In my radio listening, I hear something that makes me say “oh wow” about once a week. It’s a pretty eclectic bunch of fairly deep songs. Yesterday on CKOI Montreal, it was “I Just Wanna Live,” the 2004 CHR mid-charter by Good Charlotte. Last week on Portugal’s AC RFM network, it was “Oh My God,” which snapped Adele’s hit streak in 2021. The week before, I was listening to Robby Bridges’ new retro top 20 countdown, covering 1990. That year is rich in lost hits, but “Girls Night Out” by Tyler Collins is the one I singled out.
The point of listening to a retro countdown is, in part, the forgotten hits. In the other cases, “oh wow” wasn’t necessarily the objective for the intended audience. The recently profiled RFM is a successful station, and “Oh My God” was likely bigger there. Montreal remains a very distinctive musical universe, and I often seek out CKOI because its hits are my surprises. (There is only one American market, however, where I would play “I Just Wanna Live,” and I’ll be curious to see if anybody reading this column guesses which one.)
If surprise and delight are ever your programming objective, you’re likely choosing from a few different piles of songs beyond the safe list. There are songs that disappeared from radio station libraries almost immediately, but there are also those that were airplay staples for years and have faded with time. For the stations playing a ’60s/’70s version of Classic Hits, it’s possible to play only onetime “safe list” songs. They don’t surprise us, but they’re also not being played anywhere else.
For instance, Foreigner’s “Cold as Ice” is a song you still expect to hear at both Classic Rock and Classic Hits. “Feels Like the First Time” or “Double Vision” are songs played somewhat less these days, especially on the Classic Hits side, but not such that an average listener might notice. The true “oh wows” in the catalog are “Long, Long Way from Home” or “Blue Morning Blue Day,” but those aren’t songs that everybody knows, especially if those listeners weren’t Class of 1979.
WXRC (The Ride) Charlotte, N.C., was up 6.5-6.7 in June, fourth in a market that also has Adult Hits, Classic Hits, and Classic Rock. In the Mediabase hour I studied, there was “I Love Rock & Roll,” but there was also that next tier of once-standard/now-rarer titles (“Running on Empty,” “We’re an American Band”), as well as deeper cuts (“Suffragette City”) and true “oh wows” (“Cars” by Gary Numan, “Every Time I Think of You” by the Babys). “Do Ya” would’ve gotten my attention by ELO; WXRC played the earlier version by the Move.
Classic Rock KOFX (The Fox) El Paso, Texas, is typically the market leader and currently has a 12.6. Its hour had a mix of standard (“Small Town”), once-standard (“Witchy Woman”), and deeper (“For Those About to Rock, We Salute You”). Then it went into the noon hour, and the spikes got spikier: “Ebony Eyes” by Bob Welch, “Godzilla” by Blue Oyster Cult, “Screamin’ in the Night” by Krokus.
At KOAI (The Wow Factor) Phoenix, where the intended effect is built into the name, some of the “wow” comes from the juxtaposition of genres and eras. Yesterday’s 2 PM hour draws from all levels of familiarity: still big now (“Billie Jean”), once safe but slipping (“Sister Golden Hair,” “Cecilia,” “The Long Run”), always secondary (Blue Oyster Cult again, with “Burning for You”), and a few that are both older and never made the safe list (Lobo’s “Me & You & a Dog Named Boo,” “Temptation Eyes” by the Grass Roots).
When “That Thing With Rich Appel” listeners vote for the syndicated show’s annual “WOW” countdown, they go for both lost hits (“Driver’s Seat” by Sniff N’ the Tears) and songs that never really were (“Pretty Lady” by Lighthouse). But they also include “It’s a Shame” by the Spinners and “God Only Knows” by the Beach Boys.
In the early ’00s, Howard Kroeger’s Bob FM, and the Adult Hits format that it unleashed, changed programmers’ notion of whether it was ever OK to augment the hits with songs that provided some relief or just sounded good on the radio. Bob and Jack FM and similar outlets began with some true “oh wows” — “Tired of Toein’ the Line” by Rocky Burnette or “Sausalito Summer Night” by Diesel — that became, for a while, secret weapons for a significant number of affiliates. Eventually, the passage of time, the advent of PPM, and the initial novelty wearing off dispatched that first wave of records back to trivia night.
