Theres a whole thread on that station a few pages back. They play some stuff other stations havent played in a while. The hustle by van mccoy gets played quite a bit as does be near me by abc.
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Why are big hits "lost?"
- Thread starter tall_guy1
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The theme was revisited by Garth Brooks in 1993 in his No. 1 country hit "That Summer." I still hear it on classic country stations, and even as gold on hit country stations, so it has definitely aged better than "Honey," "Summer" or any of Goldsboro's other pop or country hits. ("Watching Scotty Grow," anyone?)
I've heard it occasionally in supermarkets, but not recently. The last time was at a Big Y (small western New England chain) in Connecticut.
Were they having a sale on Pepto-Bismol at the time?
Depends?
we went from Ballad Of The Green Berets to Billy Don't Be A Hero in just a few short years.... and WAR by the band.... WAR
Um..."War" was by Edwin Starr....but WAR did give us "The World Is A Ghetto".
Yes, we've heard all about your adoration for KCBC, like it's the center of the known world. I believe many of your artist/playlist examples/posts were spawned from your having heard it on the station.
Honestly? The Hustle from Van McCoy isn't exactly what most people would consider a recurrent. It's considered an 'oh-wow', song from their PD, but I'm willing to bet that it's more of an 'oh-Hell-no'-song right before listeners punch a different preset.
Good piece, I took a look at a couple of his other columns. Thanks for the tip!
I would not say Big Y is a small chain.
Funny for the youtube video of streetcorner symphony by rob thomas, the top comment said its been in constant rotation in cvs stores and grocery stores across the nation since its release!
Your translation must have been better than the original lyrics, and the OM must have been very good with voiceovers.
This is a question for anyone here who has worked in radio or in the music business. Here's the mystery.
How do these execrable - or at least groan-inducing songs become big hits in the first place? And how is it that they get so much air play to begin with? Some ideas:
1. Does the song resonate emotionally with listeners who normally pay little attention to songs, but tear jerker songs strikes some chord in them that relates to their own lives? Maybe they lost someone due to death, or to a bad breakup, so they call in incessantly to request the song? If you ever took requests via phone, email, text message, etc. - do you find that the same people continually contact the station with requests?
2. Is the mediocre song part of an album release, or a movie soundtrack release which will make a big impact on the culture? For example, "The Way We Were" by Barbra Streisand was just.......not good. It was self-pitying, maudlin, tear-jerking, patronizing, corny, etc. I didn't like it. But it was played to death on L.A. radio. It won a Grammy, I believe. It was heavily promoted, because it was used to sell the movie.
2.a. Same thing with "You Don't Bring Me Flowers Any More" w/ Streisand and Neil Diamond. More maudlin, cornball dreck. It went to the top 10 very quickly after its release, IIRC. There was no movie associated with it. But Streisand and Diamond were huge names in pop music. So fans bought it because at that level, a fan will collect every album that their favorite artist releases.
3. Do listeners request or buy music because the artist is associated w/ another artist that they like? For example, was "You Light Up My Life" a hit because fans of Debby Boone's father, Pat Boone, really liked slow, sentimental ballads that were played at wedding receptions? ( I'm not a fan of this song- I thought it was SO corny with weepy sentiment. But, a lot of my gal friends who got married during this time, wanted it played at their weddings).
4. Do listeners buy it because they like the genre or like to sing along? Example "That Summer" by Garth Brooks. ( Gawd. I don't like the lyrics. The guy spends the rest of his life bragging about a fling he had with a desperate older woman on a farm). The chorus is not all that singable, except to people who believe they have very strong voices. Anyone who thinks he/ she sounds like Garth, Reba McEntire, LeeAnn Rimes, or Dolly, likes to sing along. It's a big karaoke favorite on cruise ships).
4.a. Another example of sing-along with not very good lyrics, not very good beat, not very danceable - but a chorus that draws the bar-- karaoke crowd: "Friends in Low Places". Great song to slur along with at 1 a.m. in the local watering hole.
5. Is there a dance step associated with it? "Achy-Breaky Heart" was cute, the first 500 times that it was played. After that, well, not so much. Same thing way back in the 1960's with Little Eva's "Locomotion."
