After months of promotion and excitement, Chappell Roan has released her first country song, “The Giver,” continuing to expand her artistry and audience. She debuted it on Saturday Night Live in November where she also performed “Pink Pony Club”. It was uploaded to YouTube but quickly taken down. Still, fans continued to play the track through third-party YouTube channels from fans who uploaded it.
The day after release, “The Giver” debuted at #3 on Spotify, and would’ve been #1 if Playboi Carti didn’t simultaneously release his 30-track album “MUSIC”. Five days later, it’s still #4 and the official SNL performance is back online. Surprisingly, radio hasn’t been quick to jump on it despite the obvious passion for all her music. Three massive hits within a span of one year, along with so many others that could’ve been. “Good Luck, Babe!”, “HOT TO GO!” and “Pink Pony Club” each took a long time for Top 40 radio to catch up, so it’s not shocking to see that “The Giver” wasn’t an obvious immediate add.
By contrast, many stations were quick to jump on Benson Boone’s “Sorry I’m Here For Someone Else” after two days. Since then, that song has completely dropped out of the Spotify Top 200, and we have not received any requests for it. Ross on Radio’s Sean Ross wrote an excellent piece last week about some Boston stations and their take on this song: Right now, “The Giver” is #43 on Top 40 and #74 on Country airplay.
Lizzo – “Still Bad”: Despite the title, the actual song itself is pretty good. Lizzo also has a history of songs with tons of first-week adds, but only three massive hits, but everything in between was forgettable. “Still Bad” didn’t even debut in the Spotify Top 200, it has less than 2 million views on the view in 6 days, which if you watch first-week streaming numbers for big artists, is not a large number. Interesting though, it’s already #28 on Top 40. Lizzo has a new album called “Love in Real Life” coming this summer, with a title track that was released, but not worked, three weeks ago. (It has already become a chart hit in Australia!) We’ll follow up with this song in a couple weeks to see if it gains traction.
Alex Warren – “Ordinary” & “Burning Down”: Two wonderful songs by another Atlantic artist, formerly of the TikTok group Hype House. He’s 24 years old, born Alexander Warren Hughes in Carlsbad, California. Both songs are doing well, but in different ways. Having a radio hit is still vital to turning an artist into a household name, especially when it comes to people over 35 who don’t frequently use streaming or social media to scout new music.
While both songs are singles, “Burning Down” is the one being promoted to Top 40 right now, despite “Ordinary” being the obvious and most popular of the two. It’s #8 on Shazam and #20 on Spotify in America (but really #15 because of the five new Playboi Carti songs above it), with 4.8 million views on the YouTube video which came out three weeks ago. “Burning Down” has 3.5 million views over months of airplay, isn’t in the Spotify Top 200 and has never gotten any requests on Liveline. This is very similar to the Gracie Abrams story we wrote a few months ago when radio was playing “Close to You,” then took a while to switch to “That’s So True” which was #1 on Spotify. Perhaps “Ordinary” and “Burning Down” both became radio and streaming hits.
Buried Treasures of the Week
Wiz Khalifa, Bruno Mars & Snoop Dogg – “Young, Wild & Free”: Another lost oldie but goodie. This is a catchy Rhythmic anthem that dominated the early 2010s, just like Wiz, Bruno and Snoop. It’s been a top Gold request on Liveline for nearly 5 years and is loved by people of all ages. It actually samples two songs, “Toot It and Boot It” by YG (2010) and “Sneakin’ In the Back” by Tom Scott & The L.A. Express (1974). It peaked at #7 on Billboard, #10 on Top 40 and #1 on Rhythmic where it also finished #3 for the year 2012. Bruno Mars is hotter than ever, and everyone loves Snoop Dogg…oh yeah, and Wiz Khalifa; what’s he doing nowadays?
