How ‘Forever Young’ Lived Forever

In March/April 1985, “Forever Young” by Alphaville spent four weeks on the Billboard chart. It peaked at No. 93. It was the follow-up to “Big in Japan,” an international hit that went to No. 8 in the UK, but only No. 66 here, although that song did become one of those records that some radio people remember fondly.

This week, on Coleman Insights’ Integr8USA national callout, a new version of “Forever Young” by David Guetta, Alphaville, and Ava Max debuted at No. 1 CHR. In previous weeks, Integr8’s published results have primarily confirmed the stasis of the present-day Top 40. No. 2 this week is still “Beautiful Things.” No. 3 is “A Bar Song (Tipsy).” Any new song with the ability to cut through immediately is certainly significant and welcome.

Over nearly 40 years, “Forever Young” has been the stealthiest stealth hit that ever stealthily became a hit. It has almost resurfaced on numerous occasions. At CHR this week, the Guetta remake is up No. 26-22. It’s not yet the biggest iteration of the song — that would be Jay-Z & Mr. Hudson’s 2010 interpolation, “Young Forever,” which got to No. 16 at CHR and top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100.

“Forever Young” was a hit right away for WPST Trenton, N.J., under PD Tom Taylor–in fact, the top song of 1985. While Top 40 WCAU didn’t play it as a current, WPST had enough influence on Philly radio that the song would end up in the libraries of WPLY (Y100), WYXR (Star 104.5), and, many years later, WOGL. Eventually, though, it would test in markets where it wasn’t played as a current.

“Forever Young” is a song that I’ve intersected with a few times in my career. In 1988, during a brief stint at Alternative WDRE Long Island (aka WLIR), in which my duties involved tabulating requests, I came to realize that it was one of many anthems in the format that barely existed outside the Modern Rock radio of the time. (“There Is a Light That Never Goes Out” by the Smiths was also huge on the phones, for instance.) 

A few months later, I was radio editor at Billboard. WDRE did a Memorial Day countdown, and the song was No. 1, as well as No. 3 on KITS (Live 105) San Francisco. I wrote about “Forever Young” (and some of the format’s other homegrown hits). In that time of “Red Red Wine” and other bringbacks, Atlantic reissued “Forever Young” with a quote from then KZZP Phoenix APD/MD Gene “Bean” Baxter, among others. This time it got to No. 65.

In Los Angeles, Mediabase shows spins for “Forever Young” on KYSR Los Angeles, now Alternative but then Modern AC, going back to 1998. In the mid-’00s, it became a secret weapon for KCBS (Jack FM) Los Angeles, as did a number of heritage records from Alternative KROQ. Like several of the KROQ songs that Jack cultivated, it now plays 9-10x a week on Classic Hits KRTH (K-Earth 101).   

In 2016-17 at Edison Research, I got a few AC and Classic Hits stations to test “Forever Young.” The first few times it came back playable, the PDs involved didn’t know the song and found it too odd to consider.  Often the discussions ended with, “Well, you can’t get hurt by what you don’t play.”

In one of those markets, “Forever Young” didn’t have any radio history, and I could only guess it was the combined impact of Jay-Z and the song’s appearance in “Napoleon Dynamite.” Eventually, though, WOGL Philadelphia decided to play it, in part because the station’s Bobby Smith remembered it as the last song at real high-school dances. 

“Forever Young” got 160 Mediabase spins last week — 47 of them from Classic Hits, 34 from Adult Hits, and 47 on SiriusXM’s TikTok Radio, following a recent resurgence on that platform. It does well in some markets that did not, to my knowledge, have a history with Alphaville as a current, but it hardly became a record that everybody plays. In Canada, “Forever Young” did make it to Top 40 CFTR Toronto. A dance version also became a late-’90s hit for the artist Temperance. There, the radio footprint is a little larger.

Besides its recent TikTok resurgence, “Forever Young” has kept popping up in different ways. It came up a few weeks ago in an article about the 100 lowest-charting songs of the ’80s. (That’s sort of a technicality; the number reflected only its first chart run.) It also showed early results in the new-release focus-group testing for Eric Norberg’s Adult Contemporary Music Research Letter, doing better sooner than other more established hits.

There have been a lot of Alternative radio records reissued over the years that didn’t make it a second time either. I’d love to still be having this discussion about Q-Feel’s “Dancing in Heaven (Orbital Be-Bop)” or “Crash” by the Primitives. Besides the resonance of the lyrics for many, I also think that “Forever Young” benefits from having both Depeche Mode and Abba in its DNA.

Like a lot of stealth hits, “Forever Young” also probably benefits from never having been overplayed as a current. It’s testing now for the reason that “Give a  Little Bit” by the Goo Goo Dolls tested right away — a combination of familiar, but not burnt, song and known artist. Because it has instant results at a time when nothing else does, it’s a rare song where callout, and thus radio, can lead streaming.

“Forever Young” endured in its odd way over 40 years also in part because it had radio champions, from WPST to all the Philadelphia radio people who kept it going even though it had not been a national hit. That’s something that might not happen in this era of less radio enterprise. It also showed how even pre-Nirvana Alternative radio had some influence over both the radio and cultural landscape. 

It’s also a good reason to never say never to any type of record. Two years ago, Guetta’s “I’m Good (Blue)” unleashed so many other interpolated and reworked hits that the formula quickly became wearisome. Except when it wasn’t. Now, I’m hoping that he does something with “Crash” or “Dancing in Heaven” next.