On August 1, 1981, Top 40 radio had a lot of Air Supply. Rock radio had all the oxygen.
Top 40 radio, at least the “all the hits” version, barely existed. About 40% of the stations reporting to the Radio & Records CHR chart at that moment were really AC stations. Another 40% were taking their cue from what R&R called Album Rock Radio, then in its peak moment of dominance over the pop mainstream.
There have already been a lot of 40th anniversary of MTV articles. Already, they feel so two-weeks-ago. But the orbit of rock radio and rock radio in and (mostly) out of the pop mainstream is a fascinating journey in itself, and on August 1, 1981, Journey’s Escape album, then and now the sound of pop/rock in that era, was two weeks old.
I saw it from a very specific POV. As a college student in 1981, a columnist in 2021, and a consultant/radio researcher in between, I’ve been most focused on the broad landscape of all formats, but particularly as they all flow into the traffic circle of the pop mainstream, or detour to avoid it. And on August 1, 1981, “kickass rock ‘n’ roll,” as the radio station liners called it, ruled the world.
Your definition of “kickass” may vary, especially talking about an era of polished, melodic hits. “Corporate rock” isn’t a pejorative for me. It’s the rock music of my age group, and at in August 1981, five years after the first Boston album, it was at its apex. 1981 was the winter and spring of REO Speedwagon and Styx. By August 1, “Urgent” had given Foreigner a comeback after a less-successful attempt to rock harder on “Head Games”; Journey’s “Who’s Crying Now” had rapidly ascended the charts, and the stations that wanted something a little more rocking were playing “Stone in Love,” not yet “Don’t Stop Believin’.”
Also in August 1981: Pat Benatar had been a star for the last 18 months, and her hot streak was just starting to cool with the appropriately titled “Fire and Ice.” The Moody Blues had made a surprise comeback by sounding like Electric Light Orchestra. Stevie Nicks & Tom Petty’s “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” was only a few days old as well.
Those big crossover rock hits were also CHR’s power-rotation songs. There ws a second tier of AOR smashes from that spring and summer — Rush’s “Tom Sawyer,” Billy Squier’s “The Stroke,” Blue Oyster Cult’s “Burning for You,” AC/DC’s “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap” — that were played by the “really a rock station” half of CHR, but not the “really an AC station” half.
AOR wasn’t the only place where the musical action was. Many Ross on Radio readers are going to tell me they listened mostly to new wave anyway, but there wasn’t much on U.S. Top 40 or AOR that summer. In the U.K., the pop chart on August 1 had a broad spectrum but included the Specials, Spandau Ballet, Depeche Mode, Human League, and Duran Duran. In the U.S., Squeeze’s “Tempted” was AOR’s nod to new wave, although further down the rock tracks chart, you’d find “Icehouse” by Icehouse, which became an early MTV signature video.
R&B was in the incredible Zapp/Gap Band/Kashif/Solar/Prince moment in (The) Time that “Uptown Funk” managed to summarize in four minutes, but after the “disco backlash,” the only crossover R&B hits were those songs ratified by the CHRs-that-were-really-AC: “Slow Hand,” “Just Once,” “Endless Love.” This was also the moment of Rick James’ “Super Freak” — which went to become cause celebre R&B hit that MTV wouldn’t play. “Urban Contemporary” was bringing R&B to FM in a big way for the first time in the early ‘80s, but only a few of its flagships, particularly WXKS (Kiss 108) Boston, were part of the pop chart.
From a radio programming standpoint, there was also considerable overlap between AORs that had Top 40 elements and those CHRs-that-were-really-AOR. Doubleday’s KWK St. Louis and WLLZ Detroit galvanized the industry with their tight playlists, liner-card jocks, and emphasis on songs that tested well (often by anonymous acts) over artist image. KWK was part of the Top 40 chart; WLLZ reported to AOR, despite similar programming. But that approach, whether in the AOR camp or on the Top 40 side became known in the industry as “top tracks.”
I was in Washington, D.C., that summer. WWDC (DC101) electrified the market, thanks to a morning host named Howard Stern. WRQX (Q107) was already a rock-leaning CHR. Now, with word that Doubleday was coming to town, it became “Q Phase II,” essentially becoming a rock station itself. In markets from New York to Houston, similar scenarios were being played out. (At this moment, WLLZ had a 7.7 share while incumbent WRIF had a 5.2; in six months, WRIF would reverse that.)
