Writing a weekly column about Classic Rock/Hits Radio gave me a great excuse to sneak out last night to see the latest biopic, Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere, so I could use the movie as a basis for this week’s post.
While I didn’t come home and rush to my keyboard rife with inspiration, a couple of articles I’ve since read about the movie made some points that are relevant to our little corner of the radio world.
So with full gratitude to Killian Faith Kelly’s piece in GQ, Eight Lessons Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere Can Teach Future Music Biopics, and Daniel Parris’ latest Stat Significant post, Hollywood’s Music Biopic Boom: Quantifying the Rise of a Soulless Genre. Here are some takeaways from the Springsteen movie that relate to running a Classic Rock/Hits radio station.
People Still Like to Learn About Their Favorite Artists
While you can debate the effectiveness of how filmmaker Scott Cooper accomplished this on screen, a few of the more interesting moments in the movie are when we see Springsteen being inspired to write the songs for Nebraska.
You see Bruce stumbling across the film Badlands, which led him to learn more about Charles Starkweather’s killing spree, which eventually led to the title track. You also see him reading Flannery O’Connor stories, which also inspired several songs.
These are the stories people like, and we need to keep sharing them.
Don’t Let the Facts Get in the Way of a Good Story
Faith-Kelly notes that some of the moments in the movie were probably true to life but would have benefited from embellishment. Like the moment when Springsteen’s manager describes the new songs to his wife by saying they are “deeply personal.”
It creates a “no duh” sort of moment that could have been improved by him saying something more profound.
That applies to entertaining on the radio too. While there are times facts are important, quite often embellishment is the key to good storytelling.
Specifics Matter
One point that I agree with Faith-Kelly on is that the movie fails to develop the secondary characters.
One of Springsteen’s friends drives him across the country as the singer is having a breakdown. We never learn who this person is, how he fits into Springsteen’s world, or anything about him. It leaves the emotional stakes exceptionally low even in a final heartfelt moment between the two characters.
This is a great reminder that the more specific the details are in a story, the more brightly the picture is painted for the audience, especially in an audio medium where there are no visuals to rely on.
Don’t Be Too Subtle
The title of this movie is somewhat of an outlier.
Parris points out that most music biopics are either the artists’ name, like Amy or Ray, a famous song title, like Bohemian Rhapsody or Walk the Line, or a combination of the two, like Bob Marley: One Love.
Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere gets halfway there but then chooses to reference a song that doesn’t exist, which leaves it to the potential viewer to decode the marketing.
A good reminder that the less direct your promotions and marketing are, the more risk you take of wasting your efforts because the audience doesn’t have time to figure out the message you are sending.
Play the Hits
Not that you probably don’t already know this, but I’m going to say it anyway because at times we all forget this simple rule. It applies in radio and in filmmaking.
Faith-Kelly notes that even though the songs on Nebraska aren’t huge hits, their moody sound would have fit the film perfectly, yet they get little play in the movie. Likewise, there are a lot of huge Springsteen songs that a clever writing team could have found ways to take advantage of by including them in appropriate moments.
That didn’t happen either. In our world it’s a lot more straightforward. There are ways to work in secondary and even tertiary songs in certain moments; the rest of the time, play the hits.
Hopefully, these thoughts will not only help keep your Classic Rock/Hits station moving in the right direction, they will also save you $40 or more in tickets and concessions, as I wholly recommend waiting until this movie hits streaming.
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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.
