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WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE RADIO STATION?!
I listen to WFAN online a lot, because I enjoy being angry. WFAN's online feed has the same doom-and-gloom hosts like Joe Benigno ("Oh, the pain!") and the rapidly disintegrating alliance of Mike and the Mad Dog, but it also features commercials that are a million times worse than those you hear on their regular signal, repeated with ten times the frequency.
For instance, an ad for 1-877-KARS4KIDS. It would be impossible to truly describe how annoying the ditty in this commercial is in print form, so I won't even try. Suffice to say, even though this commercial is for a charity (whose aims are mysteriously unclear, other than to get you to give them your car), I hope everyone associated with it gets hit by a truck. All at the same time. And then fall into a vat of sulfuric acid. And then have that vat get hit by another, bigger truck.
But there's another ad I've been hearing a lot lately (a lot = 17 times every half hour) that I find just as disturbing for different reasons. It's for a new online radio station, Allnumberoneradio.com. They proudly proclaim that they play "only songs that were NUMBER ONE on the Billboard chart!"
There's a supremely flawed premise at work here, the same kind that gave us the Big Gulp and the Super Size. It's the very American principle that says, Why have one of something when you can have a thousand? Obviously, if a song hit number one, it must be a good song, right? So if you had a station that played ONLY number ones, then that station would be the bestest station ever!
The problem is, there are a lot of great songs that never hit number one. And I'm not just talking about obscure stuff that only appeals to music snobs like me. Most of what we now call classic rock never even sniffed the pop charts. Neither did most great soul and R&B songs from the 60s and 70s, with the exception of Motown (though not even all of their classics topped the charts). And by definition, it eliminates any song recorded before the advent of Billboard.
If you look at the recorded legacy of your Favorite Classic Group, chances are they don't have a number one song to their credit. And if they do, it's a good chance that big hit is one of their worst, most pandering late-period songs. Did you know Bob Dylan's best selling single was a disco version of "It Ain't Me Babe" he cut in 1978? True story!*
What kind of songs make it to number one? Sometimes they're undeniably great feats of pop craftsmanship. The Beatles had a bajillion number one hits, and most of them are unimpeachable as works of art. And then there's...well, I'm sure there are other examples.
But far more often, number one hits are the audio equivalent of cafeteria food, inoffensive but palatable to all. Meanwhile, great songwriters toil in relative obscurity for small cultish audiences and don't get recognized by the world at large until 10 years after they're dead. This is true in any medium. Look at the New York Times Best Seller list. James Patterson's got, like, 15 books on it. Does that mean he's a better writer than Jonathan Lethem?
Number one songs are often the result of inexplicable pop culture trends that emerge like tornados. Science has no idea why they happen, and they can't tell us when or where they'll appear. All we know is that, given certain atmospheric conditions, they tear up the landscape and leave a huge mess behind when they disappear.
Like, we're all minding our business when it suddenly becomes impossible to escape "Who Let the Dogs Out." Or how about 15 years ago, when an album of Gregorian chants stormed up the Billboard charts for absolutely no reason whatsoever. All of a sudden, monks were hot. Why? Before we could figure it out, they were gone, and we were all on to the next thing.
Here's a totally unfair, cherry-picked list of some number one songs from the past 20 years.
"Don't Worry, Be Happy", Bobby McFerrin
"I'm Too Sexy", Right Said Fred
"Wild Wild West", Will Smith
"London Bridge," Fergie
"I'd Do Anything for Love (but I Won't Do That)", Meat Loaf
"Bad Day", Daniel Powter
"Jump", Kriss Kross (8 weeks at #1!)
"Smooth", Santana with Rob Thomas (12 weeks at #1!)
"Macarena", Los Del Rio (14 weeks! 14!)
And here's a list of some artists who have never had a number one hit on the Hot 100 chart:
Led Zeppelin
Nina Simone
Tom Waits
Black Sabbath
Wilson Pickett
The Who
Elvis Costello
Run DMC
The Kinks
So, by the self-imposed rules that this radio station operates under, you will never hear any songs by any of these people. But there's a significant statistical chance you will hear THE DADDY MAC'LL MAKE YOU JUMP JUMP!
I do not like them odds.
* Completely not true
Posted 07.18.08 09:21am * Permalink
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