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iHeart's "Sunny" Soft AC gets a makeover

K

kevtronics

I noticed this week that iHeartRadio's "Sunny" has gotten a makeover -- they're playing newer and more upbeat music, including Taylor Dayne's "Tell It to My Heart" (which I found very jarring and out-of-format) and the Backstreet Boys' "I Want It That Way".

They also have new jingles that seem to no longer include any reference to "Easy Listening" and instead mention "the best of the '70s, '80s, and '90s".

The bulk of their playlist is still typical '70s and '80s Soft AC fare, but whatever '60s music they had remaining now seems to be gone completely, and they now sprinkle in a few 2000s tunes like Norah Jones and Michael Bublé.
 
I'm guessing they lost some subscribing stations, or had requests from stations to provide a format like this. Rather than start a new feed, they updated this. Like with the migration of 50s/60s classic hits to 70s/80s, this simply reflects the change in music taste for those in their late 40s to their 60s.
 
kevtronics said:
I stand corrected -- they are still calling it "Easy Listening Favorites" in the hourly ID.
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Sounds like what WEZV Myrtle Beach SC is doing. Changed their music almost completely but tried to give the impression what they are doing is "easy listening". Enough of the easy stuff is still around to make that almost credible, but almost none of the really easy stuff. Some 60s music but not a lot.

I guess iHeart can get away with it because the real easy listening is on The Standard.
 
vchimpanzee said:
Sounds like what WEZV Myrtle Beach SC is doing. Changed their music almost completely but tried to give the impression what they are doing is "easy listening". Enough of the easy stuff is still around to make that almost credible, but almost none of the really easy stuff. Some 60s music but not a lot.

I guess iHeart can get away with it because the real easy listening is on The Standard.
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The term "easy listening" can encompass many things to listeners today. I use the term "easy listening" to refer to the music I play on my internet-based radio station, but it's really not, as traditional soft AC was designed to be a hybrid format of easy listening and adult contemporary. But these days...people even consider mainstream AC and other forms of AC as easy listening music. Really, the term "easy listening" has a broad scope and could mean almost anything to the average Joe Q. Listener.
 
passtheword said:
The term "easy listening" can encompass many things to listeners today. I use the term "easy listening" to refer to the music I play on my internet-based radio station, but it's really not, as traditional soft AC was designed to be a hybrid format of easy listening and adult contemporary. But these days...people even consider mainstream AC and other forms of AC as easy listening music. Really, the term "easy listening" has a broad scope and could mean almost anything to the average Joe Q. Listener.
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I personally am sick of this trend. When you say you want easy listening, people who think mainstream AC counts are of no help.

I remember walking into a record store (yes! There WERE such things, before we could get our music online) and asking where easy listening was. The man asked, "Isn't the politically correct term adult contemporary?" No, I said, it was not. Adult contemporary means something else, I told him.
 
vchimpanzee said:
I personally am sick of this trend. When you say you want easy listening, people who think mainstream AC counts are of no help.

I remember walking into a record store (yes! There WERE such things, before we could get our music online) and asking where easy listening was. The man asked, "Isn't the politically correct term adult contemporary?" No, I said, it was not. Adult contemporary means something else, I told him.
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Since when does anyone outside the industry know the term, "Adult Contemporary"? Incidentally, quite awhile after one might have thought it would have changed, the Billboard "AC" chart was still labelled, "Easy Listening".
 
I somehow missed seeing "Tell It to My Heart" in the first post. WEZV is doing that one and it just makes no sense at all. "Jarring" is a good way to describe it. The station gives the impression of being easy listening and then songs like that show up. Probably the same on Sunny.
 
In the past week, Billy Joel's "Uptown Girl" is the most uptempo song I've heard on Sunny. Maybe playing songs like "Tell It to My Heart" and "I Want It That Way" were just experiments to see how listeners would react using the thumbs-up/thumbs-down buttons on the iHeartRadio app.
 
kevtronics said:
In the past week, Billy Joel's "Uptown Girl" is the most uptempo song I've heard on Sunny. Maybe playing songs like "Tell It to My Heart" and "I Want It That Way" were just experiments to see how listeners would react using the thumbs-up/thumbs-down buttons on the iHeartRadio app.
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"Uptown Girl" isn't really uptempo, or at least not too uptempo on America's Best Music. I could live with that.
 
vchimpanzee said:
"Uptown Girl" isn't really uptempo, or at least not too uptempo on America's Best Music. I could live with that.
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"Uptown Girl" was a soft AC staple thirty years ago. That is nothing new for the revamped soft ACs (soft oldies) stations to play that track. Ironcially enough, my internet-based radio station is currently playing that song, lol.

I will have to admit, though, that "Tell it To My Heart" by Taylor Dayne sounds too uptempo and dance-oriented for the "Sunny" or any traditionally-based soft AC format. "I Want It That Way", however, does seem to gel well with the rest of the soft AC format; many soft AC stations in the 2000's did play that song. Many of the revamped soft AC stations today do not incorporate post-90's music in their playlists, which is why "I Want It That Way" , released in 1999, might sound out of place on such stations.
 
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I also heard Sunny play a '60s song yesterday -- Frankie Valli's "Can't Take My Eyes Off You". Given how often I still hear it in TV commercials, movie soundtracks, and at weddings, it's one of those timeless love songs to continues to appeal to younger generations, like Etta James' "At Last".
 
passtheword said:
"I Want It That Way", however, does seem to gel well with the rest of the soft AC format; many soft AC stations in the 2000's did play that song. Many of the revamped soft AC stations today do not incorporate post-90's music in their playlists, which is why "I Want It That Way" , released in 1999, might sound out of place on such stations.
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I'm hearing "I Want It That Way" on WEZV. It doesn't seem all that bad. Most of the songs haven't been too off-the-wall today. Of course, I have the volume really low.
 
I wouldn't know this except the computer froze on me, as it often does when I listen to the radio. WEZV should list the songs they play so i don't have this happen, although from time to time I hear something really good. I have an America's Best Music affiliate playing on iHeartRadio a DVR, when that works. Right now it's not. As I was trying to turn the computer off, I heard "Heaven is a Place on Earth" on WEZV. Does that one qualify as too uptempo for Sunny? I remember thinking it seemed too uptempo for soft rock when it was first popular.
 
I like her voice too, and I liked The Go-Go's, but I'm referring to the instrumentals.

Another example of what I'm talking about is "Hold On" by Wilson Phillips. The girls' voices are nice, but the pounding drums are out of place, especially late in the song. WMNI Columbus, which still calls itself "America's Best Music" and sounds a lot like that format did when Jeff and Carl were still there, doesn't seem to understand this.
 
"Mad About You" on WEZV. Now that's not as bad as the other one, but for a station that was borderline standards just a year ago …

Lots of new songs, or at least I haven't heard them. What do you think about "Don't Stop 'til You Get Enough" on Sunny?
 
I haven't heard the Go-Go's on Sunny, but I did hear the Pointer Sisters' "I'm So Excited". The title alone is ironic for a format that claims to be "relaxing favorites".
 
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