When we first looked at the Summer Song 2022 field, there were already three main candidates. “As It Was” by Harry Styles and “First Class” by Jack Harlow had become instant powers. Lizzo’s “About Damn Time” had immediate fans and clear momentum, but it was still in that mid-teens place on the CHR chart that sometimes spells danger for promising uptempo hits that are somewhere between initial streaming excitement and power rotation.
“About Damn Time” avoided those snags. At this writing, it’s the No. 1 CHR song (while the other two linger in the top three). In the original article, I left the door open for a viral outlier to join the field. I also raised the possibility that Stranger Things might return “Running Up That Hill” to the field, although it turned out to be the Kate Bush original, not the recent Meg Myers Alternative hit cover as suggested.
On July 12, I decided to listen to “About Damn Time” for an hour straight, using the OnRad.io website and app that uses streaming metadata to find specific songs from streaming radio stations around the world. I’ve enjoyed OnRad.io over the years as a way of punching around the world’s infinite radio dial. Some readers love the Radio Garden app for audio tourism, but starting with a specific song gave me the more guided tour that I was looking for.
Ross On Radio readers may remember I did a similar exercise six years ago when Justin Bieber’s “Love Yourself” was the inescapable radio record of the moment. Of the various Song of Summer candidates, I chose Lizzo because “About Damn Time” is at its peak.
I could have chosen “As It Was,” but that song’s explosive moment had already passed. “Running Up That Hill” would have been interesting (and taken me to both current- and gold-based radio stations), but I’ve written about it a lot lately. So here is an hour of following Lizzo around the world’s radio stations.
As with “Love Yourself,” searching out “About Damn Time” around the world was a good way to catch up with a lot of U.S. stations that I might not have searched out, and a lot of international radio, particularly Italy this time. (It was also another reminder of European radio’s robust suite of side channels.) At any given time, I was choosing a station at random from at least 4-5 choices.
In 2016, I wrote that “in an hour’s listening, I encountered a diverse group of stations and discovered new songs. I didn’t hear much local personality. That doesn’t mean there wasn’t any, but if you’re only hearing a song or two, the odds are against encountering it.” That was the case this year, and yet I did find new stations that I want to come back to, and I did get some of the “sense of place” that I’m always looking for from my world-radio explorations.
Starting just before noon, here’s where OnRad.io took me over the course of an hour. Local times are shown in parentheses, except for Eastern time-zone stations.
11:57 a.m. Radio Kiepenkerl Top 40, Dortmund Germany (5:57 p.m. local time) – The current-hits online side channel of this Western Germany Adult Top 40. (The main channel was playing Miley Cyrus, “Midnight Sun.”)
12:00 p.m. KRSK (The Buzz) Portland, Ore. (9 a.m.) – Heard on the Audacy Hot AC just before Machine Gun Kelly’s “My Ex’s Best Friend.”
12:04 KBTE (The Beat) Lubbock, Texas (11:04) –Alpha Media-owned “Lubbock’s No. 1 for Hip-Hop and R&B” was giving the keyword for its $2,000 summer cash contest. That was followed by Drake’s “Sticky.”
12:07 KTRS (104.7 Kiss FM) Casper, Wyo. (10:04) – Townsquare’s “No. 1 Hit Music Station.” The first English-language jock break I heard was Matt Ryan teasing “music from Stranger Things” as part of 10 in a row. I didn’t stick around to confirm that it was “Running Up That Hill,” not “Master of Puppets.”
12:08 WXXX (95-Triple-X) Burlington, Vt. – A heritage Top 40 where you would have heard “Running Up That Hill” the first time. Today, Lizzo was followed by Charlie Puth f/Jung Kook’s “Left and Right.”
12:10 Hiper FM Portugal (5:10 pm.) – The best station name of my listening. Portuguese Adult CHR just north of Lisbon that went into Benson Boone’s “Ghost Town,” but was playing Avril Lavigne’s “Girlfriend” when I went back later.
12:13 KSTP-FM (KS95) Minneapolis (11:13 am) – We’ve written a lot about the personality-driven Hot AC recently. There wasn’t a jock break between Lizzo and One Direction’s “What Makes You Beautiful,” but the station is currently raising money for rescue dogs in “Bucks for Babe,” followed by the death of morning host Crisco’s black lab.
12:17 RDF 102.7 Florence, Italy (6:17 p.m.) – The metadata showed “About Damn Time (Clean Version),” but that “bitch!” leading into the bridge was in no way missing or obscured. In the U.S., “About Damn Time” hasn’t yet made its way from Hot AC to Mainstream AC — probably both because of the lyric and because of the time it takes for most songs to cross to AC. In Italy, an English lyric created no problem for what seemed to be a Mainstream AC. (The next song was Neneh Cherry’s “Woman.” It’s currently playing James Blunt’s “Goodbye My Lover.”)
