The point is kind of moot. There aren't many Oldies stations left. Classic Hits formats will play 80s stuff. Whether a Radio station plays these songs doesn't matter. People can find songs they like on their own (via a Jukebox in a bar, Spotify, You Tube, and endless other options). Another thing is when an artist dies, there is often a huge spike in interest in their discography...
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Why are big hits "lost?"
- Thread starter tall_guy1
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I made the exact opposite decision, David.
I played "Ben" when I was doing Top 40, but when I moved to AC, I just couldn't get past the "song about a rat" thing. Until his big late 70s comeback with OFF THE WALL, my AC libraries had just one Michael Jackson solo single ("Got To Be There") and three Jackson 5 singles ("I Want You Back", "I'll Be There" and "Never Can Say Goodbye").
And if I got put in a time machine and sent back there this afternoon, I'd second-guess "I Want You Back".
...and don't even get me talkin' about Muskrat Love by The Captain & Tennille...
America stiffs with it at #67, and then the Captain & Tennille take it to #4.......I don't understand.
It was those synthesized muskrat sex sounds in the bridge that did it. No song featuring synthesized sounds of animal sex has ever failed to reach the top 5.
Or is it The Captain and Toenail?
At least the muskrats have names. The horse that America sings about never got one.
Never underestimate the bad taste of the public. The nails on chalkboard awfulness of "Judy In Disguise" also became a big hit. The list of cringe worthy "Hits" is painfully long...
Now say that in Casey Kasem's voice.It was those synthesized muskrat sex sounds in the bridge that did it. No song featuring synthesized sounds of animal sex has ever failed to reach the top 5.
Ponderous! F***ING Ponderous. (I'm sure many here remember the infamous Kasem outtake meltdown). "It's impossible to make those transitions. I want a concerted effort not to come out of an uptempo record and then I have to talk about somebody's dog dying". Can't remember it all...🤔
It was those synthesized muskrat sex sounds in the bridge that did it. No song featuring synthesized sounds of animal sex has ever failed to reach the top 5.
Has this website ever discussed the problems with pop music in the 70's and why --- with some exceptions -- it was so bad? Was it a backlash against the excesses of the 60's, or what are the sociological reasons that some terrible songs went to the top ten?
There's a reason that very few stations are programmed to oldies music of the 70's. Even Comcast/ Xfinity cable channels that play "Music Choice" formats, in all possible genres don't have a 70's format. I think it is just a lost decade.
Yes, there were notable exceptions, and yes, heavy metal rock is its own genre. But, my gosh, "Muskrat Love" has to rank right up there with "Honey" as a cringe song that no one wants to hear again. -- Daryl
This is one of the funniest clips on You Tube. I was just going to post that link. It makes me laugh every single time. Casey, bless his heart, was the ultimate professional broadcaster, and to my ears as a listener, he was always so smooth and polished. I loved Casey at KRLA and anywhere else he went, because of his sincerity and warmth. Bloopers like this cause listeners to crack up, because the listener hears only one side of the microphone and cannot imagine a broadcaster like Casey being anything less than close to perfect. This is hilarious.
I think a big factor was the shift during that decade in who was listening to AM Top 40 radio.
Has this website ever discussed the problems with pop music in the 70's and why --- with some exceptions -- it was so bad? Was it a backlash against the excesses of the 60's, or what are the sociological reasons that some terrible songs went to the top ten?
There's a reason that very few stations are programmed to oldies music of the 70's. Even Comcast/ Xfinity cable channels that play "Music Choice" formats, in all possible genres don't have a 70's format. I think it is just a lost decade.
Yes, there were notable exceptions, and yes, heavy metal rock is its own genre. But, my gosh, "Muskrat Love" has to rank right up there with "Honey" as a cringe song that no one wants to hear again. -- Daryl
In the 60s, the audience was 12-34, but increasingly in the 70s, young adults started finding other formats. Males gravitated toward album rock, and by the mid-late 70s, teen males went with them. Young adult females also listened to album rock stations, but not in the same numbers. Those who grew out of Top 40 spent time with "mellow rock" stations like KNX-FM and adult contemporary stations like the original KIIS-AM and post-1976 KRTH.
And then you had a new breed of Top 40 program directors (Buzz Bennett, Jerry Clifton, Gerry Peterson) who believed that the only way to win in the ratings as a Top 40 was to dominate in teens, so the focus shifted specifically to 12-17 year olds, and teen males weren't far behind young adult men in moving to album rock--meaning the de facto audience for Top 40 radio was teen and pre-teen girls (which gets you Bobby Sherman, Donny Osmond, The DeFranco Family, Shaun Cassidy and so on).
