MusicMaster Blog

• Joe Knapp – President/CEO and Creator of MusicMaster
• Drew Bennett – Learning and Development Director
• Rainer Eichhorn – ON AIR General Manager
• Jesus Rodriguez – Spanish Language Scheduling Specialist

By Sean Ross (@RossOnRadio)

“I’m surprised by the results of this music test,” said the radio research client. “How could ‘Liar’ by Three Dog Night not come back playable?”

There were a lot of reasons. Although this was a decade ago, Three Dog Night had already been reduced to a handful of songs at most Oldies/Greatest Hits stations. Even at this long-listed soft classic hits outlet, even testing “Liar” was a stretch. That song rode the momentum of “Joy to the World” into the top 10 in 1971, but was already pretty much lost to time. Only another music head would have possibly had any expectations to begin with.

And then there was the hook. If you’ve never heard it, it comes at :55 here, but suffice it to say that it’s a bellowed minor-chord accusation that is deliberately jarring in the context of the song. It’s even more jarring on a tape of 700 hooks, but before anybody seizes on that as an example of why a seven-second hook can’t convey the essence of a song, I feel safe in saying that this one does.

And to be clear, as is the case with zillions of other songs that don’t test, I really like “Liar.” I also like “Liars” by Ian Thomas, unknown in the U.S., but a significant Canadian hit from 1976. While the Three Dog Night song is apparently about a romantic relationship, “Liars” sounds more like it’s about managers or label executives. In that regard, it’s more like Heart’s “Barracuda,” a hit a year later, which has a very similar musical feel as well. No matter, even though the subject is more nebulous, “Liars” is a spectacularly bad tester, too, even by the standards of deeper Canadian oldies.

The “Liar” story took place during my second year or so in music research, and helped crystalize something for me that has become even clearer over the years. Songs built around any sort of second-person reproach, especially if it’s in the hook, rarely become enduring hits. As with the friends they choose, people like songs that like them back.

Not every enduring hit is a second-person affirmation, of course. But many of the biggest songs of all time in the classic rock/classic hits/adult hits fall into a few different categories. In some, the hooks are neutral (“More Than a Feeling,” “Summer of ’69,” “The Logical Song,” “Down Under,” “Bennie and the Jets”), but often they are either:

Compliments or entreaties in the second person: “I Want You to Want Me,” “Wonderful Tonight,” “Need You Tonight,” “Any Way You Want It,” “You Make My Dreams [Come True],” “Sweet Child O’ Mine,” “You Are So Beautiful.” The latter is a 40-year-old Joe Cocker record that hardly seemed momentous, but has outlived almost all of the soft AC fodder that surrounded it at the time. Billy Joel’s “Just the Way You Are” faded eventually, but not until Bruno Mars’ song of the same name became one of the best-testing, most universal songs of this decade.

Affirmation or encouragement, also often in the second person: “Livin’ on a Prayer,” “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This),” “Carry On Wayward Son,” “Life Is a Highway,” “Dream On.” Fleetwood Mac’s “Don’t Stop” and Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” are two of the most enduring hits of all time, the latter probably the most enduring of the moment, and both for the same reasons. It’s a pattern that continues today with “Shake It Off.” And no, it doesn’t matter that the overall lyrical bent of “Sweet Dreams” is darker. As with “Every Breath You Take,” the hook sets the tone for how the listener genuinely feels about the song, regardless of the rest of the lyric.

The common thread of positivity doesn’t mean there are no negative lyrics or downer songs. But true enduring hits in which the narrator could be in any way construed as dressing down somebody directly are a relative handful: “You Give Love a Bad Name,” “I Will Survive,” “Tainted Love” (“once I ran to you/now I run from you”), “My Life” (“go ahead with your own life/leave me alone”), “Big Shot” (in which Billy Joel is actually addressing himself, but few listeners would know that), “Go Your Own Way,” and perhaps “You Oughta Know,” although that song is hardly as enduring as the others.

In some cases, listeners are willing to accept the narrator’s annoyance as being on their behalf. Most people find “My Life” speaks for them in some situation in their own life, and understand that Billy Joel is not personally accusing them of meddling. Female-empowerment lyrics also figure into a lot of the exceptions, from “I Will Survive” to “You Oughta Know” to “Someone Like You.”

That makes the enduring appeal of “You Give Love a Bad Name” that much more of an outlier, and one probably helped both by Jon Bon Jovi’s own charisma at the time and by the more positive follow-up. But when it comes to later Bon Jovi, remember that “I’ll Be There For You” sometimes tests, but “[Your Love Is Like] Bad Medicine” never does.