It’s often held that MTV was modeled on the rock radio of the moment, but MTV was really “Top Tracks” itself. Bob Pittman came from WNBC — one of the late-‘70s Top 40 AMs that was still identifiably Top 40 but with a more AOR-driven presentation. MTV’s first-day playlist featured Rod Stewart, Cliff Richard, and Lee Ritenour. Ritenour was in that second tier of jazz/R&B fusion acts that were getting some pop play in 1981, but he was the act on MTV, not Quincy Jones. Soon enough, however, another Jones-produced album, including the last minute addition of a rock song called “Beat It,” would have an impact on Top 40, MTV, and Rock radio.
August 1, 1991: A lot happened over the last decade:
- After Top 40’s 1983-84 rebound, AOR radio became even more of a “Top Tracks” format, but it reached a point of taking its cues from CHR instead of the inverse. “Sunglasses at Night” now seems like an acid test between Classic Rock and Classic Hits/Oldies, but Corey Hart was an AOR artist in 1984-85.
- The reaction was the phenomenal rise of Classic Rock. Those AOR stations that didn’t go Classic Rock outright become more adult-leaning — more library, less aggressive musically, more heritage bands and retro-sounding acts, including, recently, Black Crowes. The hair band phenomenon was several years old, but had been driven as much by CHR as AOR.
- WRIF is currently eighth in the market with a 4.4 share.
- Alternative radio had ebbed for a while, but it was rebuilding and had had its own chart for several years, meaning that the handful of Alternative stations on the AOR panel were gone. Alternative was quirky pop now — the top three were Siouxsie & the Banshees, Big Audio Dynamite II, and Psychedelic Furs. Squeeze had a top 15 Modern Rock hit this week, “Satisfied.” But we were one month from the release of “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”
With the Alternative stations out of the panel, the AOR chart this week had a number of now-mostly-forgotten titles from heritage acts — Van Halen, 38 Special, Allman Brothers. Bonnie Raitt’s “Something to Talk About” was a rock radio hit; so was Bryan Adams’ “Everything I Do (I Do it For You).” There was the tail end of hair metal (Scorpions, “Winds of Change”; Extreme, “More Than Words”; Guns N’ Roses, “You Could Be Mine”). The biggest Alternative titles were Jesus Jones’ “Right Here Right Now” and R.E.M.’s “Shiny Happy People.”
Top 40 was in its own period of transition. The last five years had been dominated by hair bands, the beginning of crossover hip-hop, some Alternative crossovers — but only the tip of what a small but growing number of Alternative stations were playing. Each of these had been bolstered by an MTV specialty program — Headbangers Ball, Yo! MTV Raps!, 120 Minutes. The hair bands had prompted an attempt by some stations at “Rock 40,” an update of top tracks at stations like Scott Shannon’s Pirate Radio in Los Angeles. Top 40 was playing the Black Crowes in August 1991, but that was one of the few times the Heritage Rock stations of that era had a direct impact.
When “Smells Like Teen Spirit” came out a month later, rock radio returned, over the course of two-three years, to the vitality and influence of the early ‘80s. For the first few years, it was mostly without the ratification of Top 40, which was barely hanging on in some markets, and gone in others. As with Country, which saw almost no crossovers in the early ‘90s, it didn’t much matter. If anything, for Alternative stations to have that much influence without pop’s help seemed to reinforce their importance.
August 1, 2001: MTV Total Request Live helped drive several years of pop dominance and relative balance at Top 40 radio. The boy bands got the headlines, but there was an ongoing strong representation from Alternative radio, and then from the development of Modern AC. But by 2001, TRL had waned and Top 40 was more driven by R&B and Hip-Hop. In the early 2000s, both the teen punk descended from Blink-182 and emo and harder rock would have an impact again. Linkin Park’s current single was “Crawling,” but the next one was “In the End,” which would be one of Top 40’s signature songs in its new, more extreme era.
That reflected what was happening at Rock radio. The Alternative and Active formats were closer than ever. At Active, the top three were Tool’s “Schism,” Staind’s “It’s Been Awhile,” and Linkin Park’s “Crawling.” At Alternative, it was Staind, Blink-182’s “The Rock Show,” and Tool. Nickelback’s “How You Remind Me” was climbing both charts. Blink-182 and the pop/punk boom that followed became Alternative’s point of differentiation for several years — the thing Active wouldn’t play, but which still sounded OK next to System of a Down.
