I started Big Hit Energy just over a year ago as a playlist called Summer Energy 2021. It was meant to showcase the Song of Summer candidates, but also as an experiment in music discovery. With “Adore You” and “Blinding Lights” barely out of power after 18 months, were there really no worthwhile new songs out there? Or were Top 40’s product issues more a function of how radio found and used new music? As it turned out, the challenge wasn’t finding songs I wanted to share, it was editing the playlist down to a manageable number of songs.
I had a few groups of people in mind when I started the playlist. One was those Ross on Radio industry readers who are still passionate about new music and willing to consider new-music enterprise, but without the time to aggressively look beyond the shrinking menu of those songs officially worked to pop radio. The others were older peers, in Classic Hits radio, and outside the business, who didn’t want to give up on current music, but who haven’t been hearing as much they like since the DJ had them falling in love with late-’00s/early-’10s “turbopop.”
Over the year, reader response to the playlist has grown, if modestly. There are at least a few occasions of songs winding up on the radio because they were heard here. My favorite has been Flo Rida’s “Wait,” which was found here by WIXX Green Bay, Wis., then spread to crosstown WKSZ, and is now on two other medium-market CHRs in the region, even without being on a label or having been serviced. “Breaking a record outright” is a tough job for anybody these days — including TikTok. If a local hit can still exist in 2022, I’m pretty happy about that, too.
I’ve managed to find at least 5-6 new songs every week for BHE. I’ve tried to keep the playlist at about 50 songs — similar to Spotify’s Today’s Top Hits, but it usually ends up being more like 60-65. I have time blocked out over the weekends to hear all the songs that are charting at our major formats. How often I add to it beyond that depends a lot on what I hear during the week, and what comes out on Thursday night and Friday morning.
Looking at the songs on this week’s playlist, about a quarter are mainstream hits being worked to CHR radio. An equal number are songs from other charts, particularly Alternative and Dance, but potentially from everywhere. Another 25% came from international CHR listening. It’s harder to find hits that way when songs are released everywhere at once, but I can still stumble upon the right station where I hear three new songs I love in an hour’s time.
The remaining quarter is heavily populated by left-field songs that got a promotional e-mail blast, but aren’t getting a concerted radio push. A few are bringbacks that have gained new relevance from TV or movie syncs. Only a few are from TikTok, in part because other people are actively looking for those songs already, and not all of them fill the “uptempo hit” need. But Nicky Youre’s “Sunroof” did fit that description, and it’s been on and off the playlist a few times now.
I don’t get around to as many entire albums as I’d like to, or as I wish other programmers did. A programmer did recommend Ed Sheeran’s “2Step” to me last fall, and that was the song that went on to the playlist rather than “Overpass Graffiti,” Spotify’s pick from the album. But the revelatory Harry Styles song on Harry’s House was a ballad, “Matilda,” a rare case of my gravitating to the “song that brings the radio to a halt.” It’s not for Big Hits Energy, but it is one of four Styles songs in the Top 10 of the Hot 100. Styles hardly needs a “career song” at this moment, but if “Matilda” continues to touch listeners this way, I can hear it as a song we’re hearing on Lite FM in 15 years.
Do I think all forty-five of the other outlier songs here are hits? I’m not making that claim, although since so many of them will never get their test at radio, nobody will prove that they aren’t either. I’m not saying that anything on the list is an overlooked potential power; some are briefly held whims. But maybe it’s something to bring into the music meeting, if you still have music meetings. Maybe it’s inventory — one of the songs that allows you to play a few reasonably fresh and interesting songs for listeners. If you’re still using the “No. 1 for Music Discovery” sweeper, it’s a chance at an actual radio discovery.
My viable broadcast CHR would probably play about 28 true currents now, although that’s still a lot these days. I’ve noticed recently that even Spotify’s Today’s Top Hits is relying more on year-old songs to fill 50 slots. During radio’s great periods, like 1983-85, it has about 40 songs worth playing.
The Top 40 miracle in spring 1984 was driven by Prince, Bruce Springsteen, Duran Duran, Cyndi Lauper, and Footloose, but also by Slade’s “Run Runaway,” which only had to sound great on the radio for a month until the next turntable hit came along. (I was considering making “White Horse” by Laid Back my example, but that song would be a streaming monster now.) The best periods of hit music have always been defined by both the superstars and the secondaries: especially when the secondaries give you the feeling that there are lots of really good records in the wings behind the great records.
Top 40’s inventory problem manifests itself now as too few songs for power rotation and too few secondaries. The problem used to be programmers unwilling to look beyond anything brought to them by the labels. So now, labels are bringing fewer songs to radio. We can be gratified that when they have a “Driver’s License” or “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” that they want radio as the finisher, even after those songs reach No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100. But being only the finisher is limiting, and guarantees that only TikTok will generate the passionate shared experience that Top 40 once did.
I’m still in love with finding songs, and when I find them on radio, I’m even happier. So here are some songs to listen to. I’m looking forward to hearing what you’ve got, too.