Like “Liar,” many songs written from a negative male vantage point have faded with time and probably couldn’t have become hits after research took hold — usually geared to women or at least giving female audiences veto power in most formats. Cliff Richard’s “Devil Woman” never hung around, and Electric Light Orchestra’s “Evil Woman” is mostly gone now. So are the slew of ‘70s hits about abandoning your girlfriend in the name of adventure — “Ramblin’ Man,” “Heard It in a Love Song,” “No Time” (“no time/left for you”). Most of those are now recognized as products of a very different time. Only Supertramp’s “Goodbye Stanger” remains born to run.

In that regard, it will be interesting to see what endures from the last few years. Even a look at the most-played Hot AC gold shows a trend toward the affirmative, general (“Brave,” “Roar,” “Safe and Sound”) or personal (“I Will Wait”). Most of the recent smashes that go against that trend — “Blow Me (One Last Kiss),” “Somebody That I Used to Know”, all the hits from Adele’s “21” — could continue to work for the same reason as “You Oughta Know” and “I Will Survive.” But they’ll be the likely exceptions, pitted against “Happy,” “All of Me” and “[There’s No Place I’d] Rather Be.”

By Sean Ross (@RossOnRadio)

It’s always a little dangerous to single out a programmer for playing “oh wow” oldies. In the early ‘90s, I wrote about John Gorman, then the PD who took WMJI (Majic 105.7) Cleveland to oldies. Gorman launched by including a handful of garage rock titles that definitely weren’t on the format’s top 300 safe list. When we talked after the profile he was upset. “You made it sound like I didn’t know what I was doing,” he said.

That wasn’t my intention. I was congratulating Gorman on choosing to break, or rewrite, radio law. WMJI played enough hits to throw in “Open Up Your Door” by Richard & the Young Lions occasionally. Gorman had a successful run at Majic, and that station went on to be just as much of an enduring powerhouse as the tight-and-right KRTH (K-Earth 101) Los Angeles, a station which played its powers in six-hour rotation and became the template for the format for the next decade.

I had a Majic moment a few weeks ago listening to Sirius XM’s “‘60s on 6” channel and hearing “All Your Goodies Are Gone” by the Parliaments, the future Parliament/Funkadelic. I would have been thrilled by “(I Wanna) Testify,” the R&B classic and top 25 pop hit from 1967 that came one single earlier. As best I can tell, it had something to do with veteran DJ Pat St. John being on the air. When St. John shows up, so do oldies from his former hometown of Detroit. A few years ago, St. John even managed to spike “Open Up Your Door” while doing weekends on WCBS-FM New York.

Even when the channel isn’t throwing in extra “Goodies” of that sort, I’m really enjoying “60s on 6” these days. There is an increasing amount of variety under PD Lou Simon (who would certainly know how to program the safe list if he chose to). I’ve also been making a point of checking out Brisbane’s 4KQ and its “Jukebox Saturday Night.” 4KQ is a mainstream, hit-driven “greatest hits” outlet during the week, but on Saturday mornings (U.S. time), it’s a great place to hear pre-Beatles, British Invasion, ‘60s garage, and bubblegum, along with big Australian ‘60s hits that are still pretty exotic here.

For me, the appeal of either 4KQ or “‘60s on 6″ has been hearing “Cinnamon” by Derek, a ‘60s bubblegum nugget that never made it to the safe list. But for a lot of listeners, the appeal is increasingly hearing the ‘60s at all. A few days ago, 4KQ APD/MD Brent James mentioned, with surprise, the amount of e-mails he’s getting from the U.S. One would think there were plenty of places to hear the ‘60s in the U.S., James said.

But on mainstream Classic Hits stations, there really aren’t. Songs from the ‘60s have become a less-than-once-an-hour occurrence on stations such as WCBS-FM or K-Earth, which has gone back to its old super-tight rotations and is becoming a standard-bearer for the format once again. Stations such as WOGL Philadelphia that successfully play anywhere from one to three an hour are the exception. Fans of the ‘60s used to complain about a watershed decade being reduced to “Respect” and “Mrs. Robinson,” but those are now the good old days.

As with any other era evolution at a gold-based format, it’s hard to tell whether the ‘60s fans jumped or were pushed. Even the reliable top-of-the-page songs, “Unchained Melody” and “Twist and Shout,” that were exposed to subsequent generations have gone from “power” to “playable” in music research. Researching music for gold-based stations of all stripes, I can attest that you can still fill a pretty good ‘60s category if you’re so inclined, but when they think about playing songs that are 50 years old or thereabouts, many PDs are not.

