In recent years, the “Songs That Made a Difference” column has often ended up saluting two different types of hit songs. Some are the sonic breakthroughs that would have been hard to anticipate when the year began. Just as often, I end up writing about the “medium-weight” up-tempo songs that confirm that listeners still respond to what we think of as a “hit song.” When there are enough of those songs, Top 40 radio stages a comeback.
A few of those up-tempo pop songs existed at Top 40 in 2020. In fact, two of the most prominent of them existed in 2019. I wrote about Harry Styles’ “Watermelon Sugar” and the Weeknd’s “Blinding Lights” in last year’s “Songs That Made a Difference” article. “Watermelon Sugar” was there because Columbia wasn’t working it yet, going with the more typical “Adore You.” “Blinding Lights” was effectively the B-side of “Heartless,” also a more Top 40-compliant song at the time, but it was already being championed by the Cox CHR stations on the way to becoming a power for most of the year. This week there are only seven and the song finally falls out of the top 10 and moves to recurrent.)
The rise of the TikTok-driven hit was visible too at 2019’s end. A year ago, it was Arizona Zervas, “Roxanne.” October saw Surf Mesa’s “ily (I love you baby),” Jawsh 685 x Jason Derulo’s “Savage Love,” and 24KGoldn f/Iann Dior’s “Mood” in the CHR top five together. As Slate’s Chris Molanphy noted, “Mood” was a particularly radio-friendly distillation of what we think of as a TikTok record. In fact, “Mood” and “Roxanne” were already of a piece with the trap pop that has dominated CHR, and even spilled over to Hot AC over the last five years. So are current hits from Ariana Grande, Chris Brown, Sam Smith, Justin Bieber, and Shawn Mendes (with Justin Bieber).
Top 40 is, at this moment, as far as one can imagine from a comeback. Staying at home during COVID-19 robbed mothers and daughters of their last available in-car time, although much of that had long been relinquished for listening through earbuds to something other than CHR radio. A flood of older male listening has benefitted Classic Rock, News/Talk, even Classical and Classic Country. Now Christmas is helping AC. Heritage Top 40 stations are in the 3-4 share range, where many of their predecessors opted for other formats during the format’s last near-extinction event in the early ‘90s.
At this moment, it’s hard to be sure if better product would help any format that depends on rapidly shrinking 18-to-34-year-old listening. Hip-Hop’s place in the zeitgeist didn’t save Hip-Hop and Rhythmic Top 40 stations from their own crisis this fall. Alternative radio has had decent product for several years, but it has been in the three-share range for years in many markets. (As Entercom’s Matt Malone notes, 24KGoldn had an impact there, too, this year, with “City Of Angels” opening the door for “Mood” and more shared music with CHR as well.)
It’s hard not to see 2020 as “[our seventh] sorry year for current product flow,” according to AC WINK Fort Myers, Fla., PD Chuck Knight, who has to deal with what trickles down from Top 40. The year-end most-played charts are always a good indicator of how many real hits there were. This year, the first song that wasn’t a consensus power (Camila Cabello’s “My Oh My”) is in the top 15 and the songs left over from 2019 start in the top 20 with Lizzo’s “Good as Hell.”
For many of the Facebook friends who shared thoughts on this year’s hits, it was again about what CHR didn’t play. Even in this year’s Song of the Summer wrap-up, many readers pegged the culturally dominant song as Cardi B f/Megan Thee Stallions “WAP.” But even at Hip-Hop and Rhythmic Top 40, that song was only about the 30th most-played. For former WAKS (96.5 Kiss FM) Cleveland PD Joel Murphy, the lack of airplay for both “WAP” and Fleetwood Mac’s TikTok-fueled “Dreams” reflected “CHR dropping the ball on what they should be doing all the time.” (Cumulus CHRs did follow their “Dreams” for a while.)
The songs CHR didn’t play, or didn’t play successfully, didn’t have to be outliers. Some songs entirely within the format parameters were unable to wrest power rotation from “Blinding Lights,” Dua Lipa’s “Don’t Start Now,” and Doja Cat’s “Say So,” even if some programmers decided that Lady Gaga & Ariana Grande’s “Rain on Me” or Jonas Brothers’ “Only Human” (already a 2019 holdover) were hits after they peaked on the charts. Dance hits from “Ride It” to “Head and Heart” to “Breaking Me” hovered mid-chart.
In the winter, up-tempo pop seemed to have a better chance of coming home if it was by a “not pop” artist — the Weeknd or Post Malone. But even Juice WLRD f/Marshmello’s “Come & Go,” despite CHR’s initial enthusiasm, didn’t become a power. (The next test will be Billie Eilish’s “Therefore I Am.”). Pop PDs seemed to be looking for their TikTok reaction records to test, and expecting their pop balance records to react, which ended up claiming a lot of prospective powers. But “Watermelon Sugar” made it through, and so, at year’s end, did Ava Max’s “Kings and Queens.”
Even when I feel the way about pop product that Knight and Murphy do, I’d rather see it through the eyes of Mason Kelter, host of the newly syndicated “Party LiveLine.” As Kelter sees it, “there’s been at least one song in every genre that has made a difference at Top 40 this year.” His list is “Blinding Lights,” “Mood,” “Come and Go,” but also DaBaby f/Roddy Ricch’s “Rockstar,” Saint JHN’s “Roses (Imanbek Remix),” Gabby Barrett f/Charlie Puth’s “I Hope,” and BTS’ “Dynamite.” The latter represents both a K-Pop breakthrough and a possible teen-pop resurgence, although it too stopped just short of power (at least for now).
