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The 40 Most Played Classic Rock Songs of 2025 (So Far)

**spoiler alert**

1. Bon Jovi - Livin On A Prayer
2. Guns N Roses - Welcome To The Jungle
3. Guns N Roses - Sweet Child Of Mine
4. Whitesnake - Here I Go Again
5. Bon Jovi - You Give Love A Bad Name

What are the chances this list will be the same at the end of 2026 - or even a year from now.
 
All I can say is that if I hear any of these songs on the radio, I'm gone. Tuned out. I'm not even a quarter of a century old yet and I'm sick of pretty much every single one of these songs. It befuddles me how someone who has been hearing them for twice as long (in their 50s now) is still diggin' them.

And yes, I realize these songs still get beat to death because they're consensus favorites. That's fine. But I certainly won't be listening to a station with them in heavy rotation. Just my personal opinion.

What're the chances this list will be the same next year? High. There are zero shockers here - the same old schlock from classic rock radio. I have no reason to believe they'll change too much next year. Or the year after. They'll still be playing the heck out of "Living On a Prayer" when they're livin' on a prayer keeping their transmitter on the air as they've been abandoned for streaming...
 
They play them because they're popular. Not because the people at the station like them.

I was in a bar the other night, and the cover band played almost all of those songs, and the entire place sang along with each one.

How long will they keep playing them? As long as people keep singing along with them.

Radio plays the hits. Why? Because they're what most people want.
 
AMRadioGuy said:
All I can say is that if I hear any of these songs on the radio, I'm gone. Tuned out. I'm not even a quarter of a century old yet and I'm sick of pretty much every single one of these songs. It befuddles me how someone who has been hearing them for twice as long (in their 50s now) is still diggin' them.
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Lowest common denominator is always the surest way to make money when your business is entertainment for the masses. It's why SiriusXM's Classic Vinyl and Classic Rewind channels, with their familiar playlists full of AOR anthems, are assured of spots in the low channel numbers on the satellites forever while Deep Tracks was moved from Channel 27 to Channel 308 and is no longer available through the satellites for listeners with older receivers.
 
TheBigA said:
They play them because they're popular. Not because the people at the station like them.

I was in a bar the other night, and the cover band played almost all of those songs, and the entire place sang along with each one.

How long will they keep playing them? As long as people keep singing along with them.

Radio plays the hits. Why? Because they're what most people want.
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What did Tony Bennett do for over 70 years? He sang the hits. The same 15 or 20 since the 1950s, and he was one of our most beloved entertainers.
 
TheBigA said:
Imagine being married to the same person for 50 years.
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As someone who is currently engaged... I really hope 50 years of marriage will be different and better than 50 years of hearing the same 50 songs. At least in marriage there's room to grow as individuals and as a couple.

There's no room for any growth with the same songs over and over again at all. They're the same every time you hear them. They aren't expanding your mind. Or your musical knowledge. There's nothing new there. Same old, same old.
 
AMRadioGuy said:
There's no room for any growth with the same songs over and over again at all. They're the same every time you hear them.
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Yet that's what many people want. They want familiar. Because the world is changing, becoming more complicated, and people want something that brings them back to a happier time. The song remembers when.

Imagine the artist singing the same song over and over again. You think you're tired? You can shut them off. The artist can't.

James Taylor had a story about that. He says the songs are the same, but the circumstances change. He changes. The song is the comfortable shoe that still fits when he puts his foot in. The audience changes every time he sings it. The venue changes. The song has the ability to bring him back to a moment in time. That's what Christmas music does.

Merle Haggard went through a period when he stopped singing his old songs like Mama Tried and Okie From Muskogee. He went through a bitter divorce and his ex-wife got the royalties from those songs in the settlement. So he stopped singing them. Then the people stopped showing up at his concerts. He realized they wanted to hear his old songs. He started doing them again.

The part of this we're ignoring is that classic rock stations are often top rated among 18-34s. These are not the people who grew up with these songs. These are people who love them because they're just great timeless songs.

