Listeners Love ‘New Country’; Why Don’t They Like the Songs More?

All these things are true about Country music, especially when it comes to the balance of newer and older songs on your radio station, according to two listener surveys just presented at the Country Radio Seminar, held in Nashville March 17-20.

• When Country-radio listeners rank the most important benefits of the format, “Helps You Discover NEW Music” is No. 4, important to 74% of respondents, according to a perceptual study from Strategic Solutions Research presented March 18.
• “Plays the Best NEW Country” is right behind at No. 5 and 72%.
• Although playing a “good variety of new vs. old” was well-rated, too (tied for No. 2 at 76%), Strategic Solutions’ Kevin Cassidy and Hal Rood still believed the “new country” image reflected in many Country stations’ positioning was so important that stations should be careful not to dilute it with an add-on like “…and your all-time favorites.”
• Even among fans of a “yesterday and today” or “spectrum Country” approach, “Today’s Chart Songs” (50%) were just behind “songs from the past 5 to 10 years” (52%), followed closely by “new songs just becoming popular.” (45%).
• By contrast, those same listeners have symmetrically less interest in songs from the early 2000s (35%), the 1990s (27%) or the 1980s (13%).
• Even 35-54 listeners have only slightly more interest in the ’90s (30%) than the overall sample (25%).
• In a music-library test presented the next day, Nu Voodoo’s Carolyn Gilbert and Leigh Jacobs found that the longer respondents had listened to Country, the more likely they were to be interested in new music.

Yet, when it comes to individual titles, the excitement about “new Country” has grown only slightly since Nu Voodoo presented its first CRS music test three years ago. That test was so dominated by titles from the ’90s and early ’00s, and by legacy artists such as Shania Twain and John Michael Montgomery, that when the test was repeated last year, the decision was made to not include as many older songs. 

Even with fewer of the oldest titles being tested, there are only four songs from the 2020s in the top 25. Three are from Morgan Wallen (and in the top 5); the remaining one is Jelly Roll’s “Liar.” By contrast, there are still seven songs from the ’80s and ’90s in the top 25, and at least four more just below it, depending on how you tally. (The biggest percentage of top 25 songs is from the 2010s.)

In addition, the studies also found the following:

• While the majority of respondents thought the era balance on today’s Country radio was just right, according to Strategic Solutions, if listeners felt they were hearing too little of something, it was:
  • Songs older than 10 years (33%)
  • ’90s songs (31%)
  • ’80s songs (32%) — by comparison, only 8-12% felt they weren’t hearing enough current music.
• NuVoodoo’s sample included respondents who relied more on streaming services than Country radio. Despite the expectations that streaming should lead radio to be more aggressive on new music and edgier artists, DSP partisans “as a group, prefer more older titles than those that rely on radio.”
  • 45% of those listeners top quintile of songs came from before 2010
• Overall, pre-2010 music contributed the most playable songs (78). Songs from 2020 or later (45) did manage to edge 2010-14 (42) and 2015-19 (44 songs).

The domination of Country-radio music tests by older songs, and the relative paucity of recent testers, isn’t a new phenomenon. Morgan-mania means that the NuVoodoo test is indeed led by a recent gold title, Wallen & Ernest’s “Cowgirls.” But James Otto’s “Just Got Started Lovin’ You,” long an example of an early-’00s song that far outlived its artist’s hit streak, was a reliably enduring tester even during the time of “Cruise”-mania more than a decade ago and has gone nowhere since. That song is tied for No. 26 this time.

Even with fewer older choices for respondents, “Strawberry Wine” by Deana Carter (1996) is the No. 4 song on the NuVoodoo test. Alabama’s “Mountain Music” (1982) is No. 6. Close behind are Lee Ann Womack’s “I Hope You Dance” (2000) (10), Tim McGraw’s “I Like It, I Love It” (1995) (11), and George Strait’s “Check Yes or No” (1995) (12).

