A huge thank you to everyone who has been reading, commenting, sharing and inquiring about our weekly piece. It’s fun putting this together because of all the different data points, discussing radio and hearing what others think about certain artists or songs. We’ll always do our best at presenting the facts without bias and opinion in hopes that we are able to entertain, challenge and expose you to important new information. Let’s find out what’s hot this week!
Lola Young – “Messy”: It has exploded in the past three weeks; #4 on Shazam and #14 on Spotify in America (if you exclude the Bad Bunny songs) and breaking into the Liveline top 20 requests this past week at #16. It’s about her struggles with ADHD and her last relationship, feeling good about yourself one day and then losing all hope and confidence the next. It’s showing major signs of becoming a massive hit: Currently #34 on Top 40 radio, up from #52 last week. Now on Z100, KIIS, KMVQ (30x), WXKS and most of the iHeart stations.
What an incredibly relatable, fresh, unique and song from this 24 year old likely-to-be superstar. Signed with Island Records in 2019, she released her debut single “6 Feet Under” followed by the EP “Intro“. In the past year, she collaborated with Tyler, the Creator on his succesful “Chromakopia” album. “Messy” came out in May of 2024 and didn’t really blow up until social media stars Jake Shane and Sofia Richie posted a clip of them dancing to the song on TiKTok, followed by a lip-sync video from Kylie Jenner.
Bad Bunny – “DtMF”: From his album “DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS“, the world’s 17th most-streamed artist currently occupies 17 of the top 50 slots on Spotify in America. “DtMF” isn’t even the single, yet it’s the one getting more attention than any of his others. Currently #1 on Spotify in America and #1 globally, #2 on Shazam in America and #3 globally. An amazing performer, easily the biggest Latin artist of the past 15 years. He blew up at the 2020 Superbowl halftime show performing with Shakira. It was just announced that he would begin a 21-show residency at Coliseo du Puerto Rico in San Juan on July 11th.
As we’ve stated, you might get the impression that we just endorse or any song that’s doing well on Spotify. While streaming charts often show early passion and hit-potential, many people don’t investigate the reasons behind exceptionally fast-rise popular songs. Bad Bunny is a great example of someone with a very niche, but passionate and large fan base. His album came out on January 5th, so it’s always good to wait a solid two to three weeks for the early hype and hardcore fans to disperse. That’s when you’ll see which songs from the album are really the most beloved by the broad audience if any. Rhythmic radio has embraced a few of his songs in this past, but Top 40 never did much with him except for the features on “K-POP” with Travis Scott, “I Like It” with Cardi B and “MIA” with Drake. No requests on Liveline yet for any of his songs yet.
Buried Treasures of the Week
Daft Punk – “One More Time”: In his latest treatise on the state of Pop radio, the esteemed Guy Zapoleon bemoans the state of pop music, now in the fifth year of a “doldrums rut.” With minimal variety of styles and most everything essentially formula pop, the surprise breakout of the David Guetta/Ava Max redo of the 1985 chestnut “Forever Young showed an appetite for variety and EDM. “One More Time’ was voted as the greatest dance song of all time
Daft Punk’s signature track was released in 2000 when clubs, techno music and anything longer than 4 minutes was actually cool. It never went away. All this time later, it’s one of the few from that era which stand the test of time. It’s used in so many mashups, mixshows and heard at parties with people of all ages who just love this song. Everyone knows this song, despite the fact it only reached #61 on Billboard and #33 on Pop radio. Their album “Discovery” is a pioneering piece of dance music history and generated tons of iconic dance-chart-topping hits like “Digital Love“, “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” (sampled in Kanye’s “Stronger”)and “One More Time“, for which requests still come in for. John Garabedian’s Open House Party radio show was quite possibly the reason for it’s success in America, as he heard it in a club one night and started playing it for his millions of listeners on over 175 affiliates, with top ten requests for weeks as a response. Pop Radio sadly limited it to night airplay. The song became an “Open House Party staple until John’s departure from the show in 2017. Daft Punk broke up in February 2021. RIP. No Top 40 station has played this song more than once in the past two weeks. Worth considering for your music test and to add some cool variety.