But hey, if they make you sick, change the station. Nobody forces you to listen.
 
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Many in the 18-34 range may be hearing those songs for the first time and they like what they hear. A friend of mine’s college age son was over looking at some furniture I had for his college apartment; he raved about the song that was playing on my garage sound system; that song was “Kashmir” by Led Zeppelin. He had never heard it.
 
CTListener said:
Lowest common denominator is always the surest way to make money when your business is entertainment for the masses.
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Except that we are not in the entertainment business, contrary to popular misconception. We are in the advertising business, and programming the consensus favorites -- regardless of format -- is what attracts and keeps listeners. Most people expect to hear some of their favorites every time they tune in. Just because a small minority think those songs are overplayed does not change our programming for the majority. (Sorry about that, but the truth is often uncomfortable.)

Anyway, it is the number of listeners that we sell to the advertisers. With agency buys, it's format and ratings. With local businesses, it's usually the case of the owner personally liking the station's format -- again, regardless of repeat factor -- and wanting to reach others who like it, on the premise that those listeners would be good customers for the business because they listen to his or her favorite station.

And yes, in the Classic formats, there is relatively little change. Over 75% of the songs that were Powers when I relaunched The Eighties Channel™ three years ago have never moved from that category.

To the audience, this is aural comfort food. They want the "same old same old", contrary to @AMRadioGuy's opinion.
 
K.M. Richards said:
Except that we are not in the entertainment business, contrary to popular misconception. We are in the advertising business, and programming the consensus favorites -- regardless of format -- is what attracts and keeps listeners. Most people expect to hear some of their favorites every time they tune in. Just because a small minority think those songs are overplayed does not change our programming for the majority. (Sorry about that, but the truth is often uncomfortable.)

Anyway, it is the number of listeners that we sell to the advertisers. With agency buys, it's format and ratings. With local businesses, it's usually the case of the owner personally liking the station's format -- again, regardless of repeat factor -- and wanting to reach others who like it, on the premise that those listeners would be good customers for the business because they listen to his or her favorite station.

And yes, in the Classic formats, there is relatively little change. Over 75% of the songs that were Powers when I relaunched The Eighties Channel™ three years ago have never moved from that category.

To the audience, this is aural comfort food. They want the "same old same old", contrary to @AMRadioGuy's opinion.
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For what it's worth, I specifically said that was my opinion. I understand that the masses want to be beat over the head tirelessly with the same music throughout their entire lives. Why this is I don't really understand (though "aural comfort food," as you put it, is likely part of the answer). The why is irrelevant - it is a reality and I doubt it's going away anytime soon.

But it's not my reality. I'm an outlier. I'm now to the point where I'm listening to current top-40 and country stations (something I wouldn't have been caught dead doing just a few years ago) because in my early 20s, it's the only "fresh" thing on the radio dial. I'm about through with them, too, as they make WABC back in the 70s look like the most hip station on the planet (the joke being that by the time WABC added tunes in that era, they were pretty much already "oldies" because of how conservatively it was programmed). I pretty much just stream or listen to CDs at this point while I'm on the go, with a couple of exceptions. A shame because I absolutely love radio.
 
TheBigA said:
I bet there are still a lot of stations in your area you've never sampled.
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Not many at this point... I've sampled most of them. Decent amount of "format overlap," especially song-wise. "Classic Hits" pretty much = "Classic Rock without the heavy stuff," for example.

Most of the interesting stuff is on AM and with relatively marginal signals.

I routinely scan through the dials, both AM and FM. I'm pretty familiar with what's on the air in my area. The big standout are the Robert & Ashley Stevens stations in the 'Burgh. They're pretty much the only stations I still listen to regularly. Otherwise, I just keep hitting scan until I find something interesting. That's now happening so rarely I don't do it much these days.
 
AMRadioGuy said:
Not many at this point... I've sampled most of them. Decent amount of "format overlap," especially song-wise. "Classic Hits" pretty much = "Classic Rock without the heavy stuff," for example.

