring move and while many were commercially successful in the mainstream (Ray Charles’ Modern Sounds In Country and Western Music, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s Uncle Charlie and His Dog Teddy and Will The Circle Be Unbroken), others were very daring and controversial in the industry doing it and many who were daring and controversial in the industry have only achieved a cult following over the years (e.g. the Byrds with their now legendary Sweetheart of the Rodeo album).
In fact, Nat King Cole had a #1 country chart hit in 1944 with Straighten Up and Fly Right.
Elvis Costello also put out a country album called “Almost Blue” in 1981, pretty much at the height of his commercial appeal, and this was a daring move at the time.
One more comment. The Keith Carradine pop hit from 1976, I’m Easy, came from a country music themed movie from 1975. The movie being the legendary Robert Altman film “Nashville.” While the Keith Carradine album has a pop remake of it, the version that was the hit single is the version on the Nashville soundtrack album. This even would have worked on country radio back in the day.