Anyone else thinks CHR music has become even more annoying?

gr8oldies said:

There is this service called Spotify. Maybe you've heard of it. It'll even help you discover music you may like better than what the radio is playing.
I can listen to American Top 40 reruns from the early 70s and wonder "what the hell were we thinking?". No wonder young males flocked in droves to Progressive/Album rock.

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Spotify's computer only. Also a good music discovery "tool" is going on station playlists via "Tunegenie" or whatever method is on station's websites.

wxman1976 said:

As we get older, it is sometimes hard to distinguish how much is age, and how much is trying to look at format changes objectively. Being almost 40, I was raised on CHR of the 80s and 90s. Personally, I liked the variety of hits much better on CHR back in those days. CHR has now evolved (or maybe devolved) to about 90% rhythmic pop and EDM. Rock has pretty much disappeared in the 2010s and most stations only have about 2 or 3 slots for the true Hot AC ("Let It Go", "7 Years") and alternative crossovers ("Stressed Out") into regular rotation. Even though "Stressed Out" was a big alternative hit, there are a lot of rhythmic pop elements to the song.

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People who grew up in the rock era of the 1960s and 70s really hated the '90s when hip-hop and r&b started to become more popular. It was the same story in the golden age of rock. People who grew up during the jazz era couldn't stand rock.

I think 2010s music currently is still palatable for people who grew up in the 90s as the genres haven't changed that much. They've evolved but you still have the same basic genres in rotation now as you did then. The one exception is rock. Since 2010, it's been pretty much absent from Top 40 with the exception of the occasional alternative crossover hit, most of which isn't true rock.

As some posters have said about CHR playing the same songs over and over and songs aren't as good as the 80's and 90's. As a teen growing up in the 80's I can remember a specific station in the Bay Area 105 KITS that was a Mike Josephs formatted Hot Hits station and they would play the top five records every hour (I'm not kidding!). Try hearing Taco "Puttin' On The Ritz" every hour in the summer of 1983 and I'm sure you will have a different outlook on some of those 80's songs LOL!!!

Stitches was mentioned at the top of this thread, and as someone in the demographic though not female, I'm getting sick of that one.

bobdavcav said:

Stitches was mentioned at the top of this thread, and as someone in the demographic though not female, I'm getting sick of that one.

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Its not on the chart anymore - even if they counted recurrents it would still be down to #30.

I was born in 1995, and can't tolerate any of today's CHR hits. My musical wheelhouse would be 60's-70's, and a heavy focus on the 80's. Thankfully, I can still hear music from the 1980's on the radio, but much less of the 60's and 70's. In terms of modern music, I find some modern alternative music to be enjoyable, but even that gets old after a while.

I think for many of us, we have found CHR left us behind. I found I liked less than 50% of the currents by 1990 and it has become less with each decade although I hear some great songs. Quite a few my age that didn't go the classic rock, classic hits or oldies route ended up listening to country. As a friend put it, country is just top 40 with a twang.

Small playlists were king even by the mid-1970s and especially once Michael Joseph's Hot Hits became the latest and greatest. I know of stations that only played 15 or so currents, all monster hits and a few recurrents. Rotations were running about 75 minutes.

There was a top 40 in San Antonio that played all currents (70 minute rotation) with a mix of hot recurrents in a medley after the :50 break. It was about 5 or 6 minutes, I think, and the medley repeated hourly but it might have changed daily. I think that was 760 KSAJ. That would have been early 1980s.

fordranger797 said:

I was born in 1995, and can't tolerate any of today's CHR hits. My musical wheelhouse would be 60's-70's, and a heavy focus on the 80's. Thankfully, I can still hear music from the 1980's on the radio, but much less of the 60's and 70's. In terms of modern music, I find some modern alternative music to be enjoyable, but even that gets old after a while.

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Hey Ford, how you doing? It's been a while since we've seen you on the Seattle board. As for the topic at hand, I'm finding myself listening to a lot less CHR than I did even two years ago, though I still listen to a lot of Hot AC. I figured this would happen eventually, but that I'd be pushing 40 before it did.

So, who listens to radio any longer? Not I. I have several sticks filled with my all time favs - about 6,000 in total - and plug one of these into my music machine (home or car) whenever I get the urge to listen. I am not a captive of modern radio or all the crap that passes for music on those disgusting TV shows AND I NEVER HAVE TO LISTEN TO C(RAP) AT ALL!

I do miss what music radio once was though....and the guys who made it entertainment.

landtuna said:

So, who listens to radio any longer? Not I.

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That's not what you've said at other times. You have a favorite station that you listen to in your car. Or at least that's what you've said.

And I'm here to tell you that there are still guys (and gals) who make it entertainment today. Just that you don't like the music they play.

I suppose what has me scratching my head about landtuna's comment is why are you wasting time posting on a board about a service you don't use and think is not of any value? I'm not trying to start something but I am truly asking because I can't understand why you would.

