Current music is in a weak period. There is little movement at the top of the charts where the big hits linger for months and months, and little consensus new music from number 20 on down which ever rise to replace them. As a result, many Pop stations have modified music clocks to increase recurrents and golds to improve their “hit quotient.”
It isn’t just radio where this is happening. For those who closely follow streaming numbers, three of the top 20 (Mr. Brightside, Billie Jean, Dreams) and six of the top 40 streaming titles (add Beauty and a Beat, Wonderwall, and Iris) are gold.
If you think this must be old people streaming these golds, Spotify’s own data shows 68% of users are 18-34. And from the thousands of calls we get on Liveline, we can confirm it is definitely young people calling for these same songs.
In 1996, Oasis made history with “Wonderwall” which has become one of the biggest songs of all time. Following its recent revival was being adopted as the UK’s unofficial theme song of the FIFA World Cup, I saw a video two weeks ago of a group of 10-year-olds singing it together. Not some of the words, no parents leading the way. They were into it like a new Taylor Swift song or “Golden”. After peaking two weeks ago as the #1 global song on Spotify, it’s #8 globally and #27 in the US. It was our #16 request last week.
Last week, we did an experiment on the phones for a few days where we’d ask people their age when requesting an older song. What we heard confirmed what we’ve been saying for the past few years. An 8-year-old girl requesting “Baby Got Back”, a 13-year-old boy requesting “Scar Tissue”, a 19-year-old girl requesting “Waterfalls”, a 14-year-old boy requesting “Iris”, a 21-year-old girl requesting “Rock Your Body”; then on the opposite end, a 78-year-old man requesting “Stateside.” The list is endless.
A program director recently told me how their station is trying to bring youth back to radio and really make Top 40 attractive to the 18-24 demo. But a lot of the music being played for 18-24 listeners drove away the 25-44 listeners. That PD was opposed to playing all these throwbacks, because they believe it’s only for the purpose of retaining the older audiences at the expense younger listeners. But what Top 40 is seeing now is not a return to “oldies” by young people; it is the fresh discovery by young people of a few specific gold superhits which through socials, Tik Tok and YouTube they have discovered and reacted to en masse. There will certainly be no sudden boost in 18-24 numbers on the Classic Hits stations.
We’ve had over 500 requests total for the Michael Jackson songs since April. 90% of them come from people under 30, even though his last hit was over 25 years ago. The majority of Spotify streams are made up by the 16-25 age group. Millions of plays every single day on these throwbacks like “Billie Jean”, “Smooth Criminal”, “Human Nature”, “Thriller” and so on.
Top 40 always succeeded best with style variety not focused in any particular genre. As music legend Guy Zapoleon pointed out for years, Pop Radio suffers badly when it loses the variety of music styles and gets away from including hits from country, rap and rock. Simply playing “new music” is not what young people request or stream. They want their favorite songs no matter where they come from.
Speaking of hit new music: The 2026 FIFA World Cup’s official song is “Dai Dai” by Shakira and Burna Boy. It’s Spanish for “let’s go” or “come on”. A high energy song that unites, motivates and moves people, literally. It’s currently #1 on Spotify in the world and was our #19 request last week”. A lot of the song is also in English, so it’s like “Despacito”—people know a few words and really get into into the feeling and excitement of it. It’s had big spins in markets with heavy Latin population, though the Liveline requests were from everybody. Right now, it’s #31 on Spotify in the US. We added it this week.
I rarely dislike #1 records, but Babydoll is not a good song. I don’t get the online popularity of it at all.
I enjoy it on the radio more than, say, “Earrings.” I wish it were more of a song and less of a shrug.