The past month has been very good for the growth of Liveline. We’ve added several new affiliates, including Cumulus Hot AC KQHN (Q97.3) Shreveport La. Oddly enough, almost half of our 65 affiliates are Hot AC, which in recent years has not been drastically different from Top 40. Both formats are now embracing many older titles (and listeners) while holding onto currents for much longer.
A great example of this is “NOKIA” by Drake, which still gets a fair number of requests, despite Top 40 almost completely abandoning it after its chart run—not even moving to recurrent. It is one of the biggest songs of 2025 in terms of streaming and requests. It’s already a party classic and easily one of Drake’s best songs. Most of the people who request it now are women in their 30s and 40s. (Yes, I ask off-air sometimes.)
The adult requests for “Nokia” remind me of a great quote from the late Sunny Joe White, the legendary creator/PD of WXKS-FM (Kiss 108) Boston. “Just because a person turns 30, doesn’t mean they want to hear oldies.” It was Sunny who approached John Garabedian in the summer of 1987 about hosting a weekend gig on Kiss, and thus the legendary Open House Party launched just a few months later.
Another song that continues to get calls for us is Morgan Wallen & Tate McRae’s “What I Want.” It went to recurrent relatively quickly on CHR airplay charts (compared to “Ordinary” or other long-charted hits). Country radio largely dismissed it as too pop; some Top 40 stations were hesitant to power or hold on to it because it was too Country. Currently, there are no CHRs in the top 13 markets still playing it. But it’s our #5 request this week.
The same thing happened with the #1 song of 2023, “Last Night” by Morgan Wallen. One of our most requested songs ever, it beat out monster hits like “Levitating”, “Heat Waves” and “STAY”. It was also Billboard’s pick for song of the year where it spent 16 weeks at #1, making it the biggest country song of this century. We still get calls for it all the time. This week, it received only 70 spins on Top 40, with no stations above market 43 playing it. It’s currently #169 on Spotify in America, and that’s with a dozen Christmas songs, Taylor Swift, and Kpop Demon Hunters above it!
For decades, Top 40 has seemed quick to throw out ballads, rhythmic, rock and country records even if they are better and bigger than everything else they are playing. For those who have it, perhaps research tells a different story, but even songs like “Someone Like You” by Adele, “Before He Cheats” by Carrie Underwood, “No Hands” by Waka Flocka Flame, “Mr. Brightside” by The Killers are still among our top throwback requests. Are those really too extreme?
Music This Week:
In terms of new releases, we are still pretty dry. Olivia Dean’s “So Easy (To Fall in Love)” continues its major streaming success, now at #4, while “Man I Need” is #2. She was the musical guest on Saturday Night Live last weekend. Republic says that with “Man I Need” still growing there are “no plans to work [“So Easy’] quite yet, but we’ve been having a lot of stations mention they like this one, too.”
Liveline just added Tame Impala’s “Dracula” which blew up on streaming in mid-October. It may have seemed like a Halloween novelty record but is doing better now than it was before, much like “The Dead Dance” by Lady Gaga which is still in our Top 20 Requests. “Dracula” is Tame Impala’s first song on Top 40 radio, though Kevin Parker has been releasing music since 2007 and has earned billions of streams with his eclectic, experimental, trippy and alternative music, earning him the title of “this generation’s Pink Floyd.” It’s not a Max Martin record, but Parker says he wanted it to feel like one. We think, like Martin’s own hits, that it will be around for years without sounding old.
Columbia is working “Dracula” to Top 40. Both that song and “Man I Need” are a reminder that when radio is presented an obvious streaming story, everybody wins! But there are still songs with proven stories not played by pop radio, no matter how badly it needs hits. Labels and radio are comfortable with two Taylor Swift or Sabrina Carpenter hits, but the audience is comfortable with two songs from Dean as well. Labels definitely understand the importance of Spotify and TikTok. Those numbers should drive radio priorities more, as well. Radio has been much more conscious of “what’s it doing on Spotify?” lately, and that’s good.
“I know it’s getting cold out but it’s not frozen”: Kehlani talking about CHR playlists that could be adding “Folded” now instead of kicking the can down the road another 4+ months. Maybe it can compete for CHR’s 2026 Song of the Summer?