David Guetta, Alphaville & Ava Max – Forever Young: I was so happy when “I’m Good (Blue)” became a #1 hit all over the world. It launched after a 10-second teaser went viral on TikTok before its release. David Guetta is one of the great producers and DJs of all time, but before his 2022 cover of Eiffel 65’s “Blue”, a mainstream hit hadn’t been a part of his discography for nearly 8 years (“Hey Mama”, also with Bebe). Since then, he’s continued to put out loads of new music and remixes, none of which had the impact or Top 40 support of “I’m Good”. Alphaville’s original 1984 “Forever Young” is one of the most iconic and covered songs of all time (notably by Jay-Z in 2009, for which we still get a many requests for. Ava Max seems to be the queen of mid-chart stiffs, and while this song is not obvious to be going Top 10 on CHR, it adds a missing dance beat to the Pop format which brings variety and broad demo appeal. Currently #21 in airplay and has generated a few dozen requests from Liveline listeners already. It does not appear in the Top 100 on Spotify USA or Global. But what’s old is new again. Nostalgia and gold familiarity seem to be the direction of winning Pop music radio in the past 5 years (but “do you really want to live forever?”).
Teddy Swims – “The Door”: “Lose Control” was a massive hit, reaching #1 on Billboard, Top 40, Hot AC, AC and even #13 on Rhythmic. #1 Shazam on the USA and Global chart (and STILL in the top 10). The song has lingered in the Top 50 on Spotify for months. But now it’s time for the critical follow-up: “The Door” has just reached #7 on Pop airplay without achieving any of the same chart success of his previous single. It doesn’t even appear in the Top 200 on Spotify. #31 on Billboard and since it’s April release, we’ve only had one request for it on Liveline. This is what Gen Z refers to as “radio music”, songs they don’t consume, identify with or want to hear on a personal playlist of theirs. It is usually the result of labels hyping songs to high chart positions AND a lack of great new songs in sub-powers to move into Power rotation. If it’s not something you can imagine on your station or the format in a year, does it make sense to ever add it at all? If there’s no corollary chart impact anywhere except the airplay charts, does anyone really care about it? Worse, is it a big tune-out?
Songs That Aren’t Getting Requests
Success with hit music is not as much what you play as what you DON’T play. We process 500+ calls, texts and dm’s on our social accounts every week. We keep it real and don’t exaggerate this number or the response a song gets or doesn’t get. Here are titles that are working their way up the Pop airplay chart which have yet to receive even a single request: The Weeknd – “Dancing In The Flames” (#9), Meghan Trainor – “Criminals” and every song she has ever released since “All About the Bass” (#13), Jelly Roll – “I Am Not Okay” (#15), Addison Rae –“Diet Pepsi”, Gracie Abrams – “Close To You” (#19) (see our post about her from last week), Khalid – “Heatstroke” (#20), Akon’s “Beautiful Day” (#24) and Damiano David – “Born With a Broken Heart” (up 550 spins at #25). There are many others in the Top 40 as well, but these are getting the most upward airplay movement with no passion or consumption available to us from listeners or streaming.
Buried Treasures of the Week
Waka Flocka Flame – No Hands: Statistically speaking this song wasn’t top 10 on Pop radio when it came out. Peaked at #13 on Billboard, #28 on Top 40 and #3 on Rhythmic radio. Looking back at John Garabedian’s “Monday Morning Update” from Open House Party, it held the #1 spot for three weeks in November 2010 and remained in the Top 20 until January. That list was tabulated by over 1,500 weekly requests on a Saturday night. Today, it’s a Gen Z party classic with 711 million streams on Spotify and still getting loads of requests on Liveline. It’s obviously a rap record, but the chorus is strong and musical, it’s well produced and adds cool variety to a playlist dominated by cheesy white pop. A defining moment of early 2010’s culture!
