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"Tainted Love" on CBS-FM

scooty430 said:
My hopes for CBS would be:

- they increase the amount of 50s and 60s music. It has timeless appeal.
- they keep up the great specialty things like A to Z, countdowns, Hall of Fame..
- they keep the playlist BIG, and make it bigger. Boredom is what kills stations, and we'll burn out on Tainted Love and Hotel California just like we did on My Girl, My Guy, and Brown Eyed Girl.

100% agreed! Nothing wrong with "Tainted Love", just another classic 80's tune mixed in the bunch.

Yeah, no boredom needed either...just look at the Top 500 out west! ::)
 
disney fanatic said:
I hope in the next 2 or 3 years, CBS-FM will add some 90's music in the mix such as Britney Spears' "Baby One More Time" one of my favorite songs, Christina Aguliera's "Genie In the Bottle", UB-40's "Here I Am", Celine Dion's "Power of Love", Boyz II Men's "Motownphilly", Depeche Mode's "Enjoy the Silence" and many other songs from the 90's will someday be putting on CBS-FM's playlist for the next several years.

How about Seal's "Crazy" 1991, Roberta Flack / Maxi Priest "Set the Night to Music" 1991, Stereo MC's "Connected" 1993, Suzanne Vega / DNA "Tom's Diner" 1990 or even "This is How We Do it" from 1995...classics now...to be sure.
 
oldies76 said:
scooty430 said:
My hopes for CBS would be:

- they increase the amount of 50s and 60s music. It has timeless appeal.
- they keep up the great specialty things like A to Z, countdowns, Hall of Fame..
- they keep the playlist BIG, and make it bigger. Boredom is what kills stations, and we'll burn out on Tainted Love and Hotel California just like we did on My Girl, My Guy, and Brown Eyed Girl.

100% agreed! Nothing wrong with "Tainted Love", just another classic 80's tune mixed in the bunch.

Yeah, no boredom needed either...just look at the Top 500 out west! ::)

Tainted Love a Classic 80's tune? Maybe for Jack FM...not CBS-FM...

How about some other "80's classics" (these midcharted on the Billboard Hot 100 but were Top 10 in some major markets) ? Shaddup You Face - Joe Dolce, or Turning Japanese - The Vapors..?

Compared to real 80's Classics, Tainted Love is crap. And doesn't belong on CBS-FM. It turns any set of music into a train wreck.. If they're going to play 80's, it needs to mix with what they're playing from the 60's and 70's. Which eliminates some music from the 80's - Tainted Love among them.

There's plenty of crap from the 60's and 70's, and I wouldn't want to hear them on CBS-FM either...
 
I heard that song "Tainted Love" on WHUD last night and it was good song, and no they don't add "Where Did Our Love Go" thrown in with that song except the last repeated verse at the end towards the fade out. Other stations like Lite-FM on 106.7 (except the two Hudson Valley stations on 92.1 and 98.5) plays that song with the addition of "Where Did Our Love Go" thrown in the mix.

If you want more 80's on this format, so why not play the Pet Shop Boys "Surburbia", that song used to be a dance hit back in the Z-100, "Hot 103" days or maybe play some song that WBPM plays from the "Music Blimp" like "Two Tribes" by Frankie Goes to Hollywood, or play "I Want Candy" by the Bow-Wow-Wow. Let CBS-FM do the math.
 
How about Seal's "Crazy" 1991, Roberta Flack / Maxi Priest "Set the Night to Music" 1991, Stereo MC's "Connected" 1993, Suzanne Vega / DNA "Tom's Diner" 1990 or even "This is How We Do it" from 1995...classics now...to be sure.[/quote]

That's awesome idea, wait for next several years and see what happens.
 
Disney Fanatic, you don't seriously want to hear any of that stuff mixed in with 60's-70's, do you?

You're really looking for an all 80's-90's station. Wouldn't you really prefer that rather than CBS-FM?
 
I don't agree with all of those music selections, but your assumption that CBS-FM is a 60s and 70s station is wrong. It's that line of thinking that is going to put an end to CBS-FM. Not to rehash my entire point again, but "oldies", as a format, needs to break its attachment with any specific era and just represent the music that a certain demographic wants to hear. Which means that it needs to evolve, just like every other successful format. Notice that the formats that aren't around anymore are the ones that did not evolve (e.g. beautiful music, standards). Oldies will meet that same fate if it doesn't freshen up.
 
Fredrated said:
Tainted Love a Classic 80's tune? Maybe for Jack FM...not CBS-FM...

How about some other "80's classics" (these midcharted on the Billboard Hot 100 but were Top 10 in some major markets) ? Shaddup You Face - Joe Dolce, or Turning Japanese - The Vapors..?

Compared to real 80's Classics, Tainted Love is crap. And doesn't belong on CBS-FM. It turns any set of music into a train wreck.. If they're going to play 80's, it needs to mix with what they're playing from the 60's and 70's. Which eliminates some music from the 80's - Tainted Love among them.

There's plenty of crap from the 60's and 70's, and I wouldn't want to hear them on CBS-FM either...

So, what's a "real 80's Classic" to you? "Kokomo"? "Uptown Girl"? Sure, songs like that might mix better with what why're playing from the 60s and 70s; but they, along with your rationale for rejecting "Tainted Love", are also part and parcel of what's given music radio at large a "crap" reputation with today's chronologically ad-friendly demos. And what's given oldies radio a negative reputation as a novocained comfort zone for tasteless old Bob Grant-loving duffers who're scared of what New York has become: too much "diversity", etc...
 
