K-Earth at 6.5, August 2020

[CTListener]

I am embarrassed that we live in a world where a song like "WAP" could not only get made, but get played on the radio, net the artist millions of dollars, and be lauded by all of the "right thinking people" of which I am sure David considers himself one. A humble, simple, and yes, sappy song about a lost love like "Honey" is "embarrassing", Cardi B.'s twerking, "WAP" and all of the rest is just "new".

Is that song really getting played on radio uncut? I assume not, but what exactly DON'T you bleep out to make it acceptable?

Still, when you come right down to it, isn't "I don't cook, I don't clean / But let me tell you how I got this ring" just an updated version of "I'll set a tender trap, he'll be unaware / I'll wear a smile down the aisle / 'Cause he's the father of my child" from Honey Cone's "Stick Up"? Ms. B and Ms. Stallion are just being more, um, in your face about it.

 

[davideduardo]

I am embarrassed that we live in a world where a song like "WAP" could not only get made, but get played on the radio, net the artist millions of dollars, and be lauded by all of the "right thinking people" of which I am sure David considers himself one. A humble, simple, and yes, sappy song about a lost love like "Honey" is "embarrassing", Cardi B.'s twerking, "WAP" and all of the rest is just "new".

Personally, I think "WAP" is appalling, and not very good musically. I'm glad I am not involved with any station that has to make a decision on playing it; it disgusts me.

But there is the point: I don't decide what people like. A programmer tries to guess which new songs will become hits, based on their experience within a genre and the insight that research gives on what does and does not work. Personal taste is what a programmer uses once they get home and want to hear something very personal... at the station, it is work, not entertainment.

I loved "Honey" when it was new, and even did the translation for one of our jocks to do a voice-over in Spanish. But, as with most listeners who are old enough to remember the song when it was a current, it seems kinda' creepy and insipid now.

 

[ChannelFlipper]

Still, when you come right down to it, isn't "I don't cook, I don't clean / But let me tell you how I got this ring" just an updated version of "I'll set a tender trap, he'll be unaware / I'll wear a smile down the aisle / 'Cause he's the father of my child" from Honey Cone's "Stick Up"? Ms. B and Ms. Stallion are just being more, um, in your face about it.

Hey, good job taking those lyrics WAY out of context. The song is about how a male lover took advantage of her naivete and impregnated her, but she is going to get him back by...marrying him! You didn't even post the full lyric which goes:

A thief in the night, he stole my mind
Breaking lover's hearts should be a crime
But he'll return to the scene of the crime
I'll set a tender trap, he'll be unaware
I'll wear a smile down the aisle
'Cause he's the father of my child

Honey Cone's song is about a young lover done wrong, Cardi's song is all about using her body, in the most vulgar of language, to get what she wants. We used to have a word for that but I just can't remember what it is just now, I think it may start with a "P". In any case, the songs are not comparable at all.

 

[davideduardo]

So........how are they "embarrassing"? Maybe to you. I'm not embarrassed by those songs at all. A ten week stay at #1 is a huge accomplishment (for those days anyways, unlike the ho-hum and hyped 10-19 weekers of recent years, thanks to unregulated streaming and other ridiculous chart factors) and should be noted as such today. Just because a song is inspirational or a love song, doesn't mean it should be ignored or embarrassed by them.

It was #1 half a century ago. Most people who did like it then don't like it now. When you ask them about that and similarly dated sounding songs, listeners are embarrassed at having liked that sort of thing.

It does not matter how huge a song was half a century ago. What radio needs to know is "do you want to hear that on the radio today?" Those dated songs, the novelty songs, the dance-craze fad songs are all totally negative today.

The only songs that embarrass me are the junk and vulgarity that's released today. Have you heard "WAP"? One of the worst, ever.

We are not talking about new music. We are discussing gold... oldies, flashbacks... and many, even most, of the big songs are not liked today by people who really liked them then.

It's the direct opposite, ignoring all these top hits, nearly 90% of the top ten hits of the 1967-1984 period makes a radio station very bad and unlistenable.

We have already established that you are what is called in research an "outlier". When we find one in any project, whether about music or laundry detergent, we ignore your responses.

Now, would I play Boone everyday? Hell no, but it shouldn't be ignored either. That's my point.

And, assuming I was doing a station targeting seniors, I would follow the research that says, "every time you play it, you lose listeners". And if you play it more than once along with other stiffs, you lose them permanently.