NSYNC – “Bye Bye Bye”: This may be old news, but Deadpool and Wolverine’s use of this song in the movie last July helped revive this already massive Y2K classic, the biggest of NSYNC’s career. Still, the song continues to stream well on Spotify and get daily requests on Liveline. The majority of people requesting it are not Millennials: It’s young kids and teenagers. The same demo Pop radio seems to ignore so often, despite their love for older songs which radio has overlooked. Playing throwbacks on Pop radio is not bad. If a song is big now, has strong audience support no matter the age, it should be considered (although “Here Comes The Sun” by the Beatles is still massively popular and gets requests every couple weeks, but obviously there are limits). 25 years is not that old for a massive classic gold these days. Surprisingly, “Bye Bye Bye” only got to #4 on Billboard, but #1 on Top 40 where it finished #3 for the year 2000.
I had been watching the streaming numbers for “Ordinary” closely for a few weeks and after he performed it on the Love Is Blind reunion, I immediately put it on rotation on Monday 3/10. This song is going to be big! If I had to guess, Lizzo isn’t going to be a hit. I’m still on the fence with Benson Boone. It sounds great on the air! But requests and streaming don’t always mirror callout scores and radio listener’s passion for a song. I’ve seen that time and time again. I’m still trying to figure out the disconnect between streaming and callout on certain songs. Both are great tools to have, but sometimes as a PD I have to go with my gut and I’m normally pretty spot on.
The ringer in the Lizzo discussion is “Love in Real Life,” which was snuck out here, but which is actually getting played in Australia. “Still Bad” is the attempt to recreate the Lizzo magic by recalling her previous hits. “Love in Real Life” is more like a Lil Nas X/”That’s What I Want”–a good pop/punk record of the type that still work when somebody does one. Given the oddball release patterns these days, I could see them trying it in America later if “Still Bad” is (or isn’t) a hit. Maybe Chris should go on the air during the 9a hour, play both, and solicit calls and texts.
What’s a current song you really love but it’s out there floundering?
New Lizzo attempt to score a hit. Unlike the lowkey very bad title “Still Bad”, the song itself is not that bad, but Lizzo needs to come with better material, she has a LOT TO DO to reconnect with the audiences. It does not help that she only amassed three big hits and has not created some fanbase. The song is very formulatic, a derivative from ADT, which it might have worked once, but twice? It is getting tired.
“Ordinary” definetely shows a very promising future, there is a lot of buzz around Alex Warren, I have noticed, maybe this is going to be his first hit in the States.
Regarding “Bye Bye Bye”, I think it gets a significant recurrent airplay for a gold title, it is definetely not overlooked in my opinion, always hear it on radio (perhaps I might confuse being played on either Pop or HAC stations).
Yeah, both “Bye Bye Bye” and “Young, Wild & Free” have been heavily spun as golds the past few years, they’re hardly “hidden” in the slightest. In general I’m sick of stations all settling on the same handful of golds and spinning them ad nauseam like they’re currents.
Poor Benson will hopefully feel some consolation at the eternal persistence of “Beautiful Things,” which continues to inspire me to change the station at least once per day. <3 I genuinely was expecting "Dance Monkey"-level audience polarization for this song based on the honks/screams/wails alone but no, apparently people really like that. Congrats to him on his achievement.
Lizzo and her creative collaborators really exemplify listening to the consultants and playing by the book: take the slightest of baby steps away from whatever your last big hit was, release a video then pray that a TikTok moment will lift the streams out the gutter so radio will deem it worthy of the 8+-month power-rotation treatment. The song is fine. Good luck to her too. If this one doesn't work out she can always build her next single around a sample of a played-out 90s song. I'm still amazed that she tried reheating a decade-old R&B radio hit (K. Michelle's "VSOP") with the title track from her last album.
Preach djestep, couldn’t agree more with you, I dislike very much the variety on gold titles played on Pop radio by majority of stations (iCough iCough). It has become predictable you might listen to “Baby One More Time”, “Bye Bye Bye”, “Yeah!”, “Crazy in Love”, “Down”, “Whatcha Say” (God, I dispise that one), “Just Dance”, “We Found Love”, etc. There are tons of overlooked gold hits that one might appreciate, and elevate the nostalgia sense.