If you are reading this, you probably know the story: as the Classic Rock and Hits formats have attempted to continue appealing to the vaunted 25-54-year-old demo and not fall over the dreaded demographic cliff, music from the eighties has become central to the format, and the nineties are starting to push their way to greater prominence.
That does, however, leave us with a critical issue: what role should music from the seventies and even the late sixties play in the format? How do we manage some of the artists and songs that, once upon a time, were the biggest in the format?
There is not a clear-cut answer to this question, and to muddy the waters further, here are three interesting, possibly conflicting, stories that might impact your opinion on the matter.
1) 1,000 Weeks
According to a recent Billboard article, Pink Floyd’s iconic album The Dark Side of the Moon is approaching a milestone: 1,000 weeks on the Billboard Hot 200. The January 10 chart was the album’s 996th non-consecutive week. That means, barring anything unexpected, on the chart dated February 7, the album should hit 1,000 weeks.
Bob Marley’s Legend: The Best of Bob Marley and the Wailers and Journey’s Greatest Hits are second and third, with 920 and 890 weeks, respectively. All three were off the chart from 1991 through the end of 2009, when “catalog” albums were not allowed to chart, only current and recently released albums. For reference, that period represents another 936 weeks that Pink Floyd could have been padding their statistics.
The article notes that the revival and consistent chart success of older albums is partially due to streaming activity, which was mixed into the chart methodology starting in 2014. Consistent listening to classic albums like The Dark Side of the Moon plays a large role in keeping the album on the chart.
2) More Than a Billion
Speaking of the impact of streaming, in a story on the Far Out website, Lauren Hunter wrote about which Classic Rock songs have surpassed the one billion stream mark. She points out that “Here Comes the Sun” is the only Beatles song in Spotify’s Billions Club.
At first glance, that seems surprising, but when Hunter notes that the Classic Rock artist with the most songs past the billion mark is Queen, with five titles in the club, it all starts to fall into place. The catalyst is likely the 2018 biopic Bohemian Rhapsody, which exposed Queen to a younger audience.
After the movie hit, she says, over seventy percent of Queen’s streaming play came from people under the age of thirty-five, illustrating how that audience, and their taste, can clearly drive future consumption of Classic Rock.
3) 50 Years Old
Unbelievably, that’s how old Sean Ono Lennon is. I know that’s how time works, but it’s still hard for me to conceptualize that he has turned the big five zero. Even more difficult to imagine is that he believes it’s possible future generations could completely lose touch with the music of The Beatles and the impact the band had.
In an interview with CBS Sunday Morning, Ono Lennon talks about being a custodian of his dad’s legacy and explains that something he once thought was impossible — people forgetting about The Beatles — now seems plausible.
The interview also talks about a short film Ono Lennon set to his parents’ classic “Happy Xmas (War Is Over),” which won an Oscar award last year, and a new documentary on HBO called One to One, which chronicles the benefit show John and Yoko headlined in 1972 at Madison Square Garden.
While both of Ono Lennon’s recent projects are wonderful, a short film and an HBO documentary seem unlikely to capture the imagination of younger listeners the way the Queen biopic did.
Which leaves us with the same question this post started with: what, if anything, do we as Classic Rock and Hits stations owe to the legacy of the artists that launched the format?
For my part, I think finding ways to package and pay tribute to this music, while keeping stations in their lane and primarily playing the hits people are asking for, is the true artistry of programming in these formats. But then again, maybe all the nights I spent listening to Abbey Road and The Dark Side of the Moon just leave me wistful for a time that has passed.
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Mike Stern is a Classic Rock columnist and Features writer for Barrett Media. He has been with Jacobs Media consulting stations in the Classic Rock, Rock, Alternative and AAA world for more than a decade. Prior to that he programmed stations in Chicago, Detroit, Denver Las Vegas and other markets. He also worked as News/Talk Editor for Radio and Records, wrote about Top 40 Radio for Billboard Magazine and had his own radio talent coaching business called Talent Mechanic.