These are not kind comments. But it is a mystery to me why stations start playing these songs in the first place. My guess is - they get a lot of requests, then they play it more, then it starts selling, then they play it some more, so it becomes an upward cycle that turns it into a high-charting hit. But that doesn't mean that it's good music. JMO from a listener's perspective. -- Daryl
P.S. What do you think is the pop song voted the # 1 Worst Song of All Time? According to a CNN poll from 2006, it's "You're Having My Baby" by Paul Anka and Odia Coates. ( I didn't think anything could top "Honey", but I have to agree with this poll).
The Worst :-(
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All wrapped up in 12 succinct words from satirist, social critic and world-class cynic H.L. Mencken: "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public." Those songs all connected at a gut level with average Americans. Maudlin and cornball connect more often than not. Between its greeting cards and its television movies, Hallmark has made a very profitable business out of being a mass producer of maudlin and cornball. People in the first bloom of love or recently bereaved are the most vulnerable to cheap sentiment. It's human nature. Can't blame the music industry for that.
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Every one of these is correct.
I don't think (3) necessarily applied to Debby Boone---her dad had pretty little traction among the young women of 1977---but in general, did Nancy Sinatra do better than she would have if she hadn't been related to Frank? Andy Gibb if he hadn't been related to The Bee Gees? Going way back, Ed Ames if he hadn't come from the Ames Brothers? It factors in to some degree.
The quote was actually "taste", not "intelligence", which just makes it all the more relevant here.
Obviously things are different now, but in the pop world of the 1930s-1980s, there were three keys to a monster hit:
1. Can you sing along with it---especially the chorus?
2. Can you dance (slow or fast) to it?
3. Does it touch on a very basic universal human emotion?
I won't print them here, but look at the lyrics of "You Light Up My Life" on the screen, think of the person you love most in the world and ask yourself---especially if things looked dark before you met them---is this that far off from how I feel about them? Or---alternately---how would I feel if the person I loved most in the world said these things to me?
That's the switch that flipped in people's brains when "You Light Up My Life" first came along.
I thought it was an inartful re-working of the same thing Paul Williams said better in the Carpenters' "I Won't Last a Day Without You", but I was a 21-year-old male who was not in love when Debby had her hit record. And I had to play it every four hours for 16 weeks.
Worth remembering as well---Debby Boone's "You Light Up My Life" was inescapable if you were (for the sake of the discussion) living in L.A. and listening to KFI, KMPC, KHJ, KTNQ, KIIS, KRLA, KIQQ, KRTH or KIIS-FM.
If you were among the about-to-peak number of people between 12 and 34 listening to KMET, KLOS or KWST (I'm leaving KNX-FM out of it because I'd like to think they passed---but I can't swear to it), you never heard it on a radio station you listened to.
If you were among the about-to-peak number of people between 12 and 34 listening to KMET, KLOS or KWST (I'm leaving KNX-FM out of it because I'd like to think they passed---but I can't swear to it), you never heard it on a radio station you listened to.
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Remember the unique thing about this duet was it was only available (at the time) on a 45 (single) and through radio airplay. Each artist had recorded the song solo on their respective albums, the duet came about after those albums were released.
This point deserves its own reply.
Top 40 was never about good music. It was about playing the most popular little records with big holes. Period. It's how Led Zeppelin's "The Immigrant Song" and Lynn Anderson's "Rose Garden" both ended up in KHJ's top ten in the same week.
For a while, album rock stations focused their programming on "good music", but that's always subjective, and so they, and pretty much every other format, started playing the hits, too---just not all the hits.
Right. And it began with a custom radio edit. Gary Guthrie, PD of WAKY in Louisville, took both solo versions into the production studio and edited them together. He played it for his Columbia Records promo rep, who took a dub to corporate and the next thing you know, Barbra and Neil---arguably Columbia's two biggest artists at the time---are recording it.
KFRC, San Francisco did the same thing with Rita Coolidge and Boz Scaggs' versions of "We're All Alone", but that was never gonna fly beyond KFRC as Rita was on A&M, Boz on Columbia and so much time had passed between Boz' recording and Rita's that Boz had already released the follow-up to SILK DEGREES. But Boz is/was a San Francisco favorite, so it made sense for KFRC to do it.
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I stand corrected, never post at night after a long day when the brain is trying to recall things from 50 years ago....
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