More than a decade ago, the acts made popular by Radio Disney began to make their move to establish themselves as adult artists, taking their cues from Grease-era Olivia Newton John or early-’00s Britney Spears for more provocative music and image.
Over a few years’ time, Selena Gomez went from “Love You Like a Love Song” to “Come and Get It.” Demi Lovato’s “Give Your Heart a Break” gave way to “Cool for the Summer.” Nick Jonas got “Jealous.” (The transitions continue. Sabrina Carpenter quickly pulverized any RD past with “Please Please Please,” “Taste,” and “Bed Chem.”)
On the first morning of Unwell Music, her new Throwback CHR channel on SiriusXM, one of Call Her Daddy podcaster Alex Cooper’s vignettes was about having to choose which Jonas Brothers you liked. (“For me, it was solid Joe or Nick territory.”) Another was about being a Lizzie McGuire fan and Hilary Duff making her want to be a pop star. There was one about the lasting influence of Justin Bieber’s haircut.
Call Her Daddy made headlines last fall with an appearance by Kamala Harris that was followed by Donald Trump on the Joe Rogan Experience and the ultimate christening of 2024 as the “podcast election.” In the recently released Edison Research podcast rankings, it remains the No. 4 podcast in America (with Rogan still at No. 1). Unwell Music is one of Cooper’s two new SiriusXM channels that launched on Tuesday. The other is Unwell on Air, which will feature two new daily Cooper-endorsed talk shows.
Like other SiriusXM celebrity-curated channels, Cooper’s Unwell Music hosted content is a mix of breaks devoted to specific featured artists, liners, and audio from the podcast, including artist interviews. The language is at a podcast level of candor, and songs are mostly unedited, but the Cheetah Girls are there, too, preceded by a bit about how there will be no such thing as too much Disney.
Also, like those other celebrity channels, Unwell Music has a “beyond normal format boundaries” arc that includes both “Dreams” by Fleetwood Mac and “Big Energy” by Latto. There are a handful of newer songs. After this monitor, I heard Addison Rae’s “Diet Pepsi” into Gracie Abrams’s “Long Sleeves.” But the calling cards are the Radio Disney-era throwbacks as well as some lost late-’10s titles.
Unwell Music is debuting in prime real estate on the SiriusXM dial, between Top 40 Hits1 and TikTok Radio’s very different take on CHR. Just as SXM came to prominence by covering any possible position on the Rock and Classic Hits timelines, it’s now closing in the gaps for younger listeners, too in a suite of channels that also includes ’00s gold PopRocks and Hot AC the Pulse.
Broadcast radio should be aware of the new channel. The gold-based version of CHR turned out not to help the format nearly as much as a few months of excitement about Carpenter and Chappell Roan, even though throwbacks are still plentiful at many stations. But a celebrity curator with a national platform might be different. And some of the Disney and ’10s songs are the last “songs that somebody grew up with” that aren’t being heard anywhere yet. As with the Radio Disney legacy in general, how much this channel resonates with PDs probably depends on whether their kids grew up with “High School Musical” and “Camp Rock.”
When Unwell Music was announced, WUEZ Carbondale PD Paxton Guy took to Bluesky to ask if Unwell Radio was going to be “the new Alice”–the successor to the female singer-songwriter driven Modern AC format of the late ’90s. Unwell does play Chappell Roan, Carpenter, and Abrams, and could certainly pivot there eventually, but for now there’s still even more available music, some of it from the Triple-A/Alternative side that nobody has gotten to, yet. That remains an opportunity for CHR and Hot AC.
Here’s two hours of Unwell Music on its first morning at 6:50 a.m., February 11:
- Shawn Mendes & Camila Cabello, “Senorita”
- Selena Gomez & the Scene, “Tell Me Something I Don’t Know”
- Olivia Rodrigo, “Bad Idea Right?”
- Usher f/Pitbull, “DJ Got Us Falling in Love”
- Demi Lovato, “Heart Attack”
- Cheetah Girls, “The Party’s Just Begun”
- Taylor Swift, “I Knew You Were Trouble (Taylor’s Version)”
- Chris Brown, “Forever”
- Vanessa Carlton, “A Thousand Miles”
- Ariana Grande, “Into You”
- Paramore, “Still Into You”
- ’N Sync, “It’s Gonna Be Me”
- Nicki Minaj, “Starships”
- Mandy Moore, “Candy”
- Hannah Montana, “Rock Star”
- Shakira f/Wyclef Jean, “Hips Don’t Lie”
- TLC, “Waterfalls”
- Harry Styles, “Watermelon Sugar”
- Gracie Abrams, “Best” — the first true current
- Ciara f/Petey Pablo, “Goodies”
- Rihanna f/Calvin Harris, “We Found Love”
- Jonas Brothers, “Burnin’ Up”
- Billie Eilish, “Ocean Eyes”
- Taylor Swift, “Style (Taylor’s Version)”
- Michelle Branch, “Breathe”
- Darius Rucker, “Wagon Wheel”
- SZA, “Kill Bill” — the edited version
- Beyoncé, “7/11”
- Cyndi Lauper, “Time After Time”
- Florida Georgia Line, “Cruise”
- Miley Cyrus, “The Climb”
- Pink, “Who Knew”
- The Kid Laroi & Justin Bieber, “Stay”
- Hilary Duff, “Anywhere but Here”
- Katy Perry, “Firework” — with a vignette about the writing of “Roar” on a day when she felt particularly not assertive