MusicMaster Blog

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”

By Sean Ross (@RossOnRadio)

The best part about radio’s infinite dial is that there are more than 100,000 choices. The worst is that you pretty much still have to know what you want. I try to provide audio concierge services for Ross On Radio readers, but I could always use one myself. Which European top 40 will have the great song I can know about six months before the U.S., and which will just be playing “I’m Not the Only One”? Which small-market station will be transporting, and which one will be syndicated?

My radio tourism has always benefitted from those aggregators who show you a lot of choices. Uberstations.com allows me to toggle around most of any market’s radio dial, often with “now playing” information. TuneIn.com once had a feature that showed “now playing” information from dozens of stations in the same genre that you were listening to.

That feature is gone, but there’s still predictive search on TuneIn’s radio app. That’s how I came across CKFU Fort St. John, B.C. I was preparing for a trip to Toronto and typed in the calls of top 40 CKFM (Virgin Radio). After typing in three characters, I got “Moose FM,” one of a number of similarly branded (but not identically programmed) Canadian stations.

Moose FM was billed as “Energetic Country.” I would always want to listen to a station that played energetic country, but the name itself seemed a little awkward. After some listening, it became clear that Fort St. John was “the Energetic City.” And thus Moose FM became the perfect local station – one that an outsider needs at least 20 minutes to understand.

Last night, I started using the predictive search to find more stations I didn’t know. I was looking for KVIL Dallas. Here’s where I ended up next:

KVIK Decorah, Iowa – It’s Classic Hits in Northeast Iowa. When I came across it, it was playing “All Fired Up,” the long lost Pat Benatar single that marked the end of her hit streak. It was followed by the country-rock opus “The Road Goes On Forever” by Joe Ely. “Chevy Van” by Sammy Johns was in there, too. So was “Fred Bear,” Ted Nugent’s eight-minute hunting tribute, which led to PM driver Pete Wennes talking about his first bow and arrow. Like much of the small-town radio I come across, “The Viking” was hosted, which makes it considerably more live-and-local than many large-market outlets.

XHROO (95.3 Kiss FM) Cheturnal, QR, Mexico – Bilingual CHR from the Yucatan Peninsula that I found while searching XHRM San Diego. Seemingly unhosted in morning drive (as was much of Mexican radio, including large markets, even before the rise of jockless radio in the U.S.). But I heard “Teacher” by Nick Jonas, not yet a U.S. single, as well as a Spanish-language reggaeton song (“El Taxi” by Osmani Garcia) that interpolates “Murder She Wrote.” One bilingual stager promised an “international network with one name, Kiss FM.” But it was the lack of resemblance to other stations that I appreciated. It did give me the idea to search KIIS Los Angeles, though, leading to my next stop.

KIIC (Thunder Country) Albia, Iowa — “From the corn crushers to the pontoons, this is corn country,” said one of the good-sounding stagers on this enjoyable classic country outlet, just ahead of “Slide Off Your Satin Sheets” by Johnny Paycheck. As with KVIK, there were funeral announcements on this station. There was also agricultural news in morning drive, including a controversy over antibiotics for cattle and their effects on humans. Well-produced imaging used to be the sign of a special small-market outlet. But throughout my dialing around, it was generally the norm on stations I encountered, thus closing the gap on those large-market stations that are mostly stagers and music.

WUSM (Southern Miss Radio) Hattiesburg, Miss. – By searching for urban WUSL (Power 99) Philadelphia, I found Americana/roots music radio from the University of Southern Mississippi. “The cure for bad music,” declared one stager, before adding, “We can’t do anything about that smell, though.” Within a few minutes, WUSM had gone from “Don’t Cross the River” by America to Wilson Pickett to the side project from the Avett Brothers’ Seth Avett and Jessica Lea Mayfield. During a half-hour of listening, I had found at least three songs to purchase. Then I started to type WKSC (Kiss FM) Chicago.

WKSR (Kix 106.7) Pulaski, Tenn. – The obits were on the station home page. The morning man was also the GM/station manager/sports director. (The answer to “how can these small-market stations have more local talent than the big guys” was usually multiple jobs at a station or around town.) The music mix was yesterday-and-today country. It was here I came across Tim McGraw’s “Where the Green Grass Grows” for the second time in an hour. One of the interesting common threads of the small-market radio I came across was financial as a category — not just banks but financial planners and, here, the loan company that would not just advance you your tax refund, but do your taxes for you.

WBEY (Bay Country 97.9) Pocomoke City, Md. – This came out of a search (which I knew would be fruitless) for the non-streaming WBEB (More FM) Philadelphia. If your level of radio geekery has already brought you this far, you probably already know Kemosabi Joe. He was the PD/morning man of WZYQ Frederick, Md., an airchecker’s favorite of the ‘70s and ‘80s. A decade ago, he programmed Ocean City’s The Wave, perhaps the deepest oldies FM to exist under the auspices of Clear Channel. This morning, he had just segued from his regular show to the 10 a.m. swap shop program, where the offerings included two .38 pistols and, because it was the Eastern Shore, the queries included crab-basket lids.

WDJR.net Rockford, Ill. – I found it by starting to type WDJX Louisville. Just based on the sheer number of available stations, my chances of landing on a country outlet were obviously pretty good, but I didn’t end up at country WDJR Dothan, Ala., but this online urban AC. Like many similar stations, it was minimally produced, but the music mix ranged from Southern soul artist Marvin Sease to Silver Convention’s “Get Up and Boogie.”