I presume that when it comes to the dentist's ideal of what 80s Oldies could be/could have been, one has to suppose what might have happened had Rick Sklar been allowed to "evolve" a Musicradio format beyond 1982, and had it become/reflected a national standard for Top 40/CHR, to boot--and maybe throw in the fantasy of MTV going under within a couple of years of its debut, too. But not only did none of that happen, it also sidesteps a cardinal reason why Musicradio sputtered away, i.e. by 1982, the formula was--musically speaking, at least--senile.

Thus, I sort of agree with the dentist--albeit from the opposite direction--that maybe it's better to retire the oldies format than to "evolve it" into the 80s, because dealing with that decade and its taste divides is just too vexed, especially when you still have the good will of older oldies grumps to contend with. It's like taking your Uncle Charlie to a local Indian Dosa joint, only to find him grumbling about those brownskinned furriners with their weird un-American food.

And from his most recent podcasts, I suspect even the dentist realizes that the jig is up for his particular kind of radio fantasy, at least as a "living" entity.
 
While I can understand the arguments for playing 80s songs like "Tainted Love" on classic hits stations. The danger is CBS-FM could get too watered down and no longer have a unique position in the market. Sometimes you can try to do all the right things yet make yourself irrelevant in the process.
 
Jay F said:
While I can understand the arguments for playing 80s songs like "Tainted Love" on classic hits stations. The danger is CBS-FM could get too watered down and no longer have a unique position in the market. Sometimes you can try to do all the right things yet make yourself irrelevant in the process.

How would they water themselves down exactly? They seem to be dropping some of the older music as they are adding some of the newer music, though the CBS-FM playlist of today does seem wider than the pre-2005 playlist. Also, they're the only game in town, and it is incredibly unlikely that anyone else will jump on the oldies bandwagon, especially to play the 50's and early 60's music that CBS-FM has largely phased out. We all know the reason why that won't happen. So from a business standpoint, I don't think CBS-FM has to worry about "watering down" the brand. By updating the station's sound, they're introducing the brand to potential new listeners.

Again, I say this over and over again: the CBS-FM of 1972 is not the same as the CBS-FM of 1982 or 1992 or even 2002, let alone 2009. I think if you told the CBS-FM listener of the early 70s that their oldies station would one day be playing the new music that they were hearing at the time on Musicradio 77, they would have said you're crazy. Now, 70's music is a staple part of the format; something which everyone seems to agree upon. At some point though, the line was drawn in the sand and there's really no reason why that should be.

Here's something to ponder: "oldies" is only associated with the music of the 50s-60s-70s (in some people's minds, anyway) purely because radio never really had a chance to do oldies before the late 1960s. When you consider the technological progress that was made in the first half of the twentieth century which led to radio and recorded music, it makes sense that "oldies" did not emerge as a radio format until the late 60s and the 1970s. And since then, the format became synonymous with 50s music, later 60s music, and later 70s music; music which is not as homogeneous in sound as the oldies "purists" and anti-80s brigade is trying to have us believe in claiming that oldies music can only be from the 70s and before. Now the format is moving into 80s music, following the progression it has already made several times in the past and the progression it needs to make to continue to exist as a viable format.
 
neo 11, I'll try to explain what I mean about watered down. When the original batch of oldies stations came on years ago, 60s songs were well rested. Many of the titles were not played for years and could not be found elsewhere on the dial. The songs were well known, yet there was still a sense of freshness and "oh wow".

The 80s songs CBS-FM plays and will continue to add have been somewhere on the radio constantly since they were currents. Many of them still can be found on multiple stations to this day. So unlike oldies stations of the past, there is nothing special or exclusive about classic hits stations playing 80s.

Maybe it's because the songs are played out or maybe it's because musical tastes were fragmented while growing up but I don't think Gen X (which I'm on the upper end of) will react wth the same passion to classic hits stations playing 80s the way baby boomers did hearing 60s or early 70s on oldies stations. I remember when The Big Chill movie and soundtrack came out over two decade ago, many FM stations nationally switched to oldies after that . It was recognized that 60s music was really special to boomers, it was the music of a generation. Many oldies stations were #1 25-54 at that time.

So it's 20 years latter, why not just be 80s based now? For the same reasons the all-80s stations nationally crashed and burned a few years ago. I loved "Tainted Love" when I heard it in the early 80s, great hook and it sounded so modern. But I have heard it so often and for so many years that I'm totally numb to it. I might or might not keep it on, any other station (or music source) would likely have something else on I would rather listen to. I think many Gen Xers would have the same reaction, once again totally different from when boomers heard 60s songs on oldies stations 20 years ago where it was a special experience for them.

As I said I appreciate the reasons behind younging up the music on classic hits stations. You can't let the demos all age out of 25-54. My point is adding 80s isn't going to be a magic solution either.
 
Jay F said:
Maybe it's because the songs are played out or maybe it's because musical tastes were fragmented while growing up but I don't think Gen X (which I'm on the upper end of) will react wth the same passion to classic hits stations playing 80s the way baby boomers did hearing 60s or early 70s on oldies stations.

Actually, the deeper issue here might be that Gen X doesn't react with the same passion to *radio* that boomers do...
 
Jay F said:
But I have heard it so often and for so many years that I'm totally numb to it. I might or might not keep it on, any other station (or music source) would likely have something else on I would rather listen to.

Sublime's "What I Got" does that to me. Heavy rotated to irrelevance.
 
CBS-FM should play

"Is That All There Is?" by Peggy Lee
"Stars on 45"
"Ching A Ling" by Missy Elliot
"Also Sprach Zarathustra"
and
"Does the Spearmint Lose Its Flavor On the Bedpost Overnight"

...all back to back! If it's good enough for WBPM and the Muzak Blimp, it's good enough for CBS-FM!

I have spoken!
 
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