A guest edition of Mason’s Observations from Ross on Radio editor Sean Ross. It’s also been updated below to continue the story to October 2025.
It was roughly a year ago when Liveline host Mason Kelter remarked that most of his requests were suddenly for current hit songs again. It was a positive sign for a battered Top 40 format that came on the heels of a strong Summer Song field and a Billboard Top 10 that suddenly aligned with what radio was playing.
I wanted to see those requests. Then I suggested that Liveline should be sharing them with Ross on Radio readers every week. That led to Kelter launching his own Mason’s Observations column. Because of the very nature of the show, Liveline has something that not every CHR has these days: listeners who still call or text for songs in significant quantity, and somebody at the other end of the line to tally that information.
It still surprises some readers that we emphasize requests when many stations haven’t taken them seriously for decades. But some research tools have returned to the programming conversation over the years. Singles sales had been dismissed in a similar way when callout took hold, but the iTunes store made them a valuable part of CHR’s late-’00s comeback. Requests should return to your consideration set as well.
Streaming stats baffle programmers with a firehose of songs that might or might not work in a radio context. Callout can still make hits of songs without a streaming story, but moves glacially, is less available to many stations, and often provides little help in that moment when once-promising songs are stagnating at No. 11.
In between, requests give radio an indication as to whether radio listeners actually care and whether songs are reacting to airplay. Requests can certainly be manipulated by artist superfans, although most of them have turned their attention elsewhere. So can streams and sales. The longtime complaint about requests was that they reflected only active listeners. At this moment, when our best bet is to excite the listeners who choose radio, that is now a superpower.
Liveline, with its responsibility to play the hits for multiple stations, isn’t creating songs from whole cloth. It won’t single-handedly propel a novelty record into a national hit, like the soon-to-retire Dr. Demento once did. But it does champion some songs with significant streaming stories that individual programmers might be resisting, songs that are subsequently legitimized for me by their request activity. Here are the stories that I’ve found in Liveline’s top 20 requests in recent weeks.
- Top 40’s Variety Coalition Lives. This week, the top three songs are from Alex Warren, Drake, and Chappell Roan.
- Requests can legitimize a song in the time between streaming and callout. Tate McRae’s “Sports Car” followed “It’s OK I’m OK,” exactly the sort of song that is hardest to triage now — a tempo record from an established artist that peaked at No. 6 without becoming a power. Seeing the initially promising streams followed by requests was part of what set “Sports Car” apart for me.
- They’re nice to see, even when I’m confident in a song. For some programmers, the streaming story is enough to be confident in Sombr’s “Undressed” or Ravyn Lenae’s “Love Me Not” or Lola Young’s “Messy.” Unlike “Sports Car,” I believed in those songs right away, but I also appreciated the fast extra level of confirmation.
- Requests Make Some Songs Feel Less Daunting. Streaming often identifies songs that don’t feel pop-radio-friendly. But “Timeless” by the Weeknd has consistently generated more reaction than either of the radio singles, “Dancing in the Flames” or “Cry for Me,” that bookended it. Similarly, “Blue Strips” by Jessie Murph and “Diet Pepsi” by Addison Rae began for me as kind-of-daunting trap pop songs that recalled the hits of the unhappy late ’10s. “Blue Strips” has certainly shown a more sustained streaming story than “Pepsi,” but it also generated requests in a way that song never did.
- Requests Make Some Songs Feel Less Meh. At the other end of the sonic spectrum, streaming has given us a lot of unassuming songs that defy easy definitions of what a hit sounds like. Often, streaming makes these records a little too big to ignore and does so after they’re no longer fresh to the audience that discovered them. “Sailor Song” by Gigi Perez has been getting requests for six months. Even though it’s not the fun, uptempo record I’m looking for as a programmer, I am inclined to give a playlist slot to that song over, say, “No One Noticed” by the Marias, knowing that active radio listeners are still engaged.
Songs with requests are not the only ones I consider legitimate. WIXX Green Bay, Wis., a double-digit CHR station with in-market competition, relies heavily on its own research. This week, three of its five powers are songs that aren’t driven by streams or requests: Benson Boone’s “Sorry I’m Here for Someone Else,” Shaboozey’s “Good News,” and Shinedown’s “Three Six Five.” For that successful station, they are clearly hits.
For decades, research of various types has helped programmers clear the decks of songs that have outlived their usefulness. I like research better when it also helps radio find and play more songs and be confident in those decisions. When there are multiple stories — streaming, callout, sales, requests — I am inclined to look for one story that will let me play a song instead of eliminating it by expecting it to clear every hurdle.
Local radio doesn’t have the same feedback mechanism on a new song. Most programmers don’t feel the loss — they aren’t trying to single-handedly break the hits. But more information is better, and at the very least all those breaks that go into promoting the talkback feature of radio apps ought to emphasize requests or feedback on new songs, too. If you also happen to have somebody manning text and phone lines, all the better; you’re probably doing the things that differentiate radio from DSPs as well.
UPDATE: I’m sharing this story again on the day before Halloween, and these are the stories I see this week:
- The continued ratification of Olivia Dean;
- We won’t know if Taylor Swift’s “The Fate of Ophelia” really tests for a few more weeks, but it’s still valuable now, three weeks after the initial event; (the Hot 100 and Billboard 200 support that one, too);
- Ravyn Lenae’s “Love Me Not” as a real, enduring hit and not just a tempo record that filled the void this summer;
- Sabrina Carpenter’s last two singles as showing radio value; important, because “Tears” is sort of the record that is scary on multiple levels (lyrics, streaming numbers) but still sounds great on the radio to me;
- Lady Gaga’s “The Dead Dance” as worthwhile on the radio today, whatever happens on the Saturday after Halloween.
