In this column, we always speak freely about the songs that are doing well for Liveline and those that aren’t. Honesty is everything and we have nothing to gain by calling out those heavily promoted mid-charters with no active base that hurt the already struggling radio business. We’re only trying to help Top 40 and Hot AC rebound from a nearly-decade-long slump by identifying songs that generate streams and requests, and those that don’t.
Sometimes it happens that songs without an active audience can eventually be justified through station callout research. Those songs are the exceptions however and it often takes months to identify them because of listeners’ slower reaction times, and fewer stations have access to callout. The songs hurting the format used to be in the No. 20-40 range. Now, with tighter recurrent rules to speed up the chart for newer currents, a song can spend weeks in the high teens or even #7-#10 range before labels and radio move on.
Labels have a different mission from radio, of course, and always have. While pop departments promote fewer records to radio than they once did, and spend less doing so, there are still airplay stiffs—sometimes from legacy artists, sometimes from recent breakthroughs trying to create a hit streak. Because the CHR chart is so soft, it’s too tempting not to let some of those songs linger for weeks and try to get them to #10.
By contrast, during this decade, Columbia has most often been the label where active records and CHR/Hot AC airplay meet, whether it’s 24kGoldn, Kid Laroi or Hozier. That strategy paid off again recently when “Dracula” became Tame Impala’s first #1 song on any format, ever. “Dracula” was a song that had two request runs on Liveline—last Halloween and again after the JENNIE remix reignited the song. Columbia will be surprised that we’re writing about them this week, but have four of this year’s biggest hits, and three are not getting the CHR airplay they deserve.
Start off with Ella Langley’s “Choosin’ Texas”, the only choice for Song of the Year. “Texas” came out last October and exploded after Christmas, although we were already getting calls. It’s consistently in the Spotify Top 5 in a dozen countries, including the US, where it is by far the most-streamed song of the year. It’s even bigger than 2023’s biggest song, Morgan Wallen’s “Last Night,” and like that song, it’s being resisted by some stations at CHR where it’s only the No. 13 song. It should be No. 1. On Liveline, it’s not a “Country song,” it’s just a song listeners love that has been consistently top 5 for seven months.
Currently, the #2 song on Spotify is “Earrings” by Malcom Todd, another we’ve featured before and highlighted the incredible response it gets on Liveline. It came out two years ago and never did anything until earlier this year after blowing up on TikTok. It went #1 in Liveline requests for just a couple days last week but has been a Top 10 request for a while. It’s just one of the many songs that we saw performing well on streaming and getting lots of requests, long before any radio station even played it once. This week, it’s only #24 on Top 40 airplay after nine weeks, much less time than when it’s been a hit with listeners under 30. It’s our #5 request this week. What’s the hold up???
Dominic Fike’s “Babydoll” is our #2 request this week, the same position it was on April 6. It entered our Top 20 on February 22, after slowly climbing the Spotify charts for weeks. It came out in 2018 and was overlooked but found its way back to the playlists and “Liked Songs” of millions. It’s already been #1 for multiple weeks on Spotify and Liveline, and right now is still #8 in the US. So why is it No. 20 on Top 40 airplay?
As Sean Ross noted in his recent guest column, the gap between the most-streamed songs and Liveline’s top requests is closing a little every week. This week, Noah Kahan’s “Orbiter,” the song with the most sustained streaming story from his new Republic album, is a top 20 Liveline request without our airplay. The current generation who love today’s hits have little to love about radio, months behind and often absent on the songs listeners care about. By using some of these songs intelligently, Liveline has shown that those listeners don’t have to be beyond our reach.