45 RPM record sales hit their peak in 1974 and were in freefall after that (they'd actually been eclipsed by album sales in 1969, but both formats grew in the intervening five years)---so from that point on, it took fewer and fewer sales to get into the top ten.
Meantime, any PD who wasn't also factoring in album sales was missing the real hits. The Cars' "Just What I Needed" stiffed at #27 and "My Best Friend's Girl" at #35, but the album went six times platinum. People were buying---they just weren't buying the 45.
As a follow-up, here's a February, 1974 interview with Gerry Peterson in which he says "you can't program Top 40 radio to people 25-49."
Gerry was PD of WRKO, Boston at the time of the interview. Before it ran, he'd been tapped to program KHJ.
https://worldradiohistory.com/hd2/IDX-Business/Music/Archive-RandR-IDX/IDX/70s/74/RR-1974-02-15-OCR-Page-0004.pdf#search="gerry"
And Gerry was wrong. Up in San Francisco, Michael Spears programmed 12-49 and took KFRC to #1 in the market. Meantime, guys like me, programming the 70s AM version of Adult Contemporary, were able to siphon off a ton of Top 40's young adult women by playing most, but not all, of his playlist at the correct speed (Gerry was a big believer in speeding up the records) and not barking the call letters every time we opened the mic.
When Gerry got broomed at KHJ in less than a year, RKO replaced him with Charlie Van Dyke, who made the station much more listenable for adults---but by '77, the handwriting was on the wall.
Gerry was PD of WRKO, Boston at the time of the interview. Before it ran, he'd been tapped to program KHJ.
https://worldradiohistory.com/hd2/IDX-Business/Music/Archive-RandR-IDX/IDX/70s/74/RR-1974-02-15-OCR-Page-0004.pdf#search="gerry"
And Gerry was wrong. Up in San Francisco, Michael Spears programmed 12-49 and took KFRC to #1 in the market. Meantime, guys like me, programming the 70s AM version of Adult Contemporary, were able to siphon off a ton of Top 40's young adult women by playing most, but not all, of his playlist at the correct speed (Gerry was a big believer in speeding up the records) and not barking the call letters every time we opened the mic.
When Gerry got broomed at KHJ in less than a year, RKO replaced him with Charlie Van Dyke, who made the station much more listenable for adults---but by '77, the handwriting was on the wall.
Yet I had the fun and privilege to be in the building with Bill Tanner and the Y-100 crew at the end of the decade. Y-100 was a station that appealed to teens, but was definitely a young adult station in all daytime hours.
The morning show did not have Janet Reno as a frequent guest if they were just going for teens.
Peterson did a competitive station against Y-100 and lost "big time"... including the license. Of course, this was the decade when advertisers stopped using radio to sell to teens, leaving agencies to look at 18-49 and, later as Arbitron solidified its dominance, 25-54.
Yes, and a bunch of Top 40 stations were either dayparting or looking mostly at 18-34 at the time.
And that is how FMs that were not part of Peterson's "there are never more than 17 hits" theory and used recurrents and gold started taking over young adults, particularly women. The Rick Sklar era of a light flashing every 90 minutes to play the #1 song were over.
There was bad and there was good in every decade. A lot of the rock went to Progressive FM stations in the late 60s and early 70s, so what was left was pop and R&B for top 40. There was a sea change with the breakup of the Beatles, Diana Ross leaving the Supremes and the songwriting/production team of Holland/Dozier/Holland parting ways with Motown.
Has this website ever discussed the problems with pop music in the 70's and why --- with some exceptions -- it was so bad? Was it a backlash against the excesses of the 60's, or what are the sociological reasons that some terrible songs went to the top ten?
There's a reason that very few stations are programmed to oldies music of the 70's. Even Comcast/ Xfinity cable channels that play "Music Choice" formats, in all possible genres don't have a 70's format. I think it is just a lost decade.
Yes, there were notable exceptions, and yes, heavy metal rock is its own genre. But, my gosh, "Muskrat Love" has to rank right up there with "Honey" as a cringe song that no one wants to hear again. -- Daryl
Huh? Our Comcast system has a Music Choice 70s station.
The end of the Vietnam War, as well as the deaths of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, had a lot to do with the demise of "psychedellic" (and other) '60s rock as the '70s began. Top 40 started to get rather lame starting in 1973, when the war ended. Not that there weren't some good songs, but the pickings were getting rather slim by then.
Larry, you're correct ! I'm sorry. I must have missed it. Comcast/Xfinity does have a Music Choice channel dedicated to the 70's.
( I probably scrolled right past it by mistake, because I was subconsciously afraid that they would be playing "You Light Up My Life and "Muskrat Love." ) Selective inattention.........😁 - Daryl
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