A few years ago, there was a tiny contingent of oldies FMs, mostly fringe stations in a market, which were playing the safe list of 15 years ago. There were no “Cinnamon”-type surprises, just the “More Today Than Yesterday” ‘60s warhorses that were once hard to avoid. Now, most of those stations are gone as well.

So if nobody is going to try to program the ‘60s for kids of the ‘80s and ‘90s, it’s time to consider life beyond the safe list. Do you give the format back to the people who were there at the time? Do you rework the format for the sensibilities of an audience that never heard the music, as the U.K.’s Absolute Radio did with its ‘60s channel a few years ago? It’s a question we’ll be asking about the ‘70s in the not-too-distant future.

It’s not impossible to put together a gold-based format out of songs that endure many generations later. In the ‘80s, Walt Sabo and Harry Valentine’s KFRC (Magic 610) San Francisco was an adult-standards station I could listen to and enjoy, even though its music preceded even my parents’ frame of reference. But other standards stations hewed to a wider library and far less hit-driven approach.

The latter type of oldies station is readily available among internet radio’s 100,000 choices. (Look for a longer list of favorite oldies outlets in the near future.) I hope the Magic 610 approach will exist, too, so that those unfamiliar with this watershed decade have the same basic education in that music that KFRC provided me for standards. And I hope Gorman, who is now doing hosted Triple-A online with the new oWow Cleveland,  will do well enough to do a ‘60s/’70s station as well. Because what I still want most is to hear those songs when there’s some element of calculated risk involved.

Here’s Sirius “‘60s on 6” at 4:30 p.m. on March 18:

Jackie Wilson, “(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher”

Dave Clark Five, “Reelin’ & Rockin’”

Rolling Stones, “Under My Thumb”

Tommy James & the Shondells, “Mirage”

Jackie DeShannon, “Put a Little Love in Your Heart”

Beach Boys, “Barbara Ann”

Joe Cocker, “Delta Lady”

Byrds, “All I Really Wanna Do”

Dawn, “Knock Three Times” (the beginning of Cousin Brucie’s show, which isn’t strictly ‘60s)

Beatles, “I’m a Loser”

And here’s 4KQ’s “Jukebox Saturday Night”:

Elvis Presley, “Kissin’ Cousins”

Shirley Ellis, “The Name Game”

Don Fardon, “Indian Reservation”

Chiffons, “He’s So Fine”

John Fred & His Playboy Band, “Judy In Disguise (With Glasses)”

Gene McDaniels, “Point Of No Return”

Drummond, “Daddy Cool” (early ‘70s Australian remake of the Rays ‘50s hit)

Beach Boys, “When I Grow Up (To Be A Man)”

Turtles, “She’d Rather Be With Me”

Atlantics, “The Crusher” (Australian ‘60s surf instrumental)

Blues Magoos, “We Ain’t Got Nothin’ Yet”

Buddy Holly, “Heartbeat”

Johnny Burnette, “You’re Sixteen”

Desmond Dekker & the Aces, “Israelites”

Helen Shapiro, “No Trespassing”

Chris Andrews, “Yesterday Man”

Our network of MusicMaster partners in Europe are going to attend this year’s RADIODAYS EUROPE as a PREMIUM PARTNER in Milan/Italy on March 15-17.

RADIODAYS EUROPE has become the biggest radio industry event on the old continent with over 1300 participants from 60 countries. It’s packed with high-profile seminars, workshops and sessions and it’s definitely THE place to be if networking in Europe is on your agenda.

If you happen to be in Milan at the time please feel free to touch base with any of our European representatives, have an original Italian espresso at our shiny booth (Level 1, Stand 27-30) or meet us at the MusicMaster super-session “Brand like a Rock Star” with Steve Jones on Monday, March 16 10:35 am. (Don’t miss this one!)

Contacts:

Roberto Bellotti (BVMedia, Italy) rbellotti@bvmedia.it

Rainer Eichhorn (ON AIR, Germany) re@onair.de

Michael Buholzer (SwissMediaPartners, Switzerland) mb@swissmediapartners.ch

Cesco van Gool (Stirlitz, Poland) cesco@stirlitzmedia.com

Bart van Gogh (Top of Mind, Netherlands) bart@topofmind.nu

Location: MICO, North Wing, (http://www.micomilano.it/DoveSiamo_en.html)