Writing about CHR’s 1997 comeback earlier this year was a reminder of just how much the format’s back-from-the-dead resurgence was driven by two genres — dance pop and teen pop. The Modern AC/acoustic pop that had dominated the format for a few years didn’t go away, but now it was part of a balanced, more active diet.
Today’s CHR has plenty of dance pop available, but the format brings it through the pipeline slowly. The songs are proven international hits waiting for U.S. radio. Topic & A7s’ “Breaking Me” finally gets traction; now CHR can turn its attention to Joel Corry X MNEK, “Head & Heart.” It’s understandable. In 1996-97, CHR had success stories such as WKTU New York, then WWZZ (Z104) Washington, D.C., or WBLI Long Island, N.Y., to show the viability of that path and break new titles every week. WKTU just moved Topic & A7s into rotation this week; it’s not that station right now.
There was plenty of teen pop on the radio on this Memorial Day, but it was from 1998. CHR and Hot AC were heavy on throwbacks from Spice Girls, Hanson, Backstreet, ‘N Sync, Britney Spears — the artist sequence that had driven the format revival in 1997-98. Feel-good oldies were what the times demanded, plus even if CHR had teen pop available, it didn’t have a megaphone to break those songs. Distance learning had deprived the mother/daughter coalition of their last possible time to listen to radio together.
Then there was BTS. By May, “ON” had already run its brief course at Top 40, prompting an article about the band’s travails at American radio. In a social-media exchange that followed, reminiscent of the women-at-country-radio discussion, one fan accused radio of demanding a “unicorn” single from the band that it wouldn’t expect from a Western artist. It was an understandable complaint. “Boy With Luv” peaked at No. 20; “ON” went to No. 47. Justin Bieber’s “Yummy” got to No. 11 in three weeks, before PDs decided it wasn’t a radio hit. Then CHR took “Intentions” to No. 1 — a better record but not one that solved CHR’s tempo or variety issues.
As it turns out, “Dynamite” didn’t have to be a unicorn. Like “Story of My Life” by One Direction or “Adore You” by Harry Styles, it was up-tempo, but otherwise of a piece with songs already on the radio. In Styles’ case, giving radio what it wanted paved the way for “Watermelon Sugar,” which did turn out to be the pop unicorn that sounds like nothing else on the radio. It was also not a song that Top 40 had to break single-handedly; “Dynamite” came with a built-in fan base whose fervency was already known to radio.
At this writing, “Dynamite” is No. 17 in BDSRadio after less than three weeks. It still has to negotiate the first weeks of callout and the transition to the top 10, then crack the top four, where CHR’s consensus power rotation titles reside. These days, CHR is quick to take a viable song to No. 11, slow to admit it to power, and not always committed to waiting for an up-tempo pop song to cross those thresholds. That’s why both “Adore You” and “Watermelon Sugar” are still powers for many stations; very few songs make it. But like the Jonas Brothers’ “Sucker,” “Dynamite” feels like a song that radio wants to be a hit.
By this point, I worry about even getting your attention with an article about “Dynamite.” Three weeks in, the song’s rise is well-detailed in Slate, and it’s been declared a game-changer in the Atlantic. ROR readers are usually looking for me to cover something different, not pile on. But with Blackpink with Selena Gomez’s “Ice Cream” also cracking the top 25, it’s worth discussing the implications for a format that needs hit records, needs acts that are big enough to be written about in the consumer press, and needs teen pop to become a viable genre (but not the only viable genre) again.
I hope there will be at least three more hits off the BTS album. I hope there’s an up-tempo “Watermelon Sugar”-type song that sounds like nothing else, and that it becomes a single before the undeniable ballad. I hope one of those hits is in Korean, and it helps make U.S. radio more comfortable with world pop. I even harbor faint hopes that CHR will give a second run to Monsta X’s “You Can’t Hold My Heart,” which did sound like nothing else on pop radio during its brief run this spring.
It will help if CHR figures out its timing issues on all songs, giving itself more hits to play, and more powers. “Sucker” looked like the beginning of a decent product cycle. It came alongside an apparent shift in the way that CHR moved new music through the system — e.g., playing more than one song by an artist at a time. But even before world catastrophe struck, the format was back down to a trickle of legitimate hits, much less up-tempo ones. I hope that “Dynamite” is a power a month from now. I hope there’s a different BTS song in heavy rotation in 10 months.
And then the question is how radio programmers can actually co-opt BTS fans to be fans of radio. ARMY was already really good at mobilizing at radio on behalf of the group, and that was before they became a Super PAC. An all-ages hit is a good thing for Top 40. A song that listeners want to share with a mother or daughter is a good thing. Top 40 knows that bringing younger listeners back is key, and that teen pop is certainly a driver. Imagine if the people who evangelize for BTS could evangelize for you.
