Close to the Edit (Pop Radio and Redacted Lyrics)

I’m still in my honeymoon phase with Dua Lipa, “Love Again.” It’s a song I’m hearing whenever I spend any time with CHR radio. It’s still a song I want to hear all the way through. Like three Dua Lipa hits before it, “Love Again” is a great hit single that confirms that listeners still like uptempo hit singles. Yesterday afternoon, I heard WHTZ (Z100) New York follow it with Olivia Rodrigo, “Good 4 U,” and I thought “if only Top 40 had a supply of hip, relatively recent titles to sustain the pace for a whole hour.”

The first PD whom I discussed “Love Again” with was very aware of what exclamation precedes “you got me in love again” on the non-radio edit. He heard a gaping hole on the radio single. I thought it was barely noticeable. “Good 4 U” has the line “screw that and screw you.” It also has the less complicated version of “damn” than “Love Again.” (Z100, by the way, did very well in June, during a time when Rodrigo became an event for the Top 40 format.)

Edited lyrics are among the big questions in the discussion of whether kids will ever come back to broadcast radio when Spotify’s Today’s Top Hits has no such challenge. Adults are an issue, too. Mom is our best shot at modeling the radio again for her family. In the last six years, she has had to deal with a nearly endless stream of not-so-melodious, not-so-uptempo records, each opening with the same manipulated vocal chops. Now she may be listening to a heavily redacted edit that makes sense only if you know the original. It’s more sonic dissonance at a time when people need less cacophony in life.

That listener isn’t likely shocked by the real lyrics if she grew up on “Party Me (Up in Here)” by DMX or if she made Nelly’s “Ride Wit Me” one of the strongest female records ever — the song that effectively invented the “mom jam.” The turbopop-driven CHR revival of 2008-12 was driven by melodic but lyrically edgy songs that adults were able to enjoy nonetheless. Throughout, the attitude seemed to be “I am not shocked, just please don’t teach my kids to curse.” Now her kids are likely listening to a Rosetta Stone home course in cursing under their earbuds. “Who exactly are we protecting?” asked Ross on Radio reader Matthew Arnett.

As has been the case for the last 15 years, radio and labels have been inconsistent about what gets through. Decades after Eric Clapton’s “Cocaine” played on radio with few second thoughts, Justin Bieber’s “Peaches” edits the reference to “weed.” Numerous Country songs now have references to enjoying some “smoke.” The likelihood that a 16-year-old understands one but not the other is low. The title of “Build a Bitch” is an issue for some stations, but didn’t that barrier fall with Elton John in 1974?

My sense is that the bar could move slightly. I recently heard Bill Hennes’ Today’s Hottest Hits channel play the unedited version of “Peaches,” and it hardly seemed outrageous. Then it played the edit of Saweetie & Doja Cat’s “Best Friend,” and I could certainly hear how that song, unedited, would have gone to a different place. “Let the drug, weed, and gun references fly; draw the line at F-bombs,” says reader Charlie Mitchell. “I felt this way 30 years ago and still feel this way today.”

For that reason, the first action step is consistency. Radio should provide the labels with consistent guidance on where it draws the line — even if that varies among types of markets. The current policy of “let’s see what we can get away with” for three weeks followed by “oh good, there’s a label edit that now seems overly cautious” hasn’t helped anybody.

Continue to treat radio as a partner. Labels seem to care more about streams than spins. Yet, the traditional hit records that work best for radio create an extra set of streaming hits. Radio still needs edits that do something other than remind you how much better a song sounds elsewhere. (Madison Beer’s “B.S.” was brilliant, but the edit entirely camouflaged the intent of the lyric. Within two weeks, it became the rare song that truly pushed radio too far.) The hook would be a good start. I’m hoping for an eventual version of Big Red Machine f/Taylor Swift’s “Renegade” with “get yourself together.” But just from a label self-interest standpoint, it seems like non-redacted hooks would test better.

Is this another job for HD Radio? Recently I suggested that there might be a value to using HD-2 channels as an unhosted version of a station’s main feed. Another alternate use would be an FCC relaxation of language regulations for subchannels: one version for when families in the car together, another for when they’re not. FM translators would not be exempt, meaning that only those HD stations allowed to take advantage of this are those not competing as separate FM services.

The most important thing about hearing “Love Again” next to “Good 4 U” was hearing two hip, uptempo hits that felt like actual hits for CHR and Hot AC, not merely taking a flier on anything uptempo out of eagerness. When there are 12 equally good songs an hour, the lyric issue may be less of an issue. But it couldn’t hurt for radio to take control and send a clear signal.