There’s no intent to pit the two surveys against each other here. The contradictions are visible from either study. They are also longstanding enough that Country listeners have proven consistent in their inconsistencies.

There’s also no benchmark for how much a Country-radio music test should reflect newer songs. Among the major formats, only Mainstream AC covers the same 40+-year-swath of “yesterday and today” as a spectrum Country station. In the late ’00s, as CHR boomed, it was very possible to see then-recent titles from artists like Usher and Rihanna near the top of an AC test. I don’t recall that number ever reaching even seven newer titles in the top 25, but that format was also far less based in newer music.

If we are to conclude anything from the contradictions, it would be that:

There is likely residual damage to recent Country titles from the way we rotate them. The passive hits can take a year to develop. The more active hits can scale the chart sooner but then disappear faster. It’s not surprising that Country listeners don’t have the same enthusiasm for new songs in a library test that they do for “Wagon Wheel” or “Drink a Beer” more than a decade later, especially when those songs are no longer being saturated.

Some of the hits are not really hits in the first place. It’s accepted that some songs can go to No. 1 without becoming a true consensus power. The CRS panel “The Disruptors,” meant to encourage stations to pay less attention to the chart game, promised to take on the topic of “terminal currents,” but didn’t spend much time on what changing that might look like. (This column has suggested that labels and radio strive to give their “push week” airplay to songs earlier in the process to get a better sense of what songs deserve to be No. 1 and to get them there sooner.) When those songs exit the “revolving door” at No. 1, they don’t stay on the radio long enough to endure in a way likely to be reflected in a music test.

It is harder to build consensus for recent music. Country is the healthiest of the radio formats that still rely heavily on recent music. But even Country radio has lost listeners to DSPs and with it the ability to burn in a new title as thoroughly as it once did. Streaming isn’t doing that either. The NuVoodoo studies have shown for several years that there is not a robust body of streaming hits that radio misses, and this year stated that there was less consensus among DSP users, who aren’t there for a shared experience.

Liking new music doesn’t depend on loving new songs. The evidence of the Strategic Solutions study in particular is that listeners want new music, and that they want that new music to be curated and presented by a human, not an algorithm-driven AI DJ. Bonding with those songs isn’t as important as a fresh, well-stocked buffet table. And if that’s the case, Country radio lets some songs sit out under the heat lamp for a long time. With a demonstrated interest in being introduced to new songs, perhaps listeners actually want more “new country,” not just the “recent-ish country” that stations actually emphasize. 

Interest in artists transcends individual songs. As three titles in NuVoodoo’s top 5 show, Wallen has the rare combination of artist strength and legitimate hits that you would expect from a generational artist. That said, the recent No. 1 “20 Cigarettes” is only starting to show some callout strength now nationally, meaning that even the biggest star can top the charts based mostly on artist image. Three of Country radio’s biggest debates — “streaming vs. callout,” “passive vs. active,” and “artist vs. song” — are really the same discussion. Perhaps listeners are interested in “here’s the latest from…” even if that song doesn’t linger.

Don’t dismiss Classic Country. I’m not a neutral observer on the Classic Country format, in which I currently do a good bit of work, but I do believe that country gold remains a viable option, no matter where the ’80s and ’90s show up in the musical hierarchy. I’ll make the case at greater length in a forthcoming article, but the headlines are:

• Classic Country remains strong in music testing, limited in this test mostly by the amount of titles included.
• Classic Country has a viable second tier beyond the “Fishing in the Dark”-level hits that doesn’t make sense on a yesterday-and-today Country station.
• In heritage Country markets, there are usually examples of Country Gold beating the mainstream outlet at any given time, most recently in Tulsa.
• Country Gold has the potential to repatriate listeners from streaming. 
• ’90s Country was far more of a shared experience for more of the decade than the ’90s CHR titles that pop Classic Hits stations are forced to delve into now.