Ke$ha – Tik Tok: #1 song of 2010 in dozens of countries. Nearly every Top 40 station played it as a Gold until the “Diddy situation” this year. Some program directors thought it was best to drop it altogether, because it says “wake up in the mornin’ feelin’ like P Diddy”. The song and video also briefly features him. A few stations actually created their own edit, including Z100/New York who basically cuts the first three lines of the song. Others bleeped out his name, or the line before it to say “wake up in the mornin’ f——- P Diddy” which is what Kesha herself said she would change the lyrics to in all future performances. Continuing to play it is a fine line to walk, but we’re here to tell you that the requests haven’t slowed down for it. It seems that the majority of people either don’t know or don’t care about his alleged criminal behavior. They like the SONG. While we don’t defend their actions, we still get a few requests for “Ignition” by R. Kelly and “I’ll Be Missing You” by Puff Daddy. Because we have a large list of affiliates to not offend, we don’t play them. “The audience won’t notice that it isn’t playing anymore, and they can just go stream it if they wanna hear it so badly” is something I’ve heard from a handful of PDs. The last time this happened was 2022, when DaBaby and his homophobic remarks got him removed from the Top 40 version of “Levitating” by Dua Lipa. The streams and requests never slowed down for the dual version. Kanye West on the other hand? Yeah, though his offensive remarks have caused widespread drops, “Gold Digger”, “Heartless” and “Stronger” are still all big requests.
I have a slightly different take on “The Door.” It did become a power at several of those successful small-market stations that do research such as WIXX Green Bay, Wis. I also believe in Swims as an artist and thought the song added tempo we needed. And therein lies the discussion about “turntable records.” To me, some have something to offer, while others are just hype. And no two people may agree which songs are which.
In general, I’m a big believer in active records and requests—not just streams or TikTok—as their best, most-relevant-to-radio indicator. If seeing this column every week has put requests more on your radar as a programmer, I’m glad for that. At this moment when Top 40 has a product shortage, I also believe in songs that come primarily through callout. “I Am Not Okay” is a power at many of those same successful small-market stations. “Forever Young” has just arrived with a great callout story. (You can see more about that soon in the Nov. 21 Ross On Radio.)
“Just play the hits” is a programmer’s cornerstone. WYOY [Y101] Jackson, Miss., has made great strides over the past two months under new PD Jay Michaels, whose current powers are all songs-that-won’t-go-away. Sometimes that works. In general, though, holding on to “Blinding Lights” or “As It Was” for a year has gotten us a lot of 3-share CHRs. Top 40 still has about half the songs it needs now, so I’m happy for it to find stories from different places, even if it’s just occasionally “sounds good on the radio.” I write a lot about KMVQ (Now 99.7) San Francisco in particular does a great job of knowing which story to acknowledge, knowing how to find songs, and knowing when to let an older title rebound.
I use a combination of local streams, Mediabase and my local callout to program my CHR. In the first week of callout, Forever Young looks really strong. I can vouch that The Door and I Am Not Okay are high testers, too. I’m one one of only a couple of CHR’s that plays Pink Skies by Zack Bryan and it’s #1 in callout. The label isn’t working it but I know my listeners have a passion for his music. In regards to callout and streaming differences, just because it isn’t streaming doesn’t mean listeners don’t like the song. Muni Long “Made For Me” was huge for me but it wasn’t a big streaming record. Same with Madison Beer “Make You Mine.”
I am glad you called out the situation with “The Door”, which hasn’t shown any major callout story, let alone consumption metric to justify its airplay. However, it thankfully didn’t go too high, and it is rightfully starting to decrease.
However, I do think a more worrying situation about the sad state of CHR is the ridiculous (and disgusting) amount of obvious payola cases currently happening: “Dancing in the Flames”, a single that was dead on arrival, and which radio should have moved on, time ago, the public is rarely here for new The Weeknd material after ‘After Hours’.
“I Can Do It With a Broken Heart” has no business in being the biggest gainer on Pop radio right now. The song has shown more than enough times that it did not connect with the general public (underwhelming streaming, ignoring the obvious fan demand first-week; and bad callout scores). Plus, with just listening to it, you can tell the song is polarizing (and bad, even I say it myself that I can consider a swiftie). Sure it is pretty shocking how underwhelming the audiences’ reaction has been with the two singles this album, but you can not force to play a disliked song, just because the artist is the biggest one in the world. PDs need to let it go and move on.