KYSR (Alt 98.7) Los Angeles’ Chris Booker was at MTV in 1999-2003 and recalls that “rock was essentially nonexistent on the channel. I hosted Return of the Rock, which suggested it had gone away.” Even without MTV, rock radio had a definite musical footprint, but there was grumbling because it wasn’t the music Alternative program directors came to the format to play. And many of the biggest stations were driven as much by Howard Stern in the mornings as the music.
WRIF was No. 5 with a 5.3 share. The following year, a Canadian radio station is going to go to a new form of Classic Rock drawing on both the corporate rock of the early ’80s and the MTV pop/rock that followed. Bob-FM, Jack-FM, and similar Adult Hits stations are going to become the most phenomenal format trend of the 2000s.
August 1, 2011: Active and Alternative had been pulling away from each other since the release of “Seven Nation Army” eight years earlier. Alternative became increasingly driven by indie-pop. Active Rock’s top five this week included Avenged Sevenfold, Seether, and Theory of a Deadman. As the two formats became separate niches, there was less rock from either camp with the critical mass to reach CHR and Hot AC. Alternative would send Foster the People, Mumford & Sons, and AWOLNation, but not Black Keys, Airborne Toxic Event, or Death Cab for Cutie. (WRIF had a 4.3 share, tied for eighth.)
At this current moment of pop strength, CHR wasn’t really looking to any outside format for product. Even among the artists shared with, say, R&B radio, the paradigm had become a separate Chris Brown or Usher or Rihanna single for each format. “Turbo-pop” remained dominant, and even the current Coldplay single, “Every Teardrop is a Waterfall,” showed its influence. PPM’s metered listener measurement seemed to have bolstered mass-appeal formats like CHR, while exposing the rock formats as niche.
August 1, 2021: “Don’t Stop Believin’,” still a few months away from becoming a hit in August 1981 is the signature song of Classic Hits and one of the most enduring songs of all time. Whatever rock’s influence now, AOR of that era rules Classic Hits and Classic Rock, and both of those dominant formats now as current-based formats regroup after COVID.
In recent years, Alternative has been very much the quirky pop format that was taking shape in 2011. It usually has some presence at Top 40 — Billie Eilish, AJR, Machine Gun Kelly, All Time Low, Glass Animals. The crossovers are hard-fought, and there are always a few more songs at any given time that don’t go quite as far at Hot AC and CHR as they should. For a brief, controversial moment, some Alternative stations again seemed to be taking their cues from Top 40 but the reverse-crossover trend has slowed momentarily.
Active Rock reached a point of marginalization in the late ‘10s, to the point where “Active Rock, but without the currents” briefly became a format trend. In 2020, as COVID changed listening patterns and male-targeted formats became dominant, so did many Active Rockers, however. WRIF was one of the earliest rebounds. WRIF celebrated its fiftieth anniversary this spring, sending it to a 6.2 share. It’s currently No. 3 in the market with a 5.8.
Active rock has had more retro-flavored music that recalls Classic Rock, not unlike the heritage-rock hits of 1991. Greta Van Fleet went from sounding like Led Zeppelin to sounding like Rush, while more acts started to sound like Greta Van Fleet. Volbeat currently sounds like teen punk. But Active Rock isn’t sending many records to Alternative, much less Top 40.
Could it? There are two rock records very much in play at Mainstream Top 40 this week, and both come from somewhere other than rock radio. One is the current No. 1, Olivia Rodrigo’s “Good 4 U.” One is Maneskin’s remake of “Beggin’,” hovering outside the top 30, while the band’s “I Wanna Be Your Slave” does the same at Alternative. Among younger listeners, Queen were royalty even before the movie Bohemian Rhapsody. Are they ready to coronate their own generation’s band?
There is some irony in MTV — launched as a “not R&B” format — eventually having a role in the broadening of AOR and CHR. So now consider that the next guitar record at either Top 40 or Alternative won’t have been driven by rock radio or MTV, but Eurovision. At this moment anyway, CHR is seemingly moving to a more balanced place, there may be room for rock again. (Separately, there needs to be more R&B as well; 1981 is not the aspiration in that regard.) Whether rock radio reopens its pipeline to pop depends on their own available product but also perhaps on whether Alternative and Active can find a place where they work in tandem on a few songs while maintaing separate identies overall.