Kroeger’s new Temple of Rock format, announced last Friday, like WXRC or KOFX, has songs at various levels: “Photograph” and “You Shook Me All Night Long” from the top tier; “Back on the Chain Gang” from the “less heard now” pile; “Pretty Vacant” by the Sex Pistols and “My Head’s in Mississippi” by ZZ Top as the depth. I came back this morning and heard “Calling Dr. Love” by Kiss, which definitely meets my “oh wow” criteria.
I also heard a song that has moved from “oh wow” to “safelist” to “deeper” again. When Classic Rock was new, I heard “You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet” by Bachman-Turner Overdrive for the first time in years on a small-market AM and was so excited to hear it that I caught myself speeding (fortunately before anybody else did). It’s not “oh wow” now, but now that it’s no longer a song heard everywhere, I found myself enjoying it again.
Context has a lot to do with “oh wow” too. “California Love” was once more surprising on Classic Hits KRTH (K-Earth 101) Los Angeles than it would have been on Hip-Hop/R&B KRRL (Real 92.3). Bill Withers’ “Use Me” isn’t easy to hear even at Adult R&B outlets anymore, but it’s surprising (and gratifying) that WXRC plays it in a Classic Rock context. I once heard a Classic Rock programmer refer to hearing “Let’s Hear It for the Boy” by Deniece Williams on Jack FM as left field. But it’s not that if you work in AC or Classic Hits.
Stations that are willing to play “hits plus variety” might want to have a few separate piles of songs to work with — former safelist songs and true “oh wows.” Songs that have faded gradually provide variety and relief but not necessarily surprise and delight. A listener old enough to remember “Easy Lover” by Philip Bailey & Phil Collins may not realize it ever went away. (The adjoining issue is that a 29-year-old may not know it.)
A lot of this column over the years has been about the songs that surprise me on the radio. I know that most thresholds are lower — I once had a colleague excited about hearing “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number” on the radio — so I like pulling from both stacks. The best possible situation is playing enough hits to be able to pull off just enough variety to keep the hits fresh. It’s always risky to campaign in public for the strategic use of variety and “oh wow.” I’m happy to have WXRC and KOFX (and the whole 20-plus year history of Bob and Jack FM) to prove that it’s possible to augment the hits, not merely play the hits.
Oh, wow! Or … OMG?! “Girls Night Out” is a song barely anyone remembers. If we’re going down that road, how about “Whole Wide World” by A’me Lorain or perhaps Tasmin Archer’s “Sleeping Satellite.”? The concept of the “wow” factor is to lure listeners by giving them proven records that have gotten the short shrift from finessed callout research that yields the very tired “One Way Or Another” by Blondie multiple times a day and … sigh … “In the Air Tonight” three times per day across four local stations. So long as the “wow” factor isn’t an excuse for the Program Director to drag out a “remember this?” track when anyone who did is over 50, it’s a good way to get people to not change the channel. Meanwhile, where the heck is “Only You” by Yazoo, people??
“Only You” was never a radio hit in America (except at WABX Detroit, still one of my all-time faves for its new wave/CHR hybrid). It would be known spottily by those under (or over) 50. Even the Flying Picketts version, which was a hit in Canada, hasn’t been much of a secret weapon when I’ve tried it there. I wonder about those markets where the Enrique Iglesias version was a hit, though.
At Mix 106.1 (the station I program), we have plenty of those “wow” songs on the weekends, specifically on Saturday and Sunday night. Our Saturday night flashback show offers gold cuts with a dance music lean from primarily the 80’s and 90’s, with a few “wow” songs from the late 70’s (such as “Rappers Delight” or “We Are Family”). A good example of the 80’s cuts we play would be “Let’s Go All The Way” by Sly Fox, “It’s Tricky” by Run DMC, or even the Time’s “Jungle Love”. From the 90’s, don’t be surprised when you hear cuts like “I Wanna Sex You Up” by Color Me Badd, “Jump Around” by House of Pain, or “No Diggity” by Blackstreet. And we also add a few cuts from the very early 2000’s like “Jenny From The Block” or “Sk8ter Boi”.
