Fresh Listen: BBC Radio 1

Over the last six months, one ongoing theme of Ross On Radio has been the heritage stations to which I’ve found myself returning. ROR’s Fresh Listens and other profiles have ranged from CHRs WXKS (Kiss 108) Boston and WKRZ Wilkes-Barre, Pa., to Australia’s alternative Triple-J; from Oldies WLNG Long Island, N.Y., to Country KUZZ Bakersfield, Calif.; Triple-A WXRT Chicago to AC WLTW (Lite FM) New York.

Sometimes I’ve gone back to those stations because so many heritage stations have been among our recent ratings winners. Often, it’s because these are the full-service radio stations that COVID-19 coverage demands. They are the stations that still “do radio”—another ongoing trope of recent months.

But I listened for the first time in a while to BBC Radio 1 this week because I wanted to hear Royal Blood. The British rock band’s “Trouble’s Coming” is my favorite record in months. More than any song in recent memory, it cracks the code on what a guitar rock hit should sound like in 2020, if CHR played guitar rock in 2020. “Trouble’s Coming” is the No. 11 Active rock song this week, but I wanted to hear it on a Top 40 station. 

I knew Radio 1 would play “Trouble’s Coming.” I didn’t hear it in my first attempt; in that hour, they played the new Bring Me The Horizon song instead. When I did hear them play it, it came after Justin Bieber’s “Holy” and sounded entirely appropriate in a mix that was heavily dance/pop, but also included one uptempo pure pop find as well (the YUNGBLUD song). I didn’t hear “Blinding Lights” or “Watermelon Sugar.” I did hear two new songs I wanted to own by the time my listening was done.

When I started streaming overseas radio; there were British commercial CHRs like Juice FM Liverpool that were aggressive musically but felt more accessible than Radio 1. There were also state-owned broadcasters elsewhere that I liked, like Hungary’s MR2 Petofi doing a similarly hip mix. I didn’t need Radio 1 as much. Then Juice became a Capital FM affiliate, plus hit music felt like it was increasingly on a single worldwide timetable. I didn’t feel like I needed to stream overseas radio quite as much.  

But through CHR’s product issues of the last few years, I’ve started to feel like U.K. Top 40 (and, in fact, CHR almost anywhere else) has held up better, partially because of dance music. And right now, Radio 1 is giving me something I can’t get a lot of other places—newish CHR music curated for me in a produced/hosted radio context with a variety of styles and textures–which is to say Top 40. 

Perhaps because of that variety of textures, Radio 1 sounds different from the way that U.S. programmers are reshaping the format now, which can still feel claustrophobic. It’s not because R1 isn’t conscious of changes in music consumption. During the 2010s, there was a Guardian article on a Radio 1 music meeting in which the discussion on prospective adds was all Soundcloud, YouTube, and social media. I remembered that article as a few years ago; I went back today and realized it was from 2014.

RAJAR, the U.K.’s ratings service, hasn’t released public results since its Q1 report, which had Radio 1 flat at a 5.6, and third behind AC Radio 2 and N/T Radio 4. The Capital network was off 4.0-3.7.  In Manchester, Radio 1 went 6.2-5.3, leading Capital locally. In London, it beat Capital in Q3 last year, but in the recent measurement, it has gone 4.1-3.9-3.2-3.3 since that time. Remember that this is in a market with multiple CHRs; remember also that some U.S. Top 40s are in the threes at the moment. Here’s what I wrote about Capital vs. Radio 1 in 2016.

Here’s Radio 1 just before 5 p.m. on Oct. 26; that hour ended with a 15-minute afternoon news package. The 6 p.m. hour began with London Grammar. There were also excerpts from an interview with YUNGBLUD who, because he also hosts a BBC podcast, was one of the first artists actually allowed in the building since the COVID 19 outbreak.

• Disclosure & Kelis, “Watch Your Step”
• Camelphat & Cristoph, “Breathe”
• Beyoncé, “Déjà vu”
• Justin Bieber f/Chance the Rapper, “Holy”
• Royal Blood, “Trouble’s Coming”
• Becky Hill, “Space”
• YUNGBLUD, “Cotton Candy”
• Shawn Mendes, “Wonder”
• Slowthai, James Blake & Mount Kimbie, “Feel Away”
• Bklava, “Back To Then” (“BBC Introducing Tune-Of-The-Week”)
• Jax Jones & Au/Ra, “I Miss U”
• Fontaines D.C., “A Lucid Dream”
• 24KGoldn f/Iann Dior, “Mood”
• Ashnikko, “Daisy”
• London Grammar, “Baby It’s You”