DavidEduardo said:

In the late 50's and early 60's, I found that any of my local Cleveland Top 40's (there were generally 3 of them from about 1958 on into the 60's) would play about 1/3 songs I liked, 1/3 songs I neither liked not disliked and 1/3 songs I hated. So I did a lot of switching back and forth, as I never could hear more than a couple of songs I liked in a row.

The big test was the year-end countdown. Even before I started working in radio, I taped the countdown each year and learned to edit with a blade, block and tape to remove the most detested songs... usually about 30 out of 100 songs.



By the mid-70's callout had been invented. The reasons were several. First, 45's were no longer selling much so sales reports were less and less accurate. Second, stations realized that they needed to find consensus songs as there were more competitors trying to take their audience. Callout proved that there were far fewer songs our core listeners liked, so playlists shrunk. One of the reasons recurrents and gold were added to Top 40 station lists was the absence of more than a handful of real current hits.

The late 70's was when Jerry Clifton did a 20 song hit-station in Miami (which famously lost its license!) and was quoted as saying that there were never more than 17 real hits at any given time.

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There was about a four year period when we only had one viable Top 40 station, so I got used to something like "Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte" and it didn't bother me at all. The alternative would have been the "Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte" station!

TheBigA said:

That's not what you've said at other times. You have a favorite station that you listen to in your car. Or at least that's what you've said.

And I'm here to tell you that there are still guys (and gals) who make it entertainment today. Just that you don't like the music they play.

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The intent of my message went a bit askew I think. What I meant to convey is that radio has taken a back seat because it no longer has the entertainment value I like. I do listen to one of the local HD's here in Phoenix but even it is just a jukebox now so not much difference between it and my memory stick.

And your second sentence is spot on. Music comes first. Like Mr. Gleason says if you don't like it you tune out so that means I am not around to hear the DJ's poke fun. In the old days I didn't like every song played but the entertainment factor kept me listening. Not enough any longer.

landtuna said:

In the old days I didn't like every song played but the entertainment factor kept me listening. Not enough any longer.

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The difference is today you don't like ANY of the songs played on stations with personalities. The issue isn't the lack of personalities, or that they're not entertaining, but rather you hate all the music they're playing. They could bring back the dead personalities you loved from the 60s, but if they played only today's current music, you'd shut the radio off.

b-turner said:

I suppose what has me scratching my head about landtuna's comment is why are you wasting time posting on a board about a service you don't use and think is not of any value? I'm not trying to start something but I am truly asking because I can't understand why you would.

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Believe it or not I actually had exactly the same thought when I typed that out. Reason is, I guess, radio, both commercial and military, has been a big part of my life since I built my first crystal set at age 5 or so. I am still broken-hearted what commercial radio has become but I hold out hope that it might resurrect to something approaching its golden days. Probably, if ever, not in my lifetime though. Nevertheless, by reading what others post here I keep my toe in the water and do keep learning things I would not ordinarily be privy to. I guess you could say radio has died but not my interest in it.

I still have my log book which I kept as a kid of all the DXing I did. It is fun to go through it every once in a while and remember what fun radio as a hobby was, long before my navy career took me into a (short) career. Interestingly, I belong to two "wayback" forums on FB: one is from my old home town and the other is navy radiomen. A ton of people on both forums seem to have the same feelings I do towards radio. I guess it will always be a guilty pleasure.

landtuna said:

I am still broken-hearted what commercial radio has become but I hold out hope that it might resurrect to something approaching its golden days.

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Once again the issue isn't radio, but the music. Don't blame radio or the personalities for the music they play. They play what's popular now, just as the stations played what was popular 50-60 years ago. That hasn't changed. What's changed is your strong distaste for any current music. There's nothing radio can do about that.

TheBigA said:

The difference is today you don't like ANY of the songs played on stations with personalities. The issue isn't the lack of personalities, or that they're not entertaining, but rather you hate all the music they're playing. They could bring back the dead personalities you loved from the 60s, but if they played only today's current music, you'd shut the radio off.

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You are correct as it would pertain to specific genres but not all. It is interesting to me to peruse through the song entries on YouTube and note the number of negative comments posted about "today's" music. I won't argue whether or not it is an age related thing (as many on here claim) or a product of something we experienced during our younger days (which I think is much more accurate). I do know my kids (all young adults now) do not consider "their" music the same part of their lives that we did. And judging by the posts attached to most every Oldies song it seems a great many people feel the same way.

landtuna said:

You are correct as it would pertain to specific genres but not all.

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This thread and this board specifically relates to Contemporary Hit Radio (CHR), and I doubt there's a single song or performer in that format you like. It seems a waste of time for you to even post here, given your obvious distaste for the music. I understand the desire to express your opinion, but you're not going to change anyone else's opinion, just as none of us will change yours.

TheBigA said:

This thread and this board specifically relates to Contemporary Hit Radio (CHR), and I doubt there's a single song or performer in that format you like.

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You lose. "Call Me Maybe" by you-know-who (I know.....I'm embarrassed to admit it).