What Does Mass Appeal Mean Now?

Here are some of the things we liked about “Espresso” in summer 2024 and why we missed having another song like it this summer:

• It was a Top 40 radio smash whose reach extended well beyond CHR radio, in a way that not every hit does now.
• It eventually reached the place of what RCA’s Keith Naftaly calls “grandma recognition” — acceptance or at least awareness beyond the people who normally keep up with the hits. It was the thing that we have always understood as an important confirmation of “mass appeal.” Since then, the definition of what constitutes “mass appeal” now is tested constantly.
• It heralded the arrival of a core artist — one whom CHR had already invested in by playing “Feather,” based more on callout than streaming. 

That last one is important. Over the last 18 months, Carpenter has been the consistent hitmaker most obviously missing from the format since Taylor Swift’s 2022-23 streak. In part, that’s because Carpenter has been inclined to release a steady stream of music to CHR when not every artist has.

Not every one of Carpenter’s hits has been “Espresso,” although if you go by Billboard’s Hot 100, some have been even bigger. Some, like “Manchild,” seem to be trailing off quickly in streams, and some of the stations I look at are moving it down already. But we thought that about “Taste,” too, and that one is rebounding at some stations again. Carpenter’s hits have all been bright spots on an otherwise dreary landscape and earned their three minutes of your airtime.

Part of the frustration this summer was not just the paucity of the Song of Summer field but also the lack of a Carpenter or Chappell Roan-level breakthrough. Alex Warren’s subsequent songs have had streams but no airplay (“Eternity”) or the inverse (“On My Mind”). The phenomenal success of “Ordinary” hasn’t yet translated into Carpenter-level stardom, although for some people, Warren has been a star for years due to his social-media presence, and as reflected in his SiriusXM Hits1 support. “Stardom” is nebulous now.

Here’s further proof of that. If Carpenter had just been announced as the 2026 Super Bowl performer, there would still be griping that she had not attained Prince/Rolling Stones-level stardom. Those opposed to Kendrick Lamar or Bad Bunny may have additional motivation, but based on previous complaints about Usher or Jennifer Lopez, they didn’t need it. Whatever else it may become, the Super Bowl, Grammys, or Hall of Fame trigger is often generational first.

We now know that it is possible for a song or artist to become massive outside the walls of mainstream radio. Pop radio ratifies some (Roan, Kendrick Lamar, KPop Demon Hunters) but not others (“We Don’t Talk About Bruno”). There still seems to be a difference in the magnitude of those phenomena ratified by radio and those not — a shared experience becomes the shared experience. Perhaps this is wishful thinking for a radio person, and completely offbase to an 18-year-old’s perception of what’s big. But despite the seeming industry antipathy toward radio these days, labels still usually want the co-sign.

So now I am writing the words Bad Bunny with some hesitation. You’re here for relief from four days of other people’s hot takes. But there is some insight for radio here that makes this discussion more than just giving oxygen to another “Cracker Barrel logo”-type tempest. Bad Bunny is among the world’s biggest artists without ever gearing a record for English-language CHR, in part because he hasn’t had to. 

In that regard, his stardom is reminiscent of Bob Marley at the time of his death (although “Could You Be Loved,” towards the end of his career, at least seemed like an attempt at a radio record). Marley eventually became universal by any measurement here too, and the lack of a radio hit became irrelevant. 

It’s also fun to note that Metallica, the Super Bowl pick for many, occupied exactly the same place for CHR (and even much of Mainstream Rock) radio in 1991 that Bad Bunny does now: “Yes, they’re huge, but what the hell do we do about it?” “Enter Sandman,” the song CHR briefly tried to play, never became part of the Classic Hits canon, although “Nothing Else Matters” has become a Mainstream AC staple in much of the rest of the world.

Kendrick Lamar’s place in the firmament has changed dramatically over the last 15 months too, both before and after the Super Bowl. As Chris Molanphy has noted, both of Lamar’s breakthrough hits were unlikely crossovers. Sampling and naming a song after Luther Vandross also invokes an artist whose massive stardom also took place mostly outside the parameters of pop radio. It’s likely that Bad Bunny’s place on pop radio will be different by next spring as well.

Pop radio has to make every decision, including some more innocuous ones, amidst a lot of noise now in our “argue about everything” era, as the RRHOF/Super Bowl/Grammy arguments show. Initial reaction to The Life of a Showgirl is good, but as programmers judge the new Taylor Swift single and album, doing so still comes with a lot of external noise from both fans and haters, some of whom had moved into the “now tear her down” category long having any hint of Swift’s politics. And this is a core artist who was almost the only act CHR had to talk about for a year before Sabrina.

I’m happy that Taylor will likely be playing to Tyler (the Creator) next week and that radio is finally responding to “Sugar On My Tongue” which already seems no edgier to me than “Nokia,” but neither did “Ring Ring Ring” really. Radio needs that hit and that starpower, too. And I’m glad that Columbia still saw a benefit in asking for the co-sign as well.  

Part of what made a field that stretched from “I Had Some Help” to “Not Like Us” last year was having the pop center.In general, it’s better when radio is looking for phenomena to take advantage of. In the ideal circumstance—Sabrina Carpenter, Chappell Roan, and Kendrick Lamar breaking through at the same time—it is great to have both the artist we fostered and the one we couldn’t ignore. In front of the bandwagon is better than behind it. Either is better than the parade passing by. It’s also better if radio still creates its own phenomena.