This past weekend Liveline celebrated Valentine’s with five hours of the best love songs from the past 30 years, all requested by nationwide listeners calling with their dedications and love stories. It’s always one of our most interactive and memorable shows of the year. Not only does it allow us to “break the format,” playing a lot of great golds and recurrents that you don’t hear too much anymore. It retains the image and overall sound of hit radio while showcasing a special day when people are seeking companionship, emotion and topical content (which is actually the daily goal too).
Here is our playlist from that night
What’s Hot This Week
SIENNA SPIRO – “Die On This Hill”: We’ve written a lot recently about streaming hits that start getting Liveline requests before CHR airplay kicks in. This is an unusual case of a song had both a streaming story and Top 40 airplay, but it wasn’t until last Monday when the requests suddenly started coming in on Liveline. Hearing it on the air, I was moved to chills and tears, immediately falling in love with it. This is the exact type of song that makes me excited to write Mason’s Observations every week, and I can really see it becoming one of the biggest songs of the year.
Spiro is 20 years old and comes from London, just like RAYE, Lola Young and Olivia Dean who’ve all had a very successful year. Four insanely strong and unique female voices, providing us with soul and sound that we haven’t heard much of in a long time. She has a slightly different story then the other three though, as “Die On This Hill” charted at radio long before it got requests on Liveline. It’s currently #30 on Spotify in the US and #17 globally, #20 on Top 40 with big supporters KBFF/Portland (63x), KENZ/Salt Lake City and WBLI/Long Island (58x). This is a female anthem which will be around for years and certainly nominated for dozens of awards. One of the best first reactions I’ve ever had to a song, showing every sign of going #1 within the next month.
sombr – “Homewrecker”: The follow up to “undressed”, “back to friends” and the somehow not-embraced-by-radio “12 to 12,” which were all massive streaming hits and a great way for any artist to debut. Until now, his songs have taken way too long to crack radio airplay, particularly when “Undressed” went to Top 40, while “Back to Friends” went only to Alternative, even though it was always the bigger song. Luckily, it still went to No. 1, but recent callout and retention reports reportedly showed a lot of burn, which may have been caused by audiences who were listening to it for months before airplay.
This time, radio knows there’s no reason not to get in early ,and “Homewrecker” is No. 21 CHR at this writing after less than two weeks. “Homewrecker” came out February 5. Liveline played it live upon release with instant reaction from listeners. It debuted #19 on Spotify with just over a million streams, falling to #38 the next day, but bouncing back to #12 a couple days later where it’s been sitting comfortably. Last week, it was our #20 request.