On Sunday nights, we do the same thing, except the focus is on pop-rock that features 80’s hair band tunes many of us forgot about, and 90’s grunge.
The bottom line is, I’ve always believed those are perfect times to play the “wow” cuts no one gets to hear anymore. It’s a perfect break from the normal Madonna or Michael Jackson songs you normally hear from an adult hits station.
When we programmed the R&B Oldies format called Rhythm & Gold, we had three separate categories of “Oh Wow” songs, with rotations established accordingly. Level 1 would have songs like Otis Redding’s “Hard To Handle” or “The Snake,” by Al Wilson (this was before it was regularly invoked by President Trump) … Level 2 would have the likes of “The Rain,” by Oran “Juice” Jones and Clarence Reid’s “Nobody But You Babe” … and Level 3 would have the likes of “Some Kind Of Wonderful” by the Soul Brothers Six and Shirley Ellis’s “Soul Time.” On either side of these relative obscurities would be powers. Here’s the other thing, especially in an oldies format: even if they don’t know the recording, they might well already know the song: “Hard To Handle” from Counting Crows, and “Some Kind Of Wonderful” from Grand Funk.
So for the same reason that no two people can code the same library, here’s my hierarchy of those songs:
* Oran Juice Jones/The Rain – Relatively recent top 10 hit. Not played much as a gold title now, but certainly remembered by anybody who lived through it;
* Otis Redding/Hard To Handle – Minor hit at the time, but easy to understand because the remake is relatively recent and still on the radio;
* Soul Brothers Six/Some Kind of Wonderful – Again, knowing the remake helps you figure it out, but the remake is 15+ years older than “Hard to Handle” and not heard as much now;
* Al Wilson/The Snake – A minor hit then, and for better or worse, some cultural currency now;
* Shirley Ellis/Soul Time, Clarence Reid/Nobody But You Babe – Great songs, chart hits but never really went to library, very distant now. Creates a different response–“what is this? Say, it’s pretty good!” I’m going to call that one confound-and-delight.
I guess I overdo it on WOW songs on WTRSRadio.com…great column!
Sean – Absolutely there are “forgotten gems”. When I was taught programming at WCOL in Columbus during our days as an oldies station and consulted by Critical Mass Media, we had an “A” list and a “B” list. The B-list was used for weekends and features. Deeper cuts by major acts like the Beatles and such (including album tracks), but also frequent non-testers like The Toys “Attack”. “Foolish Little Girl” by The Shirelles could be another. Or “Let’s Fall In Love” by Peaches and Herb.
Sprinkled in a couple of times an hour does NOT hurt a radio station one bit.
I remember WFLZ in its “good time oldies” period before CHR playing “She’s a Heartbreaker” by Gene Pitney!
The inherent problem with “oh wow” songs are 1) you needed to have been alive when they were being played and 2) you had to have been exposed to them enough to make an impression. I’ve compared my recollection of when I remember hearing a song being played on the radio in my hometown, to listening to actual airchecks from that station from that time period (WKBO, Harrisburg, PA). One thing I noticed consistently: many songs were being played on the radio weeks and sometimes months, earlier than I remember them being played. That simply illustrates how long it takes for a song to break through our consciousness .
Truthfully, I think “oh wow” songs are simply a niche for folks who can create masterful playlists from days past. What made radio successful was playing the true hits over and over and over. My wish is that today we had true hits to burn out!
“Girls Night Out” is another reminder of how adult and classic hits stations have handled songs from the early 90s by mostly shunning them, similar to how, for most stations, the 80s didn’t start until 1983. I know the doldrums were real and the depth isn’t there but an occasional “She Ain’t Worth It”, “Do Anything”, or “P.A.S.S.I.O.N.” would add a little spice.
I don’t necessarily believe that you had to be alive when a song comes out. And in some markets, I don’t necessarily believe the AAA and adult hits are all that different. I wasn’t alive when second chance by 38 Special was a hit, I was barely alive when just between you and me by Lou Graham was, or love and affection by Nelson, Bus stop by the Holly‘s, my point is, WRRK Pittsburgh place these regularly and they are trending up in 6+. I’m 36 years old, if the music sounds good, and sounds consistent, and the image paints a good listening experience, doesn’t really matter to me. It really is the format for people who are a little tired of consultants overthinking things. something gratifying about my city making a station like this number one in a radio world where people love to valiantly proclaim what supposedly doesn’t work. A hit is a hit, did I wanna dance with somebody suddenly stop being good at a point? Of course not, doesn’t mean I wanna hear it pounded like a current either.
“Oh Wow” songs are just that and are not hits, We now know how increasingly short time spent listening has become and in my opinion, that makes them too risky to play them outside of a themed weekend show. Right now, there seems to be the worst dearth of current hits ever that I can remember. Because of that, there is a lot of “oh wow” fishing.
I love the national advertisers that spend big money on large spot buys featuring “Oh Wow” songs. Some examples: Carnival Cruise Lines – Iggy Pop “Lust For Life”…The classic WV spot with Nick Drake’s “Pink Moon”…Coors Light using Roy Ayers Ubiquity “Everybody Loves the Sunshine”…Michelob Ultra and Young-Holt Unlimited’s “Soulful Strut”…and my favorite Subway Sandwiches with The Soft Boys “I wanna Destroy You”
Man, that made me such a huge Nick Drake fan. His family actually released a book about him, I’ve been so busy. I haven’t gotten around to reading it, but think, without that, would his legacy have even had an opportunity to be recognized? Time is a weird unpredictable thing that even radio consultants can’t figure out. Lol.
To your point, if you think about all those songs, and the songs bubbling up on the current charts, you can kind of see the results over the last decade of a younger generation being inspired by that, and not just following the pattern currently being executed. Noah Kahan isn’t exactly Nick Drake, but there is definitely the acoustic emo vibe inspiration.
You had me at Sausalito Summer Night!
How about “Something’s Wrong With Me” by Austin Roberts? It peaked at number 12 in December 1972 but no station in NYC ever plays it! with the exception of the “old”( prior to June 2005) WCBS-FM who used to play it ONLY when they did their “Top 20 Countdown” for December 1972!
I somehow missed “Something’s Wrong With Me” when it was a current. When “Rocky” came out, I thought he was it was Austin Roberts’ first hit.
Recent “oh wow” experiences in my radio listening, for reasons not perhaps intended:
1. “Gangsta’s Paradise” on a Hot AC. Not the song itself, which is every bit as playable as “California Love,” “No Diggity,” etc., but how it was played. I guess someone on the staff felt it was a little too “oh wow” for the station, because it got yanked a few lines into the first verse and hurriedly mixed into the piano intro to “Pink Pony Club”. I love “Pink Pony Club” but considered complaining.
2. “The Unforgiven” by Metallica on a Hip Hop station while I was on vacation. Presumably an automation/scheduling error? No idea. Perhaps the matrix has glitched a little bit and some sage visionary decided that it is actually OK to acknowledge that some people in the universe genuinely enjoy songs from multiple “formats” and that not everything needs to be “demographically” selected.
3. I thought I could think of a third example but actually I can’t. Oh well!
The “oh wow” I would enjoy hearing on a CHR or Hot AC someday instead of “Toxic” and “Yeah!” for the millionth time: “One Call Away” by Chingy. The “oh wow” I’ll actually get: “One Call Away” by Charlie Puth. 🙁
I’m guessing Baltimore, and/or DC, for Good Charlotte. They were hometown heroes when I was in Maryland in a non-radio job.
The answer, actually, is Scranton/Wilkes Barre, where “I Just Wanna Live” was actually a hit (like many unlikely rock records on WKRZ) and lived on in the market for at least a little while after.
I heard Dexter Freebish’s “Leaving Town” for the first time in ~24 years the other day.
Can’t remember where I heard it but man that was an “OHHH WOW!”