Seeing Kelter’s list provoked the same reaction as when I recently saw a chart from fall ’93, the moment when CHR began a four-year implosion. The hits at that moment were better and more diverse than I remembered. If a healthy year for CHR is the year when the format plays all kinds of music, the hits this year spanned from AJR’s “Bang” to Kane Brown having a top 10 hit without Country support with “Be Like That (w/Swae Lee & Khalid).” (In doing so, he extended a 40-year-plus RCA tradition of separate Top 40 and Country singles that goes back to Dolly Parton, Ronnie Milsap, and Kenny Rogers.)
When a Country single did have multi-format support, it became “I Hope” or Maren Morris’ “The Bones,” two songs that helped break the logjam for female Country artists. Those songs were joined atop the Country chart by Ingrid Andress’s “More Hearts Than Mine,” Carly Pearce & Lee Brice’s “I Hope You’re Happy Now,” Miranda Lambert’s “Bluebird” and Maddie & Tae’s “Die From a Broken Heart.” By late spring/early summer, Country was gaining share as other current-driven formats foundered.
It’s worth noting that Country’s female representation in the top 10 is more like what we were seeing in 2019; female artists represented as a group lead (Lady A) and duet partners. Country PDs tell me they think the mindset about female acts is better now, and that many of the follow-ups by those female acts are just at a different place in the chart cycle now. But it’s also the case that the spring breakthroughs didn’t move even Morris to the fast track where a song can scale the charts in 16 weeks, not 60.
At the end of the year, Country was having its own streaming-driven moment. The label that most successfully negotiated that world was Big Loud, home of Hardy, Chris Lane, and Morgan Wallen, who with “7 Summers” managed both to put a second upward single on the Country chart and debut on Spotify’s Today’s Top Hits playlist. Texas Country breakthrough Parker McCollum’s “Pretty Heart” was also headed toward the top summit after a year in development.
It’s worth noting that with fewer women in power, Country’s numbers were again tapering off in the fall. Some of that undoubtedly reflects listening first siphoned off by the election and News/Talk, then Christmas music on AC. Country is definitely helped by finding records from streaming that can create stories in less than 40 weeks. The Big Loud hits and Luke Combs’ continued hit streak are reminiscent of the Montgomery Gentry and Big & Rich songs that revitalized the format in 2004. But we need the Gretchen Wilsons in there, too.
Country’s product issues have long been balance and timing. Those are issues for Top 40, too. With non-broadcast competition for 18-34 listening, they are not the only issues, but I’ve come to believe that the records are there, just as they were in 1993, if radio figures out how to play them. We even have the rock record that would sound great on CHR, although Royal Blood’s “Trouble’s Coming” is in danger of reaching that place where it’s too pop for Active, too rock for Alternative, and not on pop’s radar.
Country has more of a safety net than other current-based formats — bigger stations with a broader age range. Those stations were better equipped than Top 40 to be the full-service pandemic companion that listeners needed. That broader age spread is also part of what revitalized the format during its own late-‘90s/early ‘00s doldrums. Country was prepared to be a 35-plus format. It’s much happier, even now, as an 18-54 format.
Cluster strategies make our current 3-share CHRs more viable than they were in 1993, but we’ve also seen what was possible in the late ‘90s and again in 2007-2012, and we shouldn’t give that up until we know we have to. Any comeback will begin, as it did in 1993, with upper demos. The daughters are under their earbuds; we might get moms back. In 1993, it was Melissa Etheridge, Sheryl Crow, and Hootie and the Blowfish that got the ball rolling. (It’s not an accident that Taylor Swift’s Folklore comeback is in that neighborhood.) The next comeback began with “Since U Been Gone.” This one, if it happens, will be driven by up-tempo songs again, as part of an overall balance. Those are also the songs that can get some lateral support from AC and Hot AC, or at least help them as they work their way down the line.
As for the role of TikTok hits, we’ve seen that they can be a lot of different things. TikTok can help break Jack Harlow, Benee, Lemonade, Ritt Momney, Daisey Ashnikko, or Fleetwood Mac. As TikTok becomes a bigger part of label strategy for every type of song, there will be plenty of up-tempo medium-weight hit music that it endorses. But not every record that helps Top 40 regain its balance will have that story, nor should it have to.
We’ll talk more about the state of current product for all formats in early 2021 when we look at the annual BDSRadio statistics on which format had the most top 20 hits. Meanwhile, what songs do you think made a difference in 2020? Which could change things in 2021?
What in the world happened to Diplo “hearless”? My god, a perfect chr song, great lyrics, strong hook, and one of the hottest country artists rights now in a song country can’t touch.
Current and new music formats are getting destroyed by streaming, tiktok, youtube etc, people do still seem to like radio from retro formats thank god. All I’m saying is that now is the time for terrestrial radio to get their playlists as close to perfect as possible. They also need to let their jocks have personality and individualism. This desire for everyone to sound the same and say the same things is killing the magic of that connection between jock and listener.