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Songs you hated playing on the air?

Minnie Ripperton/ Lovin' You (the WATO 1290 Gates BC5P and Sta-Level couldn't cope with the high notes and birds chirping. Overloaded the driver stages on that Gates and you kept a hand on the Plate On switch). Early automation gear hated it too and often mistook the chirping birds for cue tones.
Charlene/ Never Been To Me (hated playing that tune even once a shift, never mind 4 times a shift in heavy rotation)
Oak Ridge Boys/ Elvira (the most burned out record I ever played on air, and also I much preferred Dallas Frazier's Capitol original)
Captain & Tennille/ Muskrat Love (another song which crashed old automation hardware, those synthesizer bleeps are commonly processed as cue tones)
 
the brakes said:
Total Eclipse of the Heart by Bonnie Tyler!
Click to expand...
...what drove me nuts about that one was that Jim Steinman ripped part of the melody off of Ford Theater's "Theme For The Masses"...
 
the brakes said:
Total Eclipse of the Heart by Bonnie Tyler!
Click to expand...

That song was #1 the week I started in radio so it has a soft place in my heart. Other than that I dont think I would care for it. It certainly has gotten burned out over the years.

But that reminds me of a song I truly did hate playing. Her follow up to "Total Eclipse" a mid-charter called "Holding Out For A Hero". I believe it was on the Footloose Soundtrack.
That song was extremely disturbing to me, probably because I was (and am) the polar opposite of the hero she was holding out for.
 
Kelly Watts said:
Anything by that S.O.B. Crook Pat Boone
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...ten years ago or so, I did a volunteer gig for the local college station, WSUW at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. It was a weekday morning retro show, and I made a point to add a lot of the stuff that hasn't been played since the '60s and '70s on commercial stations. One such record was "Your Mama Won't Like Me" by Suzi Quatro. Talking up the ramp, I said something like, "My Mama won't like you? Woman of my dreams! After all, my mama's a Pat Boone fan." (Which she still is, BTW.) I got a couple of calls from UW-W asking, "Who the f*** is Pat Boone?" I realised that, not only had I just stepped in it, but it was on fire and burning my sandals. ;D So I tracked down a '50s pressing of Boone's biggest atrocity of all time -- his version of "Tutti Frutti" -- and brought it in for the next airshift. I introduced the thing by explaining the previous week's scenario and begging forgiveness in advance. Then I played Boone, and after that I played Quatro again. And got even more on-campus calls stating I was right, whatever would offend a Pat Boone fan would have to be much better ;D ...
 
Working in Alabama and the Florida Panhandle, late 80's...
"Losing My Religion" by REM
"Freebird" by Lynard Skynard (actually any song by Lynard Skynard)

Working a country shop in Louisiana, I dreaded spinning "My Toot Toot" by Rockin' Sidney.
He was a local boy gone national and we had (read: "ASKED") to push it.
 
After this weekend, I was painfully reminded of two that just make me cringe:

Don McLean - American Pie

Lee Greenwood - God Bless The USA

I can be patriotic and still hate those songs.
 
johndavis said:
Don McLean - American Pie
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...I like this one a lot, but it's still incredibly overplayed...

...add to my list any of those Vaudeville-sounding pop tunes from Tony Orlando & Dawn. "Tie a Yellow Ribbon," "Say, Has Anybody Seen My Sweet Gypsy Rose," "Who's in the Strawberry Patch with Sally" -- they're all the aural analogue for syrup of ipecac...
 
The Lee Greenwood still kinda makes me "misty" sometimes...but I just can't stand "Pop" acts doing their "own" version of the National Anthem. All of them like to put their own "vocal Olympics" on it. I just hate that.
 
johndavis said:
After this weekend, I was painfully reminded of two that just make me cringe:

Don McLean - American Pie

Lee Greenwood - God Bless The USA

I can be patriotic and still hate those songs.
Click to expand...

American Pie was the song that got me interested in radio. When it was a current I heard 3 stations playing it at the same time. It was on all the time. I liked it but was curious why it was getting such excessive airplay., I wanted to know what the forces were behind it.

Here it is almost 40 years later and if I heard that song today I would punch out right away, way too burned out.
 
slow motion for me...slow motion for me...slow motion for me ...move in slow motion for me...LOLOLOLOl I really hated that too!! but I hate anything by lil wayne. ;D
 
Jay F said:
johndavis said:
Don McLean - American Pie
Click to expand...

American Pie was the song that got me interested in radio. When it was a current I heard 3 stations playing it at the same time. It was on all the time. I liked it but was curious why it was getting such excessive airplay., I wanted to know what the forces were behind it.

Here it is almost 40 years later and if I heard that song today I would punch out right away, way too burned out.
Click to expand...
...I also thoroughly disliked that dreary remake Don McLean cut of "Castles in the Air" circa '81. The original was vastly better and at the best tempo for that tune. Then again, McLean himself became an insufferable jerk around this time, too :-( ...
 
I rarely disliked playing any song on the air, so long as I knew some of our listeners liked it. I do recall some oddball things in rotation that had no place being there, such as Anne Murray songs in Canada just to satisfy the canadian content rule. As a pop station, I figured we should stick with actual hits, as opposed to random songs by well known canadian artists. Seems like a no brainer to me.

I used to cringe at Don't Worry Be Happy, but not everyone takes music seriously, and so many people did enjoy that, so I got used the song. Novelty records are hard to deal with for us, ahem, serious announcer types.

I think what annoyed me the most was playing a shortened version of a song. I think if we're going to play In A Gadda Da Vida, we have to play the entire thing or we're just going to annoy those who do like it. I used to get into fights over that with PD's all the time.

I remember this one station I worked at in the 80s had a classic rock format except for the current hits. In other words, you'd hear Led Zeppelin, and then Cyndi Lauper, back to Foreigner and then Thompson Twins. That's very difficult to deal with when you're trying to do with integrity. That's what happens in smaller markets, I suppose.
 
David Owens said:
I remember this one station I worked at in the 80s had a classic rock format except for the current hits. In other words, you'd hear Led Zeppelin, and then Cyndi Lauper, back to Foreigner and then Thompson Twins. That's very difficult to deal with when you're trying to do with integrity.
Click to expand...

Kinda of like Old School stations throwing Usher, Beyonce, or Alica Keys in rotation with Zapp, Prince, or Motown...
 
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