For instance, “That’s So True” should be exploding right now, at least until certain exposure, yet programmers are focusing on pushing some dead songs, that can not be justified. I don’t know what PDs are doing.
“The Door” has been a real record at some stations I respect, such as K92 (see Chris’ comment), WIXX, WAEZ, and WKRZ. I very much consider their hits significant because they’re some of the most successful stations in the format. And if you think those stations have it easy being in smaller markets or being able to control the Hot AC and CHR franchises simultaneously, there are just as many similar stations suddenly imploding now. But I agree that there’s a lot of walking dead records midchart.
I can not argue with a radio legend like you in that behalf, and you have a point using those stations as reference (they are among the most sucessful for a reason, and that is not granted, especially nowadays for a CHR station). I know it is not an easy job, neither easy times, but it frustrastes me to see the lack of willing to avoid the death of the decaying format. I am not PD myself, but most current decisions feel off/out of touch/all over the place. It is kind of shocking when you think about it, because we are just coming from one of the best summers in recent years we have had in terms of CHR product, so much fresh and varied material to play. The slowness to react when bunch of data is available is probably my biggest issue.
At the same time, I can’t help but be surprised that overplayed songs like Beautiful Things, Espresso, A Bar Song (Tipsy) still show extremely good callout scores, with relatively low burn percentages considering. In previous years, the burn was evident and didn’t take that long, which helped the programmers move on with the songs faster.
I can verify that ICDIWABH by Taylor Swift is super weak in callout and never made it to Power on my station. I dropped it a couple of weeks ago. However, Dancing In The Flames and Timeless both test well for me. Dancing may not be a streamer but my audience likes the song.
You do not mince your words! I can’t help but laugh at times, so thanks for that.
“Nostalgia and gold familiarity” may indeed “seem to be the direction of winning Pop music radio in the past 5 years” but I think it is vitally important that those in the industry not accept this as a truism and recognize that this fundamentally lazy approach to musicmaking and programming alike is actually rather often the recipe for outright FAILURE recently. That means DUD records and WEAK playlists with nothing but chart-hyped garbage and power-recurrents. I have no idea what the inner workings of your industry actually are, but when I hear songs like “Disease,” “Woman’s World,” “Dancing in the Flames” and whatever the Halsey one was called, I think of folks seated on Zoom calls or at conference room tables repeating the truism above then judging, “Yes, this song will remind listeners of 1 to 3 gold titles from the 80s or 90s and also sounds vaguely like the last thing from the artist that briefly went ‘viral’ on TikTok, so surely this is the way to go.” And then oops, the song goes nowhere or the listeners actively hate it, but nonetheless the popmakers stick their fingers in their ears and insist on betting that culture, and listeners’ tastes, will continue to descend into utter stagnation. We squeezed a good 3+ megasmashes out of “Take on Me” alone, so surely this can continue into eternity!
I haven’t heard Guetta’s “Forever Young” yet but have to assume it’ll be nearly as putrid as the Haddaway revival from the other year; its mere existence is morally repugnant and evidence of the DEEP desperation at work here. Callout says it’s great? Terrific. According to callout, “Die With a Smile,” a song that manages to sound like old hits despite not beating listeners over the head with obvious specific references, is just kind of “eh” and Chappell Roan is a despised nonentity. Continue to over-rely on callout if you find “let’s just try to make sure we fail less as the pop music apparatus slowly collapses around us (along with the nation itself lol)” to be a winning approach. Or, I don’t know, maybe try talking to some people who have creative ideas about where music is going and how trends are developing, changing, mixing things up. Do any such people remain, or is it all just folks now who can show you data about hits sounding like hits? Not long ago people were trying to get excited about music finally being saved because a few white girls were popular at the same time again. Make no mistake, things are still DIRE.
At its best, research helps you-put songs on the radio, not just keep them off. In another story this week, it was library research that helped confirm the magnitude of Alphaville’s appeal. If it creates a story for radio on a new song that’s not just “keep playing Too Sweet/Flowers/Bar Song/Blinding Lights” (not such a winning strategy for the past four years), then I think it’s good to have that and good to have Chappell/Die With A Smile, too.