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AC hits after Christmas

C

carolinaradio

1. Bruno Mars
Just The Way You Are

2. Train
Hey, Soul Sister

3. Taylor Swift
Mine

4. Uncle Kracker
Smile (shouldn't this be on recurrent after 60+ weeks?)

5. The Script
Breakeven

6. Lady Antebellum
Need You Now

7. Michael Buble
Hollywood

8. Daughtry
September

9. Sara Bareilles
King of Anything (shouldn't this be on recurrent as well?)

10. Maroon 5
Misery


That is what the AC top 10 would currently look like if it were not Christmas, I guess. I am surprised at the hard hit "Breakeven" took and the longevity of "Need You Now" and "Hey, Soul Sister" is amazing. "Just The Way You Are" just moved up the chart from literally nowhere.

Pre-Christmas hits that have disappeared from the AC chart are Daughtry's "Life After You" and John Mayer's "Half of My Heart."

The chart is pretty much blocking any non-Christmas songs that might start crawling up the chart due to all of the Chistmas songs which stations are bound to add more than any new "regular" song. We should see more new ones start to surface in a few weeks. Any guesses about new hits for 2011?? Katy Perry's "Teenage Dream" is somewhere on there but I wonder if that will get much airplay due to the racy subject of the song.
 
Even as an Atheist, I'd pray to God for "Hey, Soul Sister" to stop being played all the time! Combined with Maroon 5, it really got me tired of hearing milquetoast rock bands with whiney, high-pitched lead singers.
 
AMEN. I liked "Hey, Soul Sister" at first but after 8 months it got horribly old and tired. Same for "Need You Now." The latter was never even a good song to begin with.
 
After Christmas, most A/C's are smart to go easy on anything new and really play power gold and recurrents. You have new audience from Christmas...some you hope will stay with you. You want to be playing your best testing songs. Some currents you were already playing before Christmas----the powers are ok..but perhaps only 4 played with one played every other hour.

I'd hold off on anything new until the middle of January.
 
Seltzer said:
After Christmas, most A/C's are smart to go easy on anything new and really play power gold and recurrents. You have new audience from Christmas...some you hope will stay with you. You want to be playing your best testing songs. Some currents you were already playing before Christmas----the powers are ok..but perhaps only 4 played with one played every other hour.

I'd hold off on anything new until the middle of January.
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I'm interested in seeing if WSPA, who always plays 5 currents in power rotation, still plays "Half of My Heart" and "Life After You" come Sunday in that category...those aren't really what I consider hits, so they shouldn't get such heavy airplay anymore.
 
satech said:
Even as an Atheist, I'd pray to God for "Hey, Soul Sister" to stop being played all the time! Combined with Maroon 5, it really got me tired of hearing milquetoast rock bands with whiney, high-pitched lead singers.
Click to expand...
carolinaradio said:
AMEN. I liked "Hey, Soul Sister" at first but after 8 months it got horribly old and tired. Same for "Need You Now." The latter was never even a good song to begin with.
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If "Hey Soul Sister" is still top 10, then there is not enough turnover on AC charts. I got tired of "Hey Soul Sister," not only from near continuous airplay, but from its use in the Samsung commercial in which the kid designs his own refrigerator. Glad I'm not the only one who is sick of it! ::) At the rate it is going, it will be like "The Game of Love" by Santana and Michelle Branch, which showed up on WRVR's year-end survey for three straight years! I am predicting that "Hey Soul Sister" will eventually become this year's "Macarena."

As for Maroon(ed)5, I gave up on them after the overkill of "This Love" six years ago!
 
I haven't been so glad to hear "Haven't Met You Yet" in ages. WBEB is still in all-Christmas mode, WLTW switched at midnight.

Agreed, AC songs have begun staying at #1 for an extremely long time. That was virtually unheard of until the early-mid 90s. 2008/2009 were awful. There just isn't enough AC-friendly material to keep the chart moving, BUT the ones that do become popular fit the format very well, unlike a lot of the hits in the 90s and early 2000s. If the format did not have so much material from the 70s and 80s, who knows...it probably wouldn't exist. AC seems more gold-based than ever, which I don't have a problem with - it's just that the same songs are played so much for so long.
 
atlantaboy said:
firepoint525 said:
If "Hey Soul Sister" is still top 10, then there is not enough turnover on AC charts.
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It's been like this for ten years - if you like new music, just listen to Hot AC
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Ironically, I got tired of Maroon(ed)5 from the overkill of "This Love" on my local AAA station. They should still be mea culpa-ing over that one! They also played a lot of Train back in the day, but I don't ever recall hearing "Hey Soul Sister" there, or for that matter, anything else by Maroon(ed)5.

And on the subject of bands with high-pitched lead singers, seems like they played Five for Fighting quite a bit, too. ::)
 
carolinaradio said:
Agreed, AC songs have begun staying at #1 for an extremely long time. That was virtually unheard of until the early-mid 90s. 2008/2009 were awful. There just isn't enough AC-friendly material to keep the chart moving, BUT the ones that do become popular fit the format very well, unlike a lot of the hits in the 90s and early 2000s. If the format did not have so much material from the 70s and 80s, who knows...it probably wouldn't exist. AC seems more gold-based than ever, which I don't have a problem with - it's just that the same songs are played so much for so long.
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The slower turnover on the charts might be due to Billboard using Soundscan and Broadcast Data Systems (BDS) to calculate chart data since the early '90s. Turnover, particularly on ACs, was slow even before then, but the changeover to BDS/Soundscan really slowed it down!
 
Exactly...."One Sweet Day" 16 weeks, "Macarena" 14 weeks, " I Swear" 11 Weeks.....jeez!
 
Stations don't have the budget to do call out research like they used to. If they did, I wonder if there would be any burn on "Hey Soul Sister"? If there is no burn I must be totally out of the mainstream.
 
To me, AC stations have to have low turnover - otherwise, they'd be Hot AC stations

The main reason AC had higher turnover in the 80s and early 90s IMO is because there was no Hot AC, so AC actually broke new music back then (it wasn't just a BDS thing - AC in the 80s was a more current-based format in general)
 
There were Hot AC stations in the late 80s/early 90s. Maybe not as common as today but they existed. I know because I worked Hot AC during that era. And yes there is no doubt that the AC chart moved faster back then, I also remember there being more exclusive AC hits that were not CHR crossovers.
 
IMO, AC and Hot AC have been drifting apart musically. H/AC's still play most of the AC hits, but not the other way around....H/AC, which really used to be more of a rock-based format in most markets, has started becoming more rhythmic with artists like GAGA, Ke$ha, Jason DeRulo, Katy Perry, Rhianna, etc being dominant. H/AC seems more like CHR now. AC hasn't been very kind to rhythmic tracks and there aren't that many of the upbeat pop/rockish tracks AC seems to warm up to now.

In recent years, songs have made themselves welcome on the chart for months - "I'm Yours" and "The Climb" for nearly 4 months in '09, "Bubbly" for approx. 5 months in '08, etc. It's been going on but seems like it got worse in the 2000s. "Drift Away" and "The Game of Love" also had long stays, IIRC.

2010 was an awful year for that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_number-one_adult_contemporary_singles_of_2010_(U.S.)
 
BTW, I hope John Mayer's "Half of My Heart" can do a re-entry and come back after all of the Christmas songs fall off. I love that one and actually it's still getting heavy spins here. It has a PERFECT AC sound - not too offensive, but not sleepy. Reminds me of "Fallin' For You."
 
Jay F said:
Stations don't have the budget to do call out research like they used to. If they did, I wonder if there would be any burn on "Hey Soul Sister"? If there is no burn I must be totally out of the mainstream.
Click to expand...

I'm wondering if "burn" even exists anymore among AC listeners. The format has been in this rut for a decade and still racks up good numbers. Would a typical AC powerhouse actually add listeners if it started pushing new music like a hot AC or a CHR (not that those charts haven't gotten sludgier over the years)? I have a feeling the typical listener really doesn't care that he/she's still hearing "Hey Soul Sister" because that listener is used to having the songs he/she likes on the radio for months on end.
 
Well, look at what #1 is for the week of 1/15 which is the first "normal" chart for AC in a couple of months...

::)

Need You Now is back at #2 AGAIN...please, music industry, be better to the AC format in 2011! More songs! The Mike Posner, Enrique Iglesias, etc. songs are back also ::)
 
Oh great, now there is an AC station here playing Train's newest song 5-6 times a day, "Marry Me." That is in addition to "Hey, Soul Sister" 5 or 6 times a day as well. :mad:

I wish that group would just...go away!
 
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