Kill Rock Stars Radio – When you start to type KILT Houston, you get a disarming number of stations with the word “kill.” There was “Kill Radio” (“anti-corporate radio since 2000″), “Killer Radio” (“playing the killer hits”), and one of TuneIn’s own ventures into branded radio in conjunction with the Portland, Ore.-based indie-label home of Sleater-Kinney. Programming blocs included “Riot Grrrl Radio” and “Kill Indie Folk Stars”

WSHE Fort Lauderdale — The seed station here was the new AC WSHE Chicago. The station I found was online-only classic rock inspired by the Miami rocker of the ‘70s and ‘80s, one of several stations built around classic Miami call letters. And as my day’s worth of listening had begun, it ended with more classic rock that you don’t hear on the radio (“Thunder Island,” “Like It or Not” by Genesis).

By Sean Ross (@RossOnRadio)

It is the thing that I most often notice when I monitor radio stations.

It is the thing that I most try to avoid when I am scheduling music myself.

It’s hearing “two of the same.”

Sometimes, it’s two records that literally have a similar feel. With the proliferation of dense, midtempo records at mainstream top 40, it’s hard not to encounter “Jealous” next to or near “Blank Space” or “Style.” (At least artist separation keeps “Blank Space” and “Style” away from each other.) Country has its own glut of similar feeling titles— enough to result in the now infamous mash-up of “bro country” songs.

But even at gold-based stations, which aren’t at the mercy of current product, two songs that didn’t sound alike at the time can become two of the same. In winter 1977, “Carry On Wayward Son” by Kansas and “Walk This Way” by Aerosmith were both on top 40 radio and wouldn’t have sounded like the same song next to each other. But on the “Greatest Hits” station I schedule, they represent essentially the same thing. Even if era separation keeps them a song away from each other to begin with, it’s two of the more rocking songs on the station in close proximity.

Recently, I came across an aircheck of WNBC New York from fall 1978, a particularly mellow era for top 40, and a time when rotations were still managed by on-air talent. The first five songs were:

Abba, “Knowing Me, Knowing You”

Toby Beau, “My Angel Baby”

Ambrosia, “How Much I Feel”

Andy Gibb, “Love Is (Thicker Than Water)”

Little River Band, “Reminiscing”

The Abba and Andy Gibb songs are more intense than the others, but that hour was full of the lush, midtempo ‘70s music now parodied as “yacht rock.” Later in the aircheck, Donna Summer’s much peppier “MacArthur Park,” Wings’ “Live and Let Die” and Meat Loaf’s “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” all make an appearance. But by then, it doesn’t matter. The overall feel of the hour is sedate.

“Two of the same” is like the old joke about mismatched socks: if you have one pair, you have another pair that looks just like it at home. If you encounter two similar songs back to back on a radio station, you’re likely to hear a different example later on – the dreaded “stretchiness” that is always easier to detect in somebody else’s editing of a music log.

Earlier this week, I came across a twitter exchange begun by WLUP Chicago morning newsman Rob Hart, who wrote, “’Uptown Funk’ is a good song and all but it needs more airplay.” That led Ken Neadly of Southsidesox.com to respond, “I enjoy the song. There are very few new songs I like, so I don’t mind the overplay.”

I’m not burnt out yet on “Uptown Funk.” The Mark Ronson/Bruno Mars hit sounds like a lot of other songs:  it’s practically an early ‘80s R&B mini-mix come to life. It’s also hardly the only example of retro R&B-flavored pop, which has become a subgenre unto itself in the last five years. But all those ‘80s R&B songs aren’t playing on top 40 radio. And the other retro soul songs at the moment tend to be ballads. So unless you’re hung-up on playing an ‘80s throwback next to the two Meghan Trainor songs that sound like early ‘60s girl-group records, “Uptown Funk” has a pretty good shot at not sounding like the song next to it on the radio.

And in that example, it’s easy to see how “two of the same” is subjective for most people, or happens even to PDs who feel they have thoroughly sound-coded their way around any problem. Should “Happy” and “All of Me,” two R&B throwbacks been kept away from each other, even with their very different tempos? “Habits (Stay High)” and “Blank Space” feel like two of the same to me. But lots of PDs undoubtedly have one coded as alternative and one as pop. And somebody somewhere probably still codes any Taylor Swift song as country.

Some PDs probably aren’t sweating these questions at all. Why not overindulge the “sound of now,” they might ask, especially if it will correct itself in a few months? Was it a problem when all the hits were 110 bpm “turbo pop”? (I think so, but it did bother me less when the two similar sounding songs were “Only Girl [In The World]” next to “DJ Got Us Falling in Love.”) Why wouldn’t you play one song people like next to another song they’re also likely to enjoy? Isn’t hearing similar songs the whole point of Pandora?

I can only say that if listeners don’t immediately sense what radio people do, that’s because they’re not supposed to. They don’t notice a lot of the detail work done by professionals in any field, unless there is something wrong. But seeing the “bro country” mashup take on a life of its own outside the industry suggests that listeners notice eventually. So do all the complaints about the stately pace of this year’s Grammy Awards, which were, like programmers, only working with the available product.

There are a lot of places, from Pandora to other narrowly drawn online stations, to hear two-of-the-same, if that’s really what you want. For the rest of the audience, offering a song-to-song variety of strong music isn’t just part of the reason we put work into editing logs, it’s increasingly one of broadcast radio’s points of differentiation.