UPDATE (Oct. 26): As is often the case in today’s Top 40 radio, “Dynamite” roared to No. 17 in less than a month. Six more weeks have passed and it’s now No. 11 airplay. In the weeks since the article was written, its spin gains have slowed down to about +200 in one week (a sign of trouble), then picked up to the +900s. Now, it’s between +370 and +450 depending on which of the two major radio charts you look at.
I don’t have access to individual radio station research, but “Dynamite” has been showing the sort of spin gains that imply that a song is starting to kick in, especially for stations owned by groups other than iHeart — Cox, Entercom, and Cumulus. A few iHeart stations have had those sort of increases as well, especially WHTZ (Z100) New York and KYLD (Wild 94.9) San Francisco. The major-market station playing it the most is WWWQ (Q99.7) Atlanta, which has in other ways shown itself to be very trend-conscious lately (for instance, playing Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” as a new song because of its TikTok activity).
So far, “Dynamite” is not “Sucker” by the Jonas Brothers, in terms of its growth pattern. Radio definitely needed to give that song a few weeks for callout to kick in, but by this time in its deelopment, its future was secure. It’s also not “Mood” by 24K Goldn f/Iann Dior, the current No. 1 song at Top 40, which barrelled its way through that tough part of the charts in a way that few other songs have recently.
When we last wrote about “Dynamite,” it had been joined on the charts by Blackpink’s “Ice Cream.” That song peaked quickly, and I had at least one PD suggest that as a reason that “Dynamite” picked up steam again when it did. Now, Why Don’t We’s “Fallin'” is climbing the charts. And while I believe there should be room for all those acts on the chart at one time, it’s likely that some radio programmers disagree. (By the way, some readers didn’t like the fact that I used the term “teen pop” in the original article. To be clear, I never regard or intend that as a negative term; when Top 40 is healthy, teen pop is usually part of it, and listeners of all ages enjoy it together.)
“Dynamite” will almost certainly make it in to the airplay top 10. (In Canada, it’s No. 6.) At that point, Columbia will likely decide whether to keep pushing, or take the Hot 100 No. 1 trophy they received right away and move on. My sense is that “Dynamite” is the kind of record that will do well in research eventually. But sometimes, as with Lady Gaga & Arianna Grande’s “Rain On Me” or the Jonas Brothers’ “Only Human,” that doesn’t happen until the song has already peaked. It still has the advantage of being an uptempo “radio record” that also happens to do well in TikTok and the other metrics that Top 40 radio cares about now as that radio format tries to figure out its own path. I haven’t changed my mind about radio wanting it to be a hit.
Even with Top 40/CHR, I’ve been occasionally following Mexico City stations: In terms of their sites’ online rankings/countdowns (which, granted, might not be based solely on airplay), “Dynamite” might currently be #1 on both Oye 89.7 and Alfa 91.3. On Los40, it’s at #2 (behind only Maluma’s “Hawái”) but perhaps still gaining. On the recently relaunched/relocated Radio Disney, it’s at only #17–with “ON” still at #1 (and, for comparison, “Hawái” at #19). However, I don’t see it on Match’s countdown–although that list only has 15 positions. And, I haven’t found an obvious list for Exa. (Ironically enough, someone apparently created a Spotify playlist that references all six stations–although it might not be updated much.)
Made me curious to tune into Alfa for the first time in a while, and there it was!
After the weekend’s updates to those lists, “Dynamite” is still #1 on Oye (with “Ice Cream” now at #2); it’s now also #1 at Los40 (swapping with Maluma, and with “Ice Cream” now up to #14), and has jumped to #1 at Radio Disney (with “Ice Cream” at #5). However, neither appears yet on Match’s countdown–although I’ve seen “Dynamite” in the playlists of both the flagship station and the countdown-related stream. (“Dynamite” is still #1 at Alfa–if the list there was indeed updated. Either way, “Ice Cream” apparently isn’t in that station’s playlist.)
One station that I was reminded of recently (and that I probably never spent much time with before) is Modern/Christian AC WSAE (Home 106.9)–where “Music that makes you feel good” is apparently a registered trademark. I mention it here because, yes, it has “Dynamite” in rotation.
Meanwhile, revisiting the Mexico City stations, “Ice Cream” has apparently pushed “Dynamite” down to #2 on Oye; “Dynamite” and “Hawái” have re-swapped positions on Los40 (with “Ice Cream” up to #8); “Dynamite” still leads on Radio Disney (followed now by “Ice Cream”); and “Dynamite” has dropped to #3 on Alfa (with “Ice Cream” apparently still not in the playlist). (Also, “Hawái” has been popular enough that it might be one of Alfa’s few Spanish-language currents.) Over at Match (which might be more English-focused than Alfa is now), neither “Dynamite” nor “Ice Cream” appears in its countdown–although both are in the playlist.