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Top 40 Ignoring Ella Langley
- Thread starter TheBigA
- Start date
I heard it this morning on Carson Daly’s Weekly top 30 show on the Vibe, but I don’t listen to 107.3 besides that show. So I don’t know if they play it at all besides when that show is on. I haven’t heard it on KKSW.
Why don't you tune in besides that one?
Because I like Mix and KKSW better. Also The Vibe signal at least used to be less receivable where I lived (it may have been upgraded since then), so I never got into the habit of listening to it over Mix, Z95.7 (which was a Mix competitor at the time) or KKSW. The last time I listened to it was when it was The X and ran Mancow in mornings.
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I agree, Mix is better. What about The Point?
I don't listen to the Point, but I listen to their HD2 Channel Q. I like the remixes/dance stuff Channel Q plays, because it reminds me of when me and my brother would go to the clubs when we were in high school and get our mack on! RIP Orlando's (it was an 18 and up club in Olathe)
That's pretty good! I don't listen to them either (or I tune in and tune right out), except Friday night 90s.
Does anyone host the Friday Night 90's show or not and do they just play the 90's songs that the station usually plays, or do they do requests/play songs that are outside of the regular rotation?
Did you ever go to Orlando's? I don't know when it closed. When we went there I think it was in a strip mall type area.
Get a room, you two. 😁
(Just kidding. Although you are taking the thread far from Ella Langley.)
(Just kidding. Although you are taking the thread far from Ella Langley.)
Well that is the topic of the thread. Her being ignored.
You know, BigA, I've been wondering the same thing. It's interesting you cite Pittsburgh as the northern city playing it the heaviest. 96.1 Kiss doesn't appear to be playing it at all. Which I don't get. It's a huge record. I think it's a great crossover sound. I've been keeping an ear out for it on Kiss, what they call "Pittsburgh's #1 Hit Music Station." Except they aren't even playing the "#1 Hit."Radio Insight's Mason Keltner wrote about it two weeks ago, and now Barrett has a similar article. Why is Top 40 radio ignoring Choosin' Texas by Ella Langley? It makes no sense to me. The song has been #1 on the Hot 100 for weeks. Yes, I know the difference between the Hot 100 and the Airplay chart. But this is a time when radio needs to pay attention to the streamers. Choosin' Texas is a certified hit, and so is the follow up Be Her. It's not just the song. People love Ella and her story. Mason's observation is it's "adult-leaning." Guess what: The audience for CHR is adult leaning too. That's why stations are now playing so much 90s music. Here's a current song that fits the audience. Play it.
Choosin' The Wrong Song: How Top 40 Radio Is Failing Ella Langley — And Itself
Every time you pass on Ella, you're actively choosing a lesser song, then wedging that lesser choice into an hour with 20 minutes of commercials, a weather report nobody needs because windows exist, and a traffic report nobody needs because we have Waze — and then wonder why your AQH is down.barrettmedia.com
I did the song analysis on Mediabase and found out why Choosin' Texas is underperforming in Top 40: Big city radio. The song is a smash in the south. The top spinner is in Charlotte. Of course it is. The biggest northern city playing this song in heavy is Pittsburgh. Where is Dallas and Houston? What's the name of this song? What am I missing?
But then again, I'm about sick of the whole CHR thing today. At least the old top-40 stations would actually play the top-40 with a variety of sounds and genres. If it was a "hit," it got played.
The song is now spending its 7th week at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart. A lot of people obviously like it a lot. I don't get it.
I think what you're missing is that corporate radio is just doing its corporate radio thing... In other words, just radio shooting itself in the foot.
I think Ella's "Be Her" also has some significant top-40 potential. It'll probably get overlooked by most CHR stations, too.
Interesting. Once upon a time... that's how radio worked. On a local & regional level, even. Look back at the top-40 charts of local stations back in the 60s. You'll find that there are plenty of records that got played in Pittsburgh that didn't in Charlotte or Boston or LA. People picked the records that resonated with their listeners. Sometimes they chose wrong, of course...
There's one thing that I find telling about what you're saying there, BigA. Aren't stations doing lots of research and whatnot to determine their playlists? I thought a lot of programming today on the big stations was mostly research-based. As I see it, one of three things would be the case (or a combination):
1. Research isn't being applied to CHR radio as much as many on this board seem to think.
2. The research CHR is using is wrong, or is being wrongly applied.
3. We're both surmising (along with the article you linked) that CHR should be playing "Choosin' Texas," but the research shows otherwise and CHR listeners actually don't want to hear it...
