Taylor Swift has dominated every part of the music industry and her album “The Life of a Showgirl” continues to occupy the entire Spotify Top 12. But in terms of listener requests, one has clearly emerged as popular. Last week in Mason’s Observations, we explained how her Friday release created a nationwide event with callers from Cape Cod to Maui talking about their favorite Taylor songs and all-things-Taylor. But when the following Monday and Tuesday came, a shocking number of requests came in for those exact same songs–zero!
On Wednesday night and the following Thursday and Friday, things took a total 180. Though only a few requests came in for some of the songs, “The Fate of Ophelia” zoomed to #3 in requests, with about two dozen listeners requesting it. The title track with Sabrina Carpenter cracked the top 20.
It all goes back to something we point out a lot about what we observe in first week excitement from requests as well as on Spotify: Everyone wants to hear the hot new thing and be a part of this moment, but after they’ve heard the album, it just becomes air. Showgirl is a great album with catchy lyrics, hooks, and beats, but Swifties aren’t the core of Top 40’s radio audience. As recently as last night, we had a few callers who hadn’t heard any of her new songs, despite presenting themselves as avid pop radio listeners. And that’s okay! It’s further proof that many listeners are just getting to know and love a song when you’re moving it into recurrent after 12 weeks. Just a few days ago, a woman asked if we could play “that ‘Ordinary’ song by the Alexander something. I think it’s new.”
The rest of this week’s request tabulation is pretty in-tune with what people are streaming on-demand. But there are a couple of songs that have slowed down online that remain top 15 requests for us–“The Dead Dance”, “Tears”, and “Daisies.” We’ve said before that with more data now than ever before, there’s no need to guess or try to be the “leader” on new songs. The audience tells us what they are passionate about. But sometimes, once they hear a song on the radio, they create a story that’s more than the streaming stats. That’s why we think the requests we receive every week are important information for radio people.
We talk a lot about the heavily hyped airplay chart songs that don’t generate streams or requests, but there are also songs that prove that streaming doesn’t always equate to a hit either. The first song that comes to mind is the dreadful “Put Your Records On” by Ritt Momney from 2020, the year Liveline was launched. That song peaked at #2, but we never got any requests for it.
It was around that time I hoped that someday I could do a weekly piece like John Garabedian’s Monday Morning Update which was the honest, brutal-but-always-trustworthy report of which songs were actually happening, and those that weren’t. Unfortunately, that year on Top 40 radio the large number of “nothing” songs greatly outweighed the real hits. Let’s hope the rest of 2025 is different.
