When Is a Song Still Relevant for CHR?

I’ve never gotten sick of hearing “Dynamite” by Taio Cruz. Maybe, just maybe, there was a moment sometime around early 2011, after months of ubiquity, when I wasn’t pumped to hear it each time. Now, it sounds great on the radio again, even when I hear it on two consecutive stations I’m monitoring, which can happen, since “Dynamite” is still the No. 77 most-played song at CHR radio, according to Mediabase, with about 400 spins a week.

When I was learning radio programming, programmers usually held to one or all of a few different rules about whether a gold library title was still relevant:

• Was it from the last three years?
• Was the artist still relevant, or a current hitmaker?
• Would it be a hit if it came out today?

The exceptions were usually deliberate. Bill Drake’s ’60s/early-’70s CHRs were driven by their “Solid Gold Weekends,” and that’s why I recently heard an aircheck of CKLW Detroit playing the Fendermen’s “Mule Skinner Blues” in 1969. KKBQ (93Q) Houston launched by pounding Terry Jacks’s “Seasons in the Sun,” the least hip song you could play in 1982-83. Some adult-leaning CHRs, such as WKRZ Wilkes-Barre, Pa., did really well by still playing the likes of “More Than a Feeling” by Boston in the early 2000s when it was 25+ years old.

Post-COVID, much of the CHR format began to more resemble those stations. Changing usage, a need for comfort food, fewer current releases, and slower callout development for new titles led stations to lean more heavily on throwbacks. Some stations, such as WBBM-FM (B96) Chicago or WZFT (Z104) Baltimore, helped define a new sub-genre of “Throwback CHR” that still played a handful of currents.

I looked at a cross-section of CHRs and generally found 3-4 gold titles an hour, many of them from the mid-’10s or earlier. Not surprisingly, many of the biggest songs no longer adhere to any of the old rules of relevance.

“Dynamite” is more than 15 years old. We judge the time/space continuum for musical relevance very differently now, but it is comparable to hearing the Foundations, another British R&B act that had two hits in 1969, on CHR during its 1984 heyday. (At that moment, when there were no holes in current product to fill, many stations were going back only 18-24 months for gold titles.) Even when There’s Something About Mary gave “Build Me Up Buttercup” new cultural relevance years later, it never returned to CHR. 

Cruz’s hit streak ended almost immediately after “Dynamite,” although some of his peers from the “turbo-pop” era remain active. Pitbull & Lil Jon recently reached No. 17 at CHR with “Damn I Love Miami,” a song whose appeal is based heavily on recalling Pitbull’s “Give Me Everything” (the No. 12 most-played oldie at CHR, 15 years later) and Usher & Lil Jon’s “Yeah!” (That 2003 hit is the No. 23 most-played gold title.)

The “would it be a hit today?” question is the most confounding. “Dynamite” still sounds great today, but there is nothing as propulsively uptempo, as melodic, or as singalong-friendly on today’s CHR. Hearing “Yeah!,” “We Found Love” by Rihanna, “Super Bass” by Nicki Minaj, or “No Scrubs” by TLC on CHR is a reminder now that the format is not just missing tempo, but also Hip-Hop/R&B crossovers or even Rhythmic Pop.

For a lot of programmers, the relevance of oldies isn’t such an issue now. CHR is no longer for 12-to-24-year-olds, and attracting them would be a challenge, even with intent. Besides, those listeners are less hung up on chronology than ever, and they’re streaming Michael Jackson and the Killers to prove it. Liveline host and Mason’s Observations columnist Mason Kelter isn’t just in favor of “Billie Jean” as an oldie on CHR, he’d be playing it like a current given Jackson’s current cultural moment and the song’s current requests from younger listeners. Many PDs are entirely untroubled by older gold and I might be too, if the format’s ratings were better.

As somebody who is now out of CHR’s target demo, whatever you believe it to be, I still consider Usher, Rihanna, and Lady Gaga to be relevant artists, regardless of their recent output. I don’t know if a 15-year-old agrees, or how they feel about “Super Bass” by Nicki Minaj, a top-50 CHR gold title that they do not remember as a current. A few weeks ago, my CHR listening led me to “Buttons” by the Pussycat Dolls on two different stations on consecutive days. The Dolls recently cancelled a planned reunion tour due to a lack of sales, which seems to answer the relevance question.

There does seem to be a dawning realization that CHR as an overtly “yesterday-and-today” format isn’t a cure-all for the format’s issues. WZFT (Z104) Baltimore and some of its iHeart brethren have edged away from the throwbacks. (There are still 2-3 songs an hour on most CHRs from the ’10s or before, but they’re not the calling card in the same way.) Sweepers for SonicTrek’s new CHR format, “Hit40.ai,” from veteran programmers Joel Denver and Brian Kelly, declare that there will be “no throwbacks” and “no waiting” for a current hit. When I asked Facebook friends, few held to the three-year-limit anymore, but several did suggest a 10-year cutoff.

I’ve always appreciated a certain amount of boldness in oldies programming at CHR. I like it even more on a station that aggressively programs its currents. Listening to CKLW from the late ’60s/early ’70s is to be reminded of both MD Rosalie Trombley’s enterprise and how many great new songs there were, few of which needed to linger for more than 10-11 weeks. So, what if CK wanted to pop in ’50s instrumental “Rebel Rouser” by Duane Eddy in 1970, at a moment where it resembled little of what was happening in current music?

But I would ask programmers two questions. When I looked at “How to Play Throwbacks” in 2023, I asked if “Love Don’t Cost a Thing” by Jennifer Lopez was really better than any current song. That question certainly goes for “Buttons,” particularly since we have it in refurbished form thanks to Tate McRae’s “Fast Car.”

The other question is “if you need ‘Dynamite’ and ‘We Found Love’ to fill a hole in 2026, why then are labels, artists, and programmers allowing that hole to exist?” Every summer there is at least one uptempo hit that proves the ongoing demand for “fun/uptempo/propulsive,” and the recent success of Tame Impala & Jennie’s “Dracula” means we haven’t given up on that sort of record yet. If we need old records to fill a hole, how can fun and tempo return from the undead?