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KRTH now playing rap music.
- Thread starter 34james
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Classic Hits at the lower end and Hip Hop at the upper end.
I think that's overstating it. This began because someone saw they were playing "California Love" by Tupac and Coolio's "Gangsta Paradise". We're nowhere near 50% hip-hop.
WKQC chose tamer rap songs, "U Can't Touch This" and "Gonna Make You Sweat".
Just one more way in which Charlotte and Los Angeles are not alike.
"Bust a Move" and "Fight for Your Right" too.
That is a pretty large oversimplification, and one that is wrong. KRTH is playing a few hip-hop and hip-hop adjacent songs to its playlist. The songs they are playing have mainstream appeal, and crossed over into top 40.
It's a very small part of the overall playlist. In fact, there are more 80's, 90's, and 2000's alternative being played than hip-hop tracks on KRTH; lots of new-wave, and songs like "Wonderwall" by Oasis, "Somebody Told Me" by the Killers, "Lovefool" by the Cardigans, "Smells Like Teen Spirit", etc.
Yes, you are missing the fact that there are only a couple of very mainstream mass-appeal hip-hop songs on the entire KRTH playlist.
In fact, the distinction by listeners who were CHR fans in the 90's likely saw those crossover hip-hop songs as just "variety" and not as something radical. And the 80's and 90's CHR fans are today's Classic Hits cumers.
The important point is that a station like KRTH has a fixed target audience age range, meaning that every year the expect many older listeners to leave while they target those entering their target demo. That means that each time they test music they will find a handful of now-playable newer songs and a like handful of ones that don't test well enough and broadly enough any longer and have to be dropped.
I once heard an announcer say that "How Soon Is Now" is to alt rock what "Stairway to Heaven" is to mainstream rock or what "Freebird" is to southern rock. That's how great a song it is, but like hotpatrick2004 said, I'm surprised it was played on a non-alt station! Figuring out what to play before and after it would be challenging indeed.
BTW, some listeners might recognize "How Soon Is Now" as the opening song from the television show Charmed. Another group, Love Spit Love, performed the TV theme but it's still clearly recognizable as the same song.
I went to KRTH's website. It shows "How Soon Is Now" playing at 9:31 yesterday morning with the song before it, Michael Jackson's "Smooth Criminal" at 9:23. That suggests there was a spot break in between. So they did a sweeper or something leading into the Smiths.
The song following was Kansas' "Carry On Wayward Son". I just did a segue online and it works.
Not only that, but it's also a clever in-joke...both are theme songs from CW shows...Charmed and Supernatural. Which also tells you a bit about the target audience.
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"Wonderwall" by Oasis?! Fine song by a fine group, but I never realized the Gallagher brothers achieved much mainstream success in the U.S. Do you remember if "Wonderwall" or any other Oasis songs were played on Top 40 stations in L.A. in the 90s? I'm in Virginia, so I understand there are differences all the way across the country.
Your an angel fan I see. But I am assuming that Warner brothers that owned the show charmed went with that cover and not the original cause it was used in the 96 movie THE CRAFT and using the smiths original would have cost them more money. Just a guess. Good for them Morrissey can be very difficult. I liked Buffy better but angel was a good show.
"Wonderwall" was top ten in the U.S. and the album was 4 times platinum, so I would imagine KIIS and KROQ were both playing it.
Both charmed and supernatural were great shows
I can only imagine the reaction in the Twitterverse if one of the Jeopardy! hosts were to do that! "Everybody Dance Now" is no more the title of "Gonna Make You Sweat" than "Rollin' on the River" is the title of "Proud Mary" or "My Country Tis of Thee" is of "America."
It's fascinating to me how the formats evolve over the years. All the oldies stations like Krth that use to play 50s and 60s music have become 80s oldies stations with a few 70s and 90s and 00s thrown in.
Hot AC use to be chr without the hip-hop now they will play a bit of it but only the most popular.
And fascinating to see how Chr has evolved over the years from a nat king Cole song to a Beatles song to a three dog knight song to a Madonna song to a Michael Jackson song to Justin Bieber to Olivia Rodriguez to Taylor swift and post Malone and nikki minaj and Beyonce. Just fascinating how formats have evolved.
Hot AC use to be chr without the hip-hop now they will play a bit of it but only the most popular.
And fascinating to see how Chr has evolved over the years from a nat king Cole song to a Beatles song to a three dog knight song to a Madonna song to a Michael Jackson song to Justin Bieber to Olivia Rodriguez to Taylor swift and post Malone and nikki minaj and Beyonce. Just fascinating how formats have evolved.
The recent death of Jeff Beck made me think about the many classic rock songs I've heard on Supernatural. One of my favorites is "Turn into Earth" by The Yardbirds. I'd never heard it before because it was released in 1969, but it's a really top-notch song and it fit in perfectly with the scene where it was played.
Much more of a Buffy fan...I didn't get to see Angel nearly as much, and then the schedule was different after the network switch. You're the first person on this board to mention the name! Thanx for noticing!!
Um, sorry to report that they are. Nirvana and Pearl Jam for sure has spun. Metal in the 80's went by way of the dodo but KRTH dabbles a bit in it. 90's metal went more dark and scream-o than acts like Metallica, Def Leppard, Poison etc. Unless you consider Papa Roach metal then yeah KRTH isn't really touching 90's metal but neither are about 99.9% other OTA stations.
What you're really talking about is the music, and the musical taste of listeners. Radio simply presents the music that people want to hear. The taste of the public changes, the work of musicians changes, there are a lot of things happening in order for a radio format to evolve. This is not something that happens in a vacuum. And it's not really driven by radio.
#Truth
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