The question of whether radio should appeal to teens is just quaint now. It’s been almost a lifetime since broadcasters actively wanted those listeners or asked them what they liked. We were happy if they showed up by osmosis, or if the music we were playing for their parents worked for them as well, as it did in 1998 or 2010. Now, radio and teens are out of each other’s consideration sets by seemingly mutual agreement.
If radio decided to give teens what they wanted, where would they start? With Tyler the Creator? With the female singer-songwriters your niece likes who might be variously found on TikTok or Triple-A radio? Classic Rock? Connie Francis? What younger listeners wanted used to be a question that most programmers could tally by 7:55 p.m., just in time for the Top 8 at 8. Now, it would be one more thing to guesstimate through the streaming numbers, which already confound us enough. (BTW, Pink Floyd is in the TikTok top 10 this week.)
The argument about whether Top 40 should acknowledge teens, much less cater to them, has been playing out throughout the generations. I’ve mentioned my Saturday-afternoon group that live-chats about American Top 40 reruns a few times lately; any countdown featuring Bobby Sherman, Donny Osmond, David Cassidy, or Shaun Cassidy will unleash both unapologetic nostalgia and comments along the lines of “this is the crap that made me switch to FM rock.”
The discussion that programmers had about Donny, David, and Shaun in the ’70s was one they’d been having since at least the Monkees, then the bubblegum-pop explosion of the late ’60s. They’d have it again about New Kids on the Block in the late ’80s, particularly when programmers blamed them for tanking the CHR format. When teen pop clearly helped improve CHR’s fortunes in the late ’90s, it only put those arguments on hold for a few years, until PDs had to decide how to acknowledge the Radio Disney acts.
Thinking about those phases of pop music sequentially makes it clear that what we’ve been talking about all along has really been about those acts that appealed to pre-teens and younger teens, a debate reopened recently in these pages by the success of Huntr/X’s “Golden” and the KPop Demon Hunters soundtrack. We’ve already had consumer-press stories about the movie’s phenomenal success spreading to parents. Whether that will translate to “Golden” testing with adults won’t be knowable for a while, but does it matter?
The “Golden” discussion has started me thinking about some of the first records I liked again. I started listening right at the moment that garage rock turned into either bubblegum or harder psychedelia, and a lot of the songs that I liked were definitely little-kid-friendly. (A few months in, there was a remake of “Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead.”) But there was also the decidedly adult “I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)” by Aretha Franklin.
When I was a little kid, I also liked “A Man Without Love” by Engelbert Humperdinck. For years, I attributed that to being so enamored of the hits in 1967-68 that I liked even the very adult songs by association. Then, a few years ago, Humperdinck underwent his own pre-Connie Francis resurgence on TikTok and that demographic cliché was shattered not only across ages, but generations.
The records that defined bubblegum were often subversive. I didn’t hear “Yummy Yummy Yummy” by the Ohio Express as a metaphor, or know what made our sitter so upset about it. “Little Willy” by the Sweet became an entirely different song once I knew more about British slang. (That writing team, Chinn & Chapman, have a lot of musical resonance in the turbo-pop late ’00s, by which time we had mostly moved on to single entendres.)
The records that the teen idols of the early ’70s made were often not so juvenile at all. “Julie, Do Ya Love Me” and Bobby Sherman’s other hits were really swingin’ Vegas MOR. Donny Osmond went for pre-Beatles remakes and left the more rockin’ stuff to his brothers. The Donny/David/Bobby songs were teen hits because of who was singing them, not necessarily because of what they were. (You might say the same about Benson Boone now.)
Like the cereals advertised to my generation in that era, the songs that were overtly kid-friendly were part of a balanced breakfast. They led me to the Aretha (and Engelbert) songs that weren’t specifically for me, and they began a lifetime of radio listening. Whatever angst programmers might have felt about Miley/Justin/Jonas (and, hey, some of radio felt that way about Taylor Swift, too), the Radio Disney acts can now be seen as the groundwork for the last great era of pop music and the last mother/daughter coalition.
I have held for a while that the mother/daughter coalition will be rebuilt by making moms happy first, in hopes they might lure their kids out from under the earbuds. Adults are the ones still trying to enjoy Top 40 radio, and while we give them “Toxic” and “Super Bass” for that reason, we know they are also here to try and stay current and have something to talk with their kids about. For some, “Golden” has definitely been that record.
To that end, I’d like to suggest that even if you still view “Golden” as mostly a kids’ record, the answer might be “so what if it is?” If a song is abrasive or actively driving away listeners, that’s one thing. If the answer is merely that some adults are indifferent to it, well, the ratings suggest that there are a lot of songs we’re playing that listeners of all ages are indifferent to as well. And, in the time of “Ordinary” and “Die With a Smile,” it’s not as if adults don’t already have something to latch on to. (Except, maybe, for those who are waiting for the era of “Party Rock Anthem” to return.)
