I would bet it got airplay on KRLA and of course KMET. Although KMET wasn't a chart reporter at the time.
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Song you wondered how they they ever got played on Top 40 radio
- Thread starter secondchoice
- Start date
I would bet it got airplay on KRLA and of course KMET. Although KMET wasn't a chart reporter at the time.
I
I Liked the song. It was considered controversial at the time, but I had nothing against it.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
I never saw it as any more "controversial" than any other song dealing with societal problems and the like. Sometimes it takes a song making the charts to change people's POV on such ... or even recognizing that there are problems that exist.
If anything, I think Ms. Vega gave the subject a good showcase without being intrusively "in your face".
Randy Newman's "Short People."
Sounds like Mr. Sklar got played...
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
Ah, that misbegotten classic, which the vast majority failed to see the sarcasm in.
I can actually see both points of view on that one. I get the sarcasm of what he was trying to say, but it's easy for it to be misinterpreted.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
I specifically remembered Randy Newman publicly lamenting that people "didn't get the point".
Then there's Donna Summer ...
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
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It was to build awareness, not an endorsement of domestic violence.
It did...unfortunately ARSA has a gap in its KRLA surveys for the months where "Lola" would have charted.
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Love to love you baby had Donna Summer singing an orgasm.
I can't imagine anyone having trouble with that. Especially three years after George Michael's "I Want Your Sex" went Platinum and peaked at #2.
Yeah, that one kinda surprised me, too. No different from Cyndi Lauper's "She Bop" six years earlier, but a lot more explicit.
Then the song should have been cited and not the artist. Donna's entire catalog isn't part of this.
And even then, Donna wasn't the first...The Chakachas "Jungle Fever" from 1972:
And Sylvia's "Pillow Talk" from 1973:
...which resulted in perhaps my favorite backsell of all time from Jack Friday at KFRC, just as the climaxes...um...climax:
"KFRC and Sylvia....has once again started without us."
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
Wait ... you mean it's okay to play "She Works Hard For The Money"?
Excuse me while I put that back into active rotation ... 😜
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
You should hear the tongue-in-cheek backsell Freddy has on his tag when we play that on Flashback Weekend.
There are people who think the song is about a hooker, but the album cover has Donna in a waitress uniform, and she’d already done the definitive hooker song (“Bad Girls”), so…
Then there was Labelle's "Lady Marmalade."