12:18 Antenne Bayern Fresh (6:17 p.m.) – European stations take their sub-channels seriously. Radio Kiepenkerl had about a dozen. Munich’s heritage Adult CHR had about 30. The main station was playing Coldplay’s “Hymn for the Weekend.” The next song on the sub-channel was Lost Frequencies & James Arthur’s “Questions.”
12:21 KKIQ Livermore, Calif. (9:21 a.m.) – Locally owned, heritage Hot AC. “As It Was” had been two songs earlier. The next song was Ava Max’s “Sweet but Psycho.”
12:25 Radio Calima (5:25 p.m.) – It’s positioned as “Italian radio for the Canary Islands.” The next song was by Italian pop star Tiziana Ferro, but when I went back, it was playing Prince, “I Wanna Be Your Lover.” So far, it’s a good source for melodic, uptempo Europop of the sort that continued to come out of Italy after music changed elsewhere.
12:27 Skyrock (6:27 p.m.) – After 25 years, the French network is still “premier sur le rap.” I lingered a little longer than usual because the next song was called “Clic Clic Pan Pan” by Yanns.
12:29 Capital FM (5:29 p.m.) – Now that the UK’s major stations are all national brands, OnRad.io offered me “About Damn Time” in Glasgow, Liverpool, and Newcastle at slightly different times. The song that followed was Paul Woolford & Pesto’s dance reworking of “Bills, Bills, Bills.”
12:33 Slam! 40 (6:33 p.m.) – One of about 10 side channels for the Netherlands dance/pop outlet. It was playing the Purple Disco Machine remix of “About Damn Time,” followed by the remix of Farruko’s “Pepas.” Although most of Europe’s Top 40s satisfy this need to some extent, Slam is worth hearing by any U.S. listener who has wished there were more dance/pop outlets here.
12:36 Simply Radio Rome (6:36 p.m.) – This Italian Top 40 had one of the best-looking websites I saw. The next song was Italian-language dance, but I found some other interesting titles by going to its “New This Week” page, including this unlikely flip of an early 2000s dance classic.
12:40 WPST Trenton, N.J. – Another Townsquare Top 40. I got the last few seconds before Lady Gaga’s “Hold My Hand.”
12:40 Radio Torino, Turin Italy – (6:40 p.m.) — The recently played list seemed to list Bob Dylan, “Like a Rolling Stone”; the new Imagine Dragons song, “Sharks”; and Dionne Warwick, “I’ll Never Love This Way Again.” I’ll be going back there as well.
12:44 WUPM (Mix 106.9) Ironwood, Mich. – It’s a LiveLine affiliate at night with Jen Austin in middays. The next song was Shawn Mendes, “Summer of Love.”
12:45 KZRC (Mix 96.1) Durant, Okla. (11:45 a.m.) – “I’d be lying if I said I was not up and dancing to that one,” said middayer Carolyn. Then she talked about Durant and its adjacent counties being under a burn ban — gas grills were OK; charcoal was not. Then she teased Black Eyed Peas and U2 on the way into an ad for Chickasaw Point Golf Course. In other words, this was the sort of local radio that I was looking for.
12:49 Rock Energy Channel, Catania Italy (6:49 p.m.) – More Italian radio, in this case a Sicilian online-only station with two channels, Adult Top 40 and Rock. The latter has just played America’s “A Horse With No Name,” Talking Heads’ “Wild Wild Life,” and Nickelback’s “Must Be Nice” in the last few minutes.
12:52 WAPE Jacksonville, Fla. – Lizzo had just ended when I tuned in, and I caught the tail end of a break about “your chance to meet Big Time Rush” as the station went into “Running Up That Hill.”
12:53 KLSS (Star 106) Mason City, Iowa (11:53 a.m.) — Another Alpha Media small-market CHR. (The community calendar is under the tab “We Live Here Too.”) Went into a listener sweeper, then spots.
12:57 105 Summer Vibes (6:57 p.m.) – One of a half-dozen channels from the Swiss affiliate of Italian CHR 105. Followed by a mid-‘10s dance version of Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Game.”
12:58 The Wild 89.1 (9:58 a.m.) – San Diego-based Hip-Hop and R&B stream that went from Lizzo to Kendrick Lamar’s “Swimming Pools (Drank)” and Drake & 21 Savage’s “Knife Talk.”
1:08 WMJM (Magic 101.3) Louisville – Over the course of the hour, I’d been taken to a few R&B outlets that had already gone into a stopset, among them WBLK Buffalo, N.Y., and KMJK Kansas City. So I was happy to hear middayer KJ teasing a giveaway for Kat Williams tickets as part of the “All Access Summer.” The station also went into Atlantic Starr’s “Am I Dreaming,” an ‘80s slow jam that I haven’t heard as much since the center of the Adult R&B format moved into the early ‘90s.
This story first appeared on radioinsight.com