On the Friday it came out, Taylor Swift’s “I Knew It, I Knew You” received 10 requests on Liveline, something that has never happened with any new song before, even with superstar releases. We promoted it all week and on the debut night played it three times. With just Friday and Saturday requests it was our 19th most requested song of the week. This past week, it was #10, despite dropping from No. 1 to No. 20 on Spotify daily.
Swift wrote the song with longtime collaborator Jack Antonoff for the Toy Story 5 movie which debuts this Friday. It was heavily publicized for closing out the entire Mediabase Country radio panel this week, something rarely achieved by any artist in any format, but particularly for an artist who hasn’t had a hit in Country for over a decade. (Country, you might remember, often resisted Swift even during her hit streak there.) Currently, it’s No. 16 at Top 40, No. 14 at Hot AC, and No. 15 at Country.
Olivia Rodrigo’s album “you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love” was released this past Friday. That same night, “drop dead” and “the cure” tripled in requests, and we even got a few requests for the other songs on the album. Now that we’ve had a few days with it, “drop dead” holds on as our top request and “stupid song” had four requests Monday night and three on Tuesday. It’s also currently #1 on Spotify, with her other 12 tracks all in the Top 20.
Ariana Grande’s “hate that i made you love me” continues to dominate the chart. It’s now our fourth most-requested song. The new album comes out July 31.
Zara Larsson now occupies the top two spots on Top 40, “Stateside” is #1 and “Midnight Sun” is #2, both after months of heavy promotion and “Stateside” being an obvious smash on streaming and requests since February. “Midnight Sun” has always gotten far less requests and streams, many of them from listeners under 13, but it does sound great on the air.
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The Dominik Fike, and Bella Kay records surprise me a bit. They really aren’t that good. Must be big TicTok songs! “The Cure” & “Die” are my favs so far!!
A lot of the TikTok hits feel like trifles to me, too, and they don’t solve much for Top 40 in terms of starpower or tempo/energy. I take them a little more seriously because they also generate requests on Liveline. Same with Dexter & the Moonrocks.