 

[CTListener]

Hey, good job taking those lyrics WAY out of context. The song is about how a male lover took advantage of her naivete and impregnated her, but she is going to get him back by...marrying him! You didn't even post the full lyric which goes:

A thief in the night, he stole my mind
Breaking lover's hearts should be a crime
But he'll return to the scene of the crime
I'll set a tender trap, he'll be unaware
I'll wear a smile down the aisle
'Cause he's the father of my child

Honey Cone's song is about a young lover done wrong, Cardi's song is all about using her body, in the most vulgar of language, to get what she wants. We used to have a word for that but I just can't remember what it is just now, I think it may start with a "P". In any case, the songs are not comparable at all.

I interpreted the Honey Cone song as the singer using her "tender trap" -- unprotected sex -- to make the man she wants, but who proved unfaithful, a daddy and force him to marry her, and "the crime" was not getting her pregnant but messing with her mind and breaking her heart by leaving her. But either way, I was indeed excerpting lyrics minus context and agree that "WAP" goes in directions unwritten and unsung about in Honey Cone's day, at least not on records made for a general audience.

 

[michael hagerty]

Is that song really getting played on radio uncut? I assume not, but what exactly DON'T you bleep out to make it acceptable?

CTListener: Megan and Cardi took a page from the movies and revoiced some of the lyrics. Wet A** P**** becomes "Wet and gushy" when they sing it.

Which STILL would have gotten me fired and the station's license in a heap of trouble if I'd played it back in the day, but "Sweet and Innocent" was #1 the year I started, so..

 

[semoochie]

Personally, I think "WAP" is appalling, and not very good musically. I'm glad I am not involved with any station that has to make a decision on playing it; it disgusts me.

But there is the point: I don't decide what people like. A programmer tries to guess which new songs will become hits, based on their experience within a genre and the insight that research gives on what does and does not work. Personal taste is what a programmer uses once they get home and want to hear something very personal... at the station, it is work, not entertainment.

I loved "Honey" when it was new, and even did the translation for one of our jocks to do a voice-over in Spanish. But, as with most listeners who are old enough to remember the song when it was a current, it seems kinda' creepy and insipid now.

"Honey" is musically a nice "adult" song for its time but I've always found the message to be creepy and a definite tune-out! The problem was, if you only had one Top 40 station, you couldn't tune anything out. You just endured it! At least "Honey" had some semblance of a Rock base. There were all sorts of creepy songs that were pre-rock based, like "Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte" for instance!

 

[radio128]

"Honey" is musically a nice "adult" song for its time but I've always found the message to be creepy and a definite tune-out! The problem was, if you only had one Top 40 station, you couldn't tune anything out. You just endured it! At least "Honey" had some semblance of a Rock base. There were all sorts of creepy songs that were pre-rock based, like "Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte" for instance!

Even though "Honey" was the #11 song on the WABC Top 100 of 1968 I never heard it on the station once it dropped off the charts. Other songs which didn't chart as high like "Love Child", "Born to Be Wild", "Lady Madonna" and "Hello I Love You"
got frequent gold airplay. So even over 50 years ago the powers that be decided not to play "Honey".

 

[semoochie]

Even though "Honey" was the #11 song on the WABC Top 100 of 1968 I never heard it on the station once it dropped off the charts. Other songs which didn't chart as high like "Love Child", "Born to Be Wild", "Lady Madonna" and "Hello I Love You"
got frequent gold airplay. So even over 50 years ago the powers that be decided not to play "Honey".

It seems to me that it fared reasonably well on Adult Standards for awhile.

 

[michael hagerty]

"Honey" is musically a nice "adult" song for its time but I've always found the message to be creepy and a definite tune-out! The problem was, if you only had one Top 40 station, you couldn't tune anything out. You just endured it! At least "Honey" had some semblance of a Rock base. There were all sorts of creepy songs that were pre-rock based, like "Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte" for instance!

I've always thought of "Honey" as being the adult version of the "teenage death song" of the early 60s ("Tell Laura I Love Her", "Last Kiss")---aimed at exactly the same audience, just seven or eight years later, when they presumably would be young married adults.

 

[TheBigA]

I've always thought of "Honey" as being the adult version of the "teenage death song" of the early 60s ("Tell Laura I Love Her", "Last Kiss")---aimed at exactly the same audience, just seven or eight years later, when they presumably would be young married adults.

Interesting subject. "Death songs" have been fairly common in country music. Tim McGraw's first #1 was "Don't Take The Girl," a song that ends with a woman dying during childbirth. Very moving song. Gets very little recurrent airplay 25 years later, even though McGraw is a superstar.

 

[CTListener]

Interesting subject. "Death songs" have been fairly common in country music. Tim McGraw's first #1 was "Don't Take The Girl," a song that ends with a woman dying during childbirth. Very moving song. Gets very little recurrent airplay 25 years later, even though McGraw is a superstar.

Country ballads seem to suffer at classic country radio just as pop ballads suffer at classic hits. "Indian Outlaw," "I Like It, I Love It" and "Where the Green Grass Grows" are the McGraw hits I hear most often, his ballads hardly ever. Wynonna's airplay has shriveled to "No One Else on Earth" and "Girls With Guitars," even on SiriusXM's Prime Country, it seems. Her first hit, "She Is His Only Need," is forgotten. Radio's obsession with uptempo isn't limited to formats targeted at 18-34 anymore.

 

[semoochie]

Interesting subject. "Death songs" have been fairly common in country music. Tim McGraw's first #1 was "Don't Take The Girl," a song that ends with a woman dying during childbirth. Very moving song. Gets very little recurrent airplay 25 years later, even though McGraw is a superstar.

Interestingly, I hated J. Frank Wilson's version of "Last Kiss" but actually liked Pearl Jam's! Perhaps, the latter version struck me in the same way as "Leader of the Pack", not to be taken seriously. Another Shangri-Las song, "I Can Never Go Home Anymore" did however strike me as "sad" and it's actually the last word in the song.

 

[davideduardo]

Radio's obsession with uptempo isn't limited to formats targeted at 18-34 anymore.

It's not an "obsession" by radio... it is simply the result of asking listeners to score songs in music tests. Today, the slow songs tend not to bring the same high scores at the brighter tempo ones do.

 

[davideduardo]

Even though "Honey" was the #11 song on the WABC Top 100 of 1968 I never heard it on the station once it dropped off the charts. Other songs which didn't chart as high like "Love Child", "Born to Be Wild", "Lady Madonna" and "Hello I Love You"
got frequent gold airplay. So even over 50 years ago the powers that be decided not to play "Honey".

One of the key elements to Top 40 programming in the late 60's was record store action. If our station found a song had dropped precipitously in sales in a week or two, we took that as a sign of stiffing, and moved fast to drop it.

I did top 40 in a market where there were no record sales for pop music as none of what we played was available at retail. So we carefully tabulated requests, and if we saw a drop-off for a formerly big song, we knew it had burnt and we either restricted, rested or pulled it.

 

[TheBigA]

Other songs which didn't chart as high like "Love Child", "Born to Be Wild", "Lady Madonna" and "Hello I Love You"
got frequent gold airplay.

Love Child and Hello I Love You were Billboard and Cash Box #1s. Born To Be Wild peaked at #2, and Lady Madonna went to #5.

Those are national charts, so local numbers may differ.

 

[davideduardo]

Love Child and Hello I Love You were Billboard and Cash Box #1s. Born To Be Wild peaked at #2, and Lady Madonna went to #5.

Those are national charts, so local numbers may differ.

And, as radio stations have known in determining rotations, the difference between #1 and #5 is often minimal. A sound that might be #1 in a different week might be #2 or so because there were several very strong songs (or, in some cases, there were no really strong songs) all competing.

I have had cases where there were no real powers in a period, and so I eliminated the power category, sped up the secondaries and the newer recurrents. There is an ebb and flow in good current material... sometimes just for a few weeks, other times for months on end. Mid to late summer used to be slow in CHR back when you had to buy little round pieces of plastic; Christmas season is still a big factor, even in downloads.

 

[TheBigA]

And, as radio stations have known in determining rotations, the difference between #1 and #5 is often minimal.

To put it in context, Madonna was the follow-up to Hello Goodbye, which went to #1, but has not aged well. So Madonna gets Gold airplay, and Hello Goodbye is a lot less frequent.

 

[John Gallagher]

It was a staple on "Love Songs on the KOST" during the 80s (Don't ask me how I know that), and as love songs go, it is really sappy (It sounds a lot like an England Dan and John Ford Coley record) , but I like it a lot and listen to it on the rare times it gets played these days.

As for the Sirius 700 countdown, it isn't the top anything. In fact it is clearly being used to throw on a lot of titles that aren't usually in the rotation, and whadaya know, the station sounds A LOT BETTER because of it. Way to go Sirius!

BTW, I originally brought this up so Oldies can have something to listen to this weekend.

Both England Dan & John Ford Coley and Leblanc & Carr were on Big Tree Records. Not sure if that would be why they sounded similiarly.

 

[TheBigA]

Both England Dan & John Ford Coley and Leblanc & Carr were on Big Tree Records. Not sure if that would be why they sounded similiarly.

That's an interesting point. Big Tree was an indie label, distributed by Ampex Records. Sometimes a label will have all of its artists record in the same studio, as was the case with early Motown songs. Not so with Big Tree. England Dan & John Ford Coley recorded their hits in Nashville and Leblanc & Carr apparently worked in Muscle Shoals. England Dan was also known as Dan Seals, brother of Jim Seals of Seals & Croft. Dan Seals went on to become a solo artist and continued to work with producer Kyle Lehning in Nashville.