In a week without major new releases, two of Liveline’s secret weapon gold titles tell the story about how the show is always looking to reflect listeners’ new and old favorites. These are our Buried Treasures of the Week
Timbaland, Justin Timberlake – “Carry Out”: This heavy bass, smooth and sexy 2009 dancefloor banger has one of the strongest and best-produced tracks of each of their careers. Now mostly overlooked by radio, listeners have been calling in and sharing memories for this song in recent weeks. As an 8-year-old kid when it was new, I remember being absolutely obsessed with it and the video which I’d watch every weekend on the VH1 Top 20 Countdown. It’s little stories and moments like that which we connect to a peaceful, memorable and magical time from our past, through the power of music. Timbaland of course created some of the biggest hits of the 2000s, won four Grammys, and his impact on the careers of Nelly Furtado and Justin Timberlake are massive. “Carry Out” peaked at #7 on Rhythmic, #8 on Top 40 and #11 on Billboard. Just another great example of a song that didn’t have to reach the top 5 to become a favorite for so many.
Gorillaz – “Feel Good Inc”: For any show, station or DJ that takes requests, there’s no response more stereotypical than “I’ll see if we have it” or “it’s coming up in just a bit”. Unfortunately, most radio DJs lack the permission to control their playlist. That’s what program and music directors are for. On Liveline, we play 5 or 6 live requests every hour. The music isn’t pre-scheduled or programmed by a computer. It’s hand-picked, segued and even beat-mixed live during the show, while following the basic rules of the format and playing highly researched categories of golds and recurrents. What is unique is the hundreds of weekly listener requests we get, allowing us to identify emerging new songs and resurging ones of the past.
2005’s “Feel Good Inc.” is no exception, as Alternative and Indie is big again and lately people are liking new releases less and older music more. It reached #1 on Alternative radio, but only #13 on Top 40. That’s not bad, but it’s not a chart position that would entice a program director to bring it back as a Gold, especially if they were looking to add some deeper cuts. Luckily today, we have access to a lot more information to determine how relevant a song is NOW, which is the ONLY thing that matters. So many number one songs from the past sound completely out of place and likely will never see the light of day again. You might be surprised to know that Feel Good Inc. now has 1.7 billion streams on Spotify where it’s currently #152 in America, more than any of their songs (“Clint Eastwood” is their second most popular with 933 million). We get half a dozen requests for this every couple of weeks, and that’s a lot. Only a few throwbacks songs can generate large numbers of calls. Just think, they could’ve asked for one of a million other songs, and they wanted this one. To them it belongs and fits in the format. As we know, Pop Radio is the relevance game, and a lifestyle.
Neither of the two major artist releases of recent weeks are generating calls for Liveline yet, although Alex Warren’s “Ordinary,” a song identified as a hit early in this column goes #13 to #2 and also goes #14 to #7 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Miley Cyrus – “End of the World”: Taking the second biggest jump in spins, now at #25 on Pop airplay this week. It’s Miley’s first single from her upcoming album “End of the World”, due May 30th. It’s nowhere in the Spotify Top 200 and we’ve had no requests for it since its release on April 4th. A weak field of new releases and her name might explain why so many program directors were quick to jump on this song, despite “Flowers” coming out two years ago and some subsequent singles underperforming.
Ed Sheeran – “Azizam”: The song has now completely dropped off the Spotify 200 and we’ve had no requests for it. It jumps from #29 to #17 on Pop airplay, up 3,170 spins in the past 7 days. Last night, a listener requested “Shape of You” and I asked her if she heard the new Ed Sheeran song. Her response (word for word) was something we actually hear a lot about songs that fail to connect with the audience: “Yeah, they’ve been playing it a lot on this station during the day and I hate it. It doesn’t make any sense and I feel like he should go back to slower songs.”
The Ed Sheeran song lacks a Hook. It has a beat, but so does shape of you, and that’s a memorable song. Are people just supposed to sing random syllables that they don’t understand? Also, the lyrics of shape of you, makes sense! I actually like the Miley song but Can concede it relies too much on the instrumental and doesn’t really have a strong hook either. These both feel like tour cycle releases, in other words, they’re going out, have to release a new one. Interestingly, artists like Ed and Miley aren’t really competing with other artists in the charts, they are competing against themselves because flowers and bad habits are still monsters. I empathize, though with those program directors, how much more can you really spin those? but if it’s a hit, it’s a hit!
Oh yeah, “Carry Out” is one of the most exquisite songs prodcuction-wise from the late 00’s. Timbo really went off with that one. Heavily overlooked, and a shame it gets no recurrent airplay at all, what a bop we’re missing.
Regarding the new releases, we’re in trenches, nothing is clicking with GP, it’s insane, but it also does not help that the material is not even strong, idk what’s going on with artists, or at least the few that remain nowadays. The rest of people releasing music are just creating content to be lucky and go viral on TikTok.
I think at the end of the day the Ed Sheeran song will be bigger than Miley…but we’ll see if either turn out to be true hits or not. I do feel like Sombr “Back To Friends” is going to be big. For my station, it’s a no-brainer! It’s huge on TikTok and streaming keeps building every week and MUTT by Leon Thomas is a smash! CHR’s are missing out on this.
Agree on Mutt and Sombr. I wish they were the 4/4 uptempo hits we need, but I feel that way about “Ordinary,” too, and that one can’t be denied.
Um. Are you all not familiar with Timbaland and Timberlake’s catalogs? Identifying “Carry Out” of all things as a production highlight of either of these men’s careers seems like utter insanity to me. Like, Timbaland’s late-90s/early-00s run is arguably one of the all-time greats in pop music in terms of production quality. To me anyway “Carry Out” is instead a pretty average corny song that’s not even a highlight of that particular phase of either artist’s career. But no disrespect to what others may get out of it! I would certainly welcome hearing it over “Too Sweet” and “Lose Control” for the millionth time.
My judgment isn’t to be trusted anyhow as it’s getting harder to ignore that “Ordinary” is a genuine hit and yet to me it’s just a total beige blank page that barely even registers. Kind of dying laughing at another slow waltz making its way to being one of the big summer hits though.
I second both the songs chris.ryan has brought up as worthy of mention and would also be interested in how much potential you see in the Ravyn Lenae and BigXthaPlug/Bailey Zimmerman tunes. Also wondering whether you think “Good News” by Shaboozey will break through its current sleeper status and actually start displacing his seemingly eternal prior hit.
At the time, “Carry Out” was a decent enough record that had the bad luck to be round II of a winning formula without the shock of the new from the previous album. When Mason wrote about it, I couldn’t even conjure it without listening to it again. But it does sound pretty good at this moment when certified hit songs sound like “Ordinary.”