Actually, I think that might be my biggest "???" with the whole thing... What's up with the "research" on this?
The specific Pittsburgh station cited is WBZZ, which says it's Hot AC, but still reports to Mediabase's CHR chart.
My take is it's a label promotion problem. While she's signed to Columbia, she's been outsourcing a lot of her radio promo. So that may be where the problem is.
Ahh, yes WBZZ is an interesting station. 100.7 Star. I haven't heard it on there yet either but I only pop it on once in a while in the car to see what they're playing (same with 96.1 KISS). I say interesting because there's a lot of crossover with it and KISS but it leans a bit more Hot AC. Sometimes it seems to lean more CHR and other times more Hot AC. Of the two, WBZZ would be the more likely to play it. Thanks for clarifying that they were the station playing it.
That might be the case, BigA, but here's the thing: it's not 1968 anymore. A CHR station has access to the #1 song on the Billboard Hot 100. They could go buy it for a buck on iTunes or whatever. Heck, radio stations used to head down to the record store and buy a 45 of a song they wanted to play... Even if it's not "serviced" to them. I don't buy that a promo rep needs to be beating down the door for a station to play the #1 record in the country by several measures.
Luke Combs is signed to Columbia, too. Was his "Fast Car" worked to CHR, too, or just to AC? Also, Big Loud seems to have had no problem getting Morgan Wallen on CHR stations regardless of geography. What are they doing right that Columbia isn't?
Agree with previous poster that "Be Her" is a CHR hit waiting to happen. Any indication from Columbia that a push is in the works?
No one hosts it, but it plays a lot of 90s stuff the station doesn't usually play like Remember the time-michael jackson, for instance. Usually the station doesn't interest me outside of that. I remember kids in my high school going there, but I never did.
Yeah, in some ways I think "Be Her" has even more potential than "Choosin' Texas." That chorus is just so doggone catchy.
I think maybe with Wallen the reality is that his "sound" fits the CHR mold a lot more than Ella Langley. There's very, very little that's actually "country" about Morgan's sound.
Wallen had a huge record with Tate McRae last year called "What I Want" and it was huge on CHR. #1 on the Hot Country chart for weeks and weeks. It barely even made the Country Airplay chart at all, just popping on at the bottom once or twice during its run on CHR and the Hot Country chart. It's kind of like this, but in reverse. Except Country radio should be playing... well... country records, and I don't think "What I Want" fit the bill there much at all.
Now we're talking about a massive hit country song and it not getting picked up by hit radio. The difference is that one should be genre-specific, the other shouldn't be.
The fact that several people are writing about it (both linked in the OP) tells me that it's a problem.
Big Loud outsourced Morgan's CHR promotion to Mercury. Ella outsourced her country promotion to Triple Tigers. Perhaps she did the same with CHR.
I guess part of what I'm wondering, Big A, is how much the promo rep actually matters?
In other words, my understanding (largely from folks on this board) is that most of what appears on big market radio today has little to do with decision makers and is largely a result of research. If that's the case, why would it matter if a rep starts beating down the door? That's not going to change what the research says.
If a promo rep needs to be beating down doors to get a song that's spent 7 weeks at #1 on the Hot 100 chart and is the #1 streamed song in the country play on a station supposedly playing "contemporary hits," there's a major issue with CHR programming and programmers and research. Somehow, the math just isn't mathing here...
Basically, I think the real question here is "What is the metric that 'big market' CHR stations use to build their playlists today?" Because something isn't working or this song should be getting airplay. Or... the research suggests it shouldn't be in which case we're wrong.
How were past crossovers like "Teardrops on my Guitar" by Taylor Swift, "Over and Over" by Nelly and Tim McGraw or "Meant to Be" by Florida Georgia Line and Bebe Rexha promoted and how long did it take them to get picked up by Hot AC/Top 40/CHR stations? I haven't listened to Q104 or KFKF in years but it seemed like all those songs were all over Mix at the time. Even though I can't stand Wikipedia, it claims that Teardrops was sent to pop radio several months after it was sent to country radio.
When it comes to playing new music, someone has to advocate for the artist. That person is the promo rep.
That's the point being made by the two articles in the OP: