This was definitely a better year for hit music. But was 2021 a good year?
I could tell the hit music was getting better in August when I asked readers to name the “Song of Summer 2021” and, for the first time in five years, nobody wrote “there wasn’t one really.” This week, I asked them to nominate “Songs That Made a Difference in 2021.” “Overall, I thought it was a great year for top 40 and Top 40 radio,” wrote Ted Lindner. For Party LiveLine’s Mason Kelter, “2021 delivered the best new material in terms of diversity and longevity since 2012.” It’s been a while since anybody was willing to go that far.
I’m still cautiously optimistic. Each month’s PPM ratings show a few success stories and a lot of other stations running in place; now we’re heading back into holiday and winter ratings, where Top 40 nearly dissolved last year. In 2009, KAMP touched off a building boom of second and third Top 40s in a market. Days ago, its successor KNOU (Now 97.1) surrendered the frequency to all-news KNX. But similar things were happening in 1995-96 as the seeds of Top 40’s eventual comeback were being planted.
Top 40 did a better job in terms of when it responded to developing records in 2021. It still struggled with how to read whether those songs were hits, as two of the year’s biggest songs show. There’s still not quite the depth of product we need either. Major-market Top 40 on FM is still a format of 18-22 songs at a time when Spotify offers 50. “Blinding Lights,” the megahit that had to sustain us through all of 2020, was still a top 20 most-played song in 2021.
But Top 40 was easier to listen to, and “Songs That Made a Difference” was easier to write this year. As usual, this article isn’t a recap of the year’s biggest hits as much as those that showed some sort of sea change in the format, although the greater availability of center lane songs like “Kiss Me More” or “Bad Habits” is news in itself. Many are songs that were chronicled in Ross on Radio at some point; follow the links in the song title to see what I wrote about them at the time.
Olivia Rodrigo, “Driver’s License” – I’ve often quoted Bob Costas’s reminiscence that Don McLean’s “American Pie” “came out on Monday and everybody knew it by Friday” as a eulogy for the hit song as shared experience (and radio’s ability to create them). Yet, “Driver’s License” began the year on a similar trajectory. The bad news is that it didn’t require airplay to become phenomenal. The good news is that Interscope still wanted to go to radio. Warren Cosford, a radio mentor, always saw “kids making music for kids” as a good sign for pop music. Despite its level of calculation, this song counted.
Dua Lipa, “Levitating”; Glass Animals, “Heat Waves” – They’re both examples of how broadcast radio Top 40 PDs still like to use music these days. Songs sit on the buffet table for a year. PDs might get to them on their first trip or their third. “Levitating” sure sounded like a radio hit right away, but reportedly came back unfamiliar in iHeart stations’ callout. “Heat Waves” was more subtle, more of a piece with Cheat Code’s “No Promises” or some of those other top 20 songs that kept resurfacing when major-market CHR radio was short on powers in a given week during the late ‘10s. (Here’s Chris Molanphy’s play-by-play on how “Levitating” became Billboard’s record of the year, despite never going No. 1.)
That neither “Levitating” nor “Heat Waves” was recognized as a smash by radio right away speaks to streaming’s seemingly superior ability to propel a song into the pop zeitgeist. Songs broken outside radio’s walls appear to reach critical mass faster, especially when a popular app is only playing the hook. Yet, “Levitating” and “Heat Waves” were both examples of radio’s ability to set the agenda for streaming, not just vice-versa. Both almost certainly would have happened sooner if radio had more consistently kept the pressure up. The same might have applied to a half-dozen uptempo pop records that stalled in the top 15 of the CHR chart as well. It suggests that broadcasters do not have faith in their own ears at this point.
The Return of Rock – As a genre, rock had more of a presence on Top 40 than it had in a decade. Sometimes it was a Ray Parker Jr./Michael Jackson-type genre exercise from Rodrigo or Lil Nas X. Sometimes it was an act that didn’t come from rock radio, but wanted to be there anyway, such as Machine Gun Kelly or Maneskin, who remain No. 1 at Alternative months later with “Beggin’.” Or it was ‘00s pop/punk act All Time Low having a long-pending Top 40 breakthrough with a ‘00s pop/punk record. There could be a lot more rock in the pipeline if Active and Alternative radio were somehow able to take advantage of it.
Walker Hayes, “Fancy Like” – Letting songs simmer under the heat lamp for a year, and not being responsive enough to streaming, has been Country radio’s M.O. for years now. It took the CMA Awards in which none of the winners thanked radio for broadcast radio to become concerned that it was no longer setting the agenda, but really the first CMA warning shot was Chris Stapleton’s “Tennessee Whiskey” becoming a real hit off of one TV performance, years before radio recognized it as such.
“Fancy Like” was Country radio’s final acknowledgement that reaction records had to be allowed to react, particularly if streaming had the ability to create the most “Country sounding” crossover hit since Kenny Rogers’ “Lucille” without Country radio’s permission. It was also broken, to some extent, by Brian Mansfield’s coverage of the streaming phenomenon in Country Insider.
It will be interesting to see how Country radio responds long-term, or if it acknowledges that reaction records come in many different packages. “My Boy” by Elvie Shane made me mist up right away; not nearly a year later when it finally reached No. 1. Ironically, “Fancy Like,” because of its faster trajectory, is only No. 52 for the year at Country radio. Priscilla Block’s “Just About Over You,” whose viral story took far longer to pay off, got to No. 48 because of the number of chart weeks involved.
“Fancy Like” is a record that Country PDs fought at first, but it’s hard to see why now. The lyric has been squarely within the format’s wheelhouse since “We’re Not the Jet Set” by George Jones & Tammy Wynette in 1973. The Hip-Hop elements “Fancy Like” incorporates haven’t been remarkable since “Boys ‘Round Here” or Sam Hunt’s hits. Ironically, “Fancy Like” broke around the time that Toby Keith returned to Country radio with “Old School.” That song title alone framed the choice for radio as a stylistic rift, but really “Fancy Like” was a Toby Keith record. Particularly this one.
Wizkid, “Essence” – In the late ‘90s/early ‘00s, dancehall reggae held an unusual place in both R&B and Top 40. Songs such as “Everyone Falls in Love” by Tanto Metro & Devonte or “Get Busy” by Sean Paul became all-ages party jams with listeners who might have struggled with straight-ahead Hip-Hop. Afrobeat has already become that at R&B radio. Now a similar breakthrough is bubbling up at Top 40. (It’s also worth noting that I tweeted about the new Wizkid single a few days ago and got more pickup from fans than anything I’ve tweeted about an act since BTS.)
Both “Fancy Like” and “Essence” had remixes with featured pop artists, but they really didn’t need them. And reader Matt Del Signore points out that Bad Bunny’s “Dakiti” and Kali Uchis’ “Telepatia” made inroads without a pop feature act and with predominantly Spanish-language lyrics.
Elton John & Dua Lipa, “Cold Heart” – Comebacks are often the sign of CHR in crisis. “Cold Heart” came along in a relative up cycle, and I was happy to hear it. It’s certainly possible there was a 17-year-old groaning somewhere, but perhaps he was already streaming “Rocket Man.” In Rocketman the movie, Elton chose to remind us of his disco bandwagon nadir with “Victim of Love.” But John was one of the first rock artists into disco with “Philadelphia Freedom.” And I kinda like “Victim of Love,” actually. Now maybe, thanks to John and Ed Sheeran, we’ll have a new entrant to the Christmas canon as well.
Adele, “Easy on Me” – Even as it shot to No. 1, “Easy on Me” was dismissed as a superstar indulgence, or perhaps another recent example of how topping the Hot 100 meant less than it used to. Two months later, “Easy on Me” is still No. 1 and clearly a consensus hit at radio at a time when few other songs are. In a year where Tate McRae’s “You Broke Me First” was a No. 1 song as well, “Easy on Me” does sound like other songs on the radio, but it’s not Adele acknowledging bedroom pop as much as reminding us of her role in creating the genre. It might also be yet another example of male programmers of female-targeted radio stations misjudging a ballad (although, to be fair, I saw that initial take from a female essayist as well). Now we’ll see if it becomes a song that changed the Country format by next year (and how long it takes to find out).
The Anxiety, “Meet Me at Our Spot” – It’s the archetypal 2021 story. An artist known for a decade-old Hip-Hop novelty returns as a pop-punk artist. Alternative radio invested five months in making Willow’s “Transparent Soul” a top 5 hit. Then a 15-month-old song by a side project emerged via TikTok and became an instantly phenomenal multi-format pop hit. Alternative didn’t even seem to notice, even though “Spot” sure seemed to be of a piece with many of its current hits. Alternative’s much-derided attempt earlier this year to find cume records wasn’t wrong — only some of the choices and holding on to songs like “Mood” and “Without You” after their hipness had worn off even at Top 40. But the new un-siloed generation that doesn’t care about our format designations should be making the right multi-format songs easier.