Most of the interesting stuff is on AM and with relatively marginal signals.

I routinely scan through the dials, both AM and FM. I'm pretty familiar with what's on the air in my area. The big standout are the Robert & Ashley Stevens stations in the 'Burgh. They're pretty much the only stations I still listen to regularly. Otherwise, I just keep hitting scan until I find something interesting. That's now happening so rarely I don't do it much these days.
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Pittsburgh is pretty unique for AM radio.. Isn't the 'Burgh home to the only AM Jazz music station in the US? I believe it's at 1550 AM.
 
AMRadioGuy said:
Not many at this point... I've sampled most of them. Decent amount of "format overlap," especially song-wise. "Classic Hits" pretty much = "Classic Rock without the heavy stuff," for example.

Most of the interesting stuff is on AM and with relatively marginal signals.

I routinely scan through the dials, both AM and FM. I'm pretty familiar with what's on the air in my area. The big standout are the Robert & Ashley Stevens stations in the 'Burgh. They're pretty much the only stations I still listen to regularly. Otherwise, I just keep hitting scan until I find something interesting. That's now happening so rarely I don't do it much these days.
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Seems odd then that people are literally complaining about Cracker Barrel changing their sign and decor, because everything should be exactly like it was when I was 10 years old forever. In other words, the older demographic wants comfort decor with their comfort food. Yeah,let's have a Rolling Stones concert where they play none of their hits. See how that works.
 
AMRadioGuy said:
For what it's worth, I specifically said that was my opinion.
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Indeed, I did see that it was your personal opinion and acknowledged same. :)

AMRadioGuy said:
I understand that the masses want to be beat over the head tirelessly with the same music throughout their entire lives. Why this is I don't really understand (though "aural comfort food," as you put it, is likely part of the answer). The why is irrelevant - it is a reality and I doubt it's going away anytime soon.
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Which is, you must admit, good for people like me who program gold-based formats exclusively. The one thing I disagree with you about is your choice of words in "beat over the head tirelessly". It is obvious from the continued listening patterns that they do not feel that way, and -- opinion or no -- you're insulting them.

AMRadioGuy said:
But it's not my reality. I'm an outlier.
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As @davideduardo, @TheBigA, and others have said: We acknowledge the existence of outliers, and we know that we can never make you happy since we program for the masses. What we wish for (and never receive) is not grumbling about it every time the subject comes up in a thread.

To those of us who are programmers, it sounds more and more like an attack every time we read it. As I said, we get it. You don't have to "beat us over the head" with it.
 
gr8oldies said:
Seems odd then that people are literally complaining about Cracker Barrel changing their sign and decor, because everything should be exactly like it was when I was 10 years old forever. In other words, the older demographic wants comfort decor with their comfort food.
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Maybe that's why my use of a 50-year-old jingle package works with my format ...?
 
And for those who want to hear the original demo for that TM package, @Michi helpfully put them up on SoundCloud:
https://soundcloud.com/michelle-bradley-3%2Ftm-the-penetrators-demo

The package was first released in 1974, and I used them at the first station I programmed in 1978 (KAAP-AM/FM in the Oxnard-Ventura CA market; the owners had bought them for an attempt at top-40 before going all-news with NIS less than a year later ... they were thrilled that I was going to get some use out of them); I left in 1981 due to an ownership change, but found myself back there doing weekends after a second ownership and call letter change. I came back Labor Day of 1984, and by Thanksgiving I was doing morning drive and was again the PD/OM.

When I moved back into my old office I found the Penetrators reel in the back of one of my desk drawers, and I absconded with it. Later had it digitized and started playing with it as I worked on updating The Eighties Channel™ after its test run on KRKE in Albuquerque. They still "fit" and when I got the go ahead from KRKE's owner to relaunch the format in October 2022, I got a hold of Greg Clancy at TM, who somehow managed to find the original backing tracks in the archives. As a result, TM was able to record the first new Penetrators in about four decades.

And they're still perfect.
 


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