I don’t know if Radio Disney created a new generation of radio listeners as it intended, or if it merely amplified the artists who were propelled mostly by the Disney Channel. It has certainly been the case that since the network’s demise things have not gotten any better for pop radio and music.
Now, the task of fostering younger listeners falls to us. Nielsen PPM ratings are 6+, and even the listening outside your station’s target swells usage in a way radio needs. Pre-teens are the new listeners who don’t know they’re not supposed to like radio yet. I can guess what your reaction would be if I told you to in any way play to them, but maybe we can agree not to dismiss them if they did want to listen with their parents.
Why is no one talking about Laufey? I just bought the album at Grace Records in Gilbert, Ariz. Everyone under 30 knows her music. She’s on a media blitz. Her concerts sell out in seconds.
Did anyone ever think that today’s young adult doesn’t want the same power pop-fueled material as their older cousins or parents?
Did anyone consider that John Records Landecker was 25 when he took nights at WLS in Chicago to rejuvenate the ratings of a station feuding with WCFL over Top 40 listeners?
Let’s be frank: Until we yield Radio to the next generation, the next generation has no need to tune in
Younger listeners definitely have their own easy listening music. Sometimes it’s Laufey, sometimes it’s Steve Lacy or Stephen Sanchez. I always wonder how much translates to CHR usage and how much is just for chilling or company.
Pre-teens or teenagers will someday be prime advertising targets. If they are prime radio users now, they’ll stay with radio as long as radio offers something interesting to listen to.
A co-worker was in the car with his kids when we played “Golden”. The kids were SO excited to hear their favorite song on the radio, he sent me a voice note with them screaming about how cool that was. He mentioned it to me in person the next day.
That seems like a positive endorsement of radio to me.
^Laufey definitely on my radar, her recent album release came with a listening party at a local record store. There was a BIG crowd for it, and the audience was clearly the ages that CHR targets.
I just got a call from a major-market PD who told me that the first time he played “Golden,” he immediately got adult calls ranging from “my kids are going crazy” to “they were impressed that you knew about this song” to “I didn’t know it from my kids, but I kind of like it.”
The whole thing is huge! Take advantage of what’s “hot” in pop culture. Top 40 is the one format that can and should do it properly. With few exceptions, you can’t go wrong with playing a “popular” song. If Mike Joseph was still among us, he would probably be playing ALL the Demon Hunter songs every 70 minutes! I’m not saying to do that, but at least acknowledge this event.
I certainly wonder what Mike Joseph would do now that “going to the box office” isn’t as easy as it once was. But, agreed. The only songs I really regret taking a flyer on are the passive ones that sit around for too long before you can be sure they’re not happening.
One thing that has changed compared to the decades of teen idols is that there is so much more female representation in music. My 12 y.o. digs Chappell Roan and Olivia Rodrigo, along with The Linda Lindas and twee indie folk gals who play covers on ukeleles.
Funny, on an online radio live segment this week, I mentioned about how Donny Osmond’s big hits were teen covers instead of following the rock direction his brothers were taking. I also mentioned about how Clint Holmes’ Playground In My Mind has wore on me with time, whereas I enjoyed it as a kid.
The big difference between “Golden” and other hits “for kids” is KPOP. There are many adults I know who love KPOP and so many adults and kids unite with this choice. It’s probably more surprising for American audiences as they now come more to grips with the mass appeal of BTS and their members over the last nearly 10 years.
Kids are likely to find out more about their favourites these days through social media and other friends. And their parents are more likely to be playing Spotify in their car than the radio, which still may allow that subliminal parental bonding when we remember where we first heard a certain song years later. Radio is still a big market for older adults in big cities and so we see the same connection to big hits like Lose Control and Die With A Smile as we do with streaming. I would say suburban and rural markets are more likely to capture attention of younger audiences whose parents still play the radio for the family to enjoy.
As long as we’re all collectively doing *something* … our self-defeating nature is our worst collective trait. The past can lead to inspiration, but the future will look different. Though two things … people love the path of least resistance so there will always be a market for curators. And the next phase of the business will not look like the previous ones.
When I was just 8-years-old, one of my very favorite songs that came out of the woodwork during the springtime months of 2001 had to (and still is to this very day) have been “Southside” by MOBY featuring Gwen Stefani. And from the very first note of hearing that very song, I just couldn’t help but to sing along to it and dance my a** off into it. And ever since that time I have been falling in love with it on and off and off and on and on again and off again. And that is just something that an mother and an daughter can just really live with nowadays. Even when the other family members just don’t want to listen to it at all. The same can be said about just about the many other great just-plain-old-pop musical styles that are out there on today just for the families to fall in love with.