Avicii – “Levels”: After the December 31st Netflix release and success of his wonderful, shocking and beautifully produced “Avicii – I’m Tim” documentary, many of his massive EDM songs spiked in streams and popularity, including “I Could Be The One“, “The Nights“, “Hey Brother” and the his biggest hit “Wake Me Up“. The film is stacked with concert footage, details on his early life and interviews with legends like Nile Rodgers, David Guetta and Chris Martin of Coldplay. It takes you through the timeline of how his career came to be, in-studio footage, backstage moments, the pressures of touring and pleasing everyone, which led to his drug problem and the shock of his eventual suicide at 28 in April 2018. “Levels” was the song that started it all for him. It is this generation’s “Sandstorm” (which is still huge) and has generated dozens of requests in just the past few weeks. Definitely a good song to spike in Gold. Everyone knows the words!
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This one is especially encouraging, because there are so many crossover hits mentioned here. AAA seems to be embracing Lola young around the same time, which is usually a format that embraces things in advance, but it seems like it’s sailing up the charts on both simultaneously. I caught the joke. about levels By the way, everyone knows the words. Lol, that’s a hard one. and ironically, one more time gets more embrace from alternative radio today then it ever did, it gets a lot of spins at DC one01, for example. I don’t think we appreciated in the late 90s early 2000s how instrumental John Garabedian was an influencing the euro dance component that blew up here in the states.
“Messy” is an interesting song — I’ve been fascinated by it since it hit the British charts, where it broke out first. It’s so different from most other stuff out there and the message has stuck with me. It’d be a deserving hit. As for her being a potential superstar — well, I’ll wait for her next song to figure that out.
“One More Time” was probably the first Daft Punk song I heard, and certainly the first I heard on the radio. It was indeed in the later hours when I’d hear it! Back then I would leave the radio on for hours in my bedroom every evening after I finished my homework while I played Pokémon on my Game Boy or whatever. I can’t imagine listening to a CHR station for hours a day now! Anyway, it’s a classic song indeed, still my favorite by them. There’s nothing quite like it but it’s still very accessible.
I’m very fond of dance music, but I honestly dislike most “EDM” and think that era for the genre — specifically when people started calling it that — is where things started going horribly wrong. I genuinely wonder at times whether EDM indirectly led the entire pop music landscape irreparably astray, despite some of the excitement it initially injected into Top 40 during its “turbo-pop” era. Unsurprisingly I’m not big on most of Avicii’s music either, but even I will admit that “Levels” revealed itself as a classic over the years. It certainly feels more relevant than the sample-within-a-sample Flo Rida song that was on the air at the same time. I actually love “Seek Bromance” too (which he released as Tim Berg), but Top 40 didn’t play that one in this country, though I did hear it out at parties.
There was definitely a moment where the balance tipped from the turbo-pop into harder, more joyless EDM (Kesha/Blow) or something sludgier. A few of the records in those piles are songs people still like–“Titanium,” “Dark Horse”–etc., but they unleashed a lot of second-stringers that took the format down in the mid-to-late ’00s.
I wouldn’t group Dark Horse as “EDM”, if anything one of the main reasons it became such a smash was that it meant a departure from the heavy electropop music that was popular back then, it actually opened doors for the flourish of trap into the mainstream scene, that it would become more and more prominent years later.
I believe EDM is always missing, we need more faceless generic tunes on radio to fill some of the current void. That’s why I felt radio was doing right on supporting songs like “Forever Young” and “Moonlit Floor (Kiss Me)”.
“Dark Horse” went into that second “something sludgier” pile. I could’ve said “‘Titanium’ and ‘Dark Horse’ respectively to clarify. I regard trap as an even worse thing for Top 40 than harder EDM, and while that could certainly be an old guy perspective, it’s not like the radio audience seemed to be enjoying it so much either.