Company News · August 13, 2008

What’s At The Bottom Of The Music Test?

By sross

This week, with many stations gearing up their music testing for the fall book, we took a look at a sample of music tests in various formats from the past several years to look at some telling titles that finished somewhere in the bottom 25, usually out of no less than 550-600 songs.

Here’s not what’s usually at the bottom of a music test: the goofy borderline novelties, often from the ’70s, that typically comprise any “Worst Songs of All Time” list. There were a few I came across (Osmonds, “One Bad Apple”; Disco Tex & the Sex-O-Lettes, “Get Dancing,” Aqua, “Barbie Girl,’ Shelly West’s “Jose Cuervo”). But a lot of the others have long selected themselves out of contention. It’s been a long time since any PD had any particular expectation that “Me and You and a Dog Named Boo” would actually test. Or even Starship’s “We Built This City,” Blender’s worst song nominee of recent years.

Besides, not all of the songs that you think would test terribly do. Blue Swede’s version of “Hooked On A Feeling” (the one with the chanting oo-ga-cha-ga opening) turned out to do okay on some Oldies/Classic Hits stations, once the kids-of-the-’70s and not their annoyed parents or older brothers were the ones voting on it. There are situations where “Mickey” and “Seasons In The Sun” come back playable. Even Billy Ray Cyrus “Achy Breaky Heart” tests well enough, if polarized, that many Country PDs just never put it in the music test, lest they be forced to actually consider playing it.

For any polarizing novelty, there’s also just as much critically beloved music that can be found clogging up the last 25 slots of a music test. In my spot checks, I found U2’s “Gloria” and “Angel Of Harlem,” Dire Straits’ “Industrial Disease,” Roxy Music’s “Avalon,” the Byrds’ “Feel A Whole Lot Better,” Nick Lowe’s “So It Goes,” the Gin Blossoms’ “Alison Road,” Public Enemy’s “Bring The Noise,” and almost every Steely Dan deep cut.

Occupying a prominent spot in Sean’s iPod is almost as much of a guarantee of “bottom-of-the-test” status as critical acclaim. After five years of working with music testing, I’ve had to come to grips with enjoying “Buffalo Stance” by Neneh Cherry, “There Goes Another Love Song” by the Outlaws, “Every 1’s A Winner”by Hot Chocolate, “Don’t Misunderstand Me” by Rossington-Collins Band, and “If I Could Only Win Your Love” by Emmylou Harris with a relatively small group of others (particularly if you’re looking for the person that would enjoy them all).

What else lurks at the bottom of the music test?

A lot of songs that were big enough hits and only a little polarizing at the time, but have been whittled down by the passage of time:
* ELO, “Shine A Little Light”
* Van Halen, “Dreams”
* Richard Marx, “Satisfied”
* Tina Turner, “We Don’t Need Another Hero”
* Phil Collins, “Take Me Home”
* Taylor Dayne, “I’ll Always Love You”
* Delfonics, “Didn’t I (Blow Your Mind)”
* Huey Lewis & the News, “Stuck With You”

A lot of songs that consultant Alan Sneed would characterize as “terminal currents,” songs that never got enough airplay after their initial run on the radio to have any particular purchase over listeners now. I could reel off a long list here that would lose anybody except the true chart junkies, but a few:
* Eddie Money, “The Love In Your Eyes”
* Dogs Eye View, “Everything Falls Apart”
* Adam Ant, “Room At The Top”
* Bell Biv DeVoe, “When Will I See You Smile”
* Animotion, “Room To Move”
* Huey Lewis & the News, “Working For A Living”; (as Lewis himself recently told an interviewer, those who remember it think it was much bigger than it was).

Songs that never got played on the radio enough as currents for listeners to remember them now. As radio programmers try to build gold-based formats around the first generation of Alternative or the rhythmic hits of the late ’80s/early ’90s, it’s hard to find a lot of songs that reached critical mass in the first place, unless you have an “I Wanna Be Sedated” by the Ramones or “Blister In The Sun” by the Violent Femmes that took on a life of its own at some latter date. So it should be no surprise seeing, say, “Show Me Your Soul” by Red Hot Chili Peppers or “The Killing Moon” by Echo & the Bunnymen on this list – there just weren’t enough people hearing them at the time.

Even in Classic Rock, where there was critical mass and we think respondents listened to every song on the album equally, there are a lot of depth cuts from major bands that have been at the bottom of a test, including:
* Led Zeppelin, “You Shook Me”
* Heart, “Dreamboat Annie”
* Supertramp, “Dreamer”
* Van Halen, “And The Cradle Will Rock”
* AC/DC, “Let Me Put My Love In You” (in this case, respondents options should probably have included, “uh, no thanks”).

There are whole genres that often populate the bottom rungs of a test, or at least their second tier of music does. “Sweet Home Alabama” may be the most reliable tester of the last few years, but it doesn’t have many counterparts (witness the aforementioned Outlaws, Rossington-Collins Band, or even a lot of Skynyrd and Allman Brothers depth tracks). Keyboard-based ’70s progressive rock does well in only a handful of places. And late ’80s hair has given us a handful of smashes (“Pour Some Sugar On Me,” “Every Rose Has Its Thorn”) and a lot of cellar dwellers, including:
* Def Leppard, “Let’s Get Rocked”
* Autograph, “Turn Up The Radio” (although it became a secret weapon record for some Bob- and Jack-type stations)
* Dokken, “Breaking The Chains”
* Scorpions, “Tease Me, Please Me”
* Ratt, “Lay It Down”
* Tora Tora, “Walking Shoes”
* Warrant, “Down Boys,” and even at one station:
* Queensryche, “Silent Lucidity”

And, yes, there are some well-known polarizing titles and artists or some that just seem too goofy to test well, among them:
* Re-Flex, “The Politics of Dancing”
* Jethro Tull, “Aqualung”
* Clay Aiken, “Invisible”
* Backstreet Boys, “Shape Of My Heart”
* Donna Summer, “MacArthur Park”
* Real McCoy, “Run Away”
* Kentucky Headhunters, “Ballad of Davy Crockett”
* Daniel Bedingfield, “If You’re Not The One”
* Little Jimmy Dickens, “Take An Old Cold ‘Tater (And Wait)”

By this time, even among this list of reliably unreliable testers, somebody has undoubtedly said, “Well that tested well for me.” Songs fluctuate wildly depending on how they’ve been heard in a market, how they’ve been used at the station in question, and how central they are to the format (in direct response to the oft-held notion that a reliable tester would work everywhere, but would still violate expectation).
Songs that were at the bottom of a test a few years ago get a new lease on life through a TV commercial or merely a changing available audience. (ELO’s “Hold On Tight” was at the bottom of one test, now it’s becoming one of those songs with which Oldies stations try to forge into the ’80s.)

In the wrong market, even the songs that “always” test might not always test, or vice-versa. The Parliament/Funkadelic ’70s hits are often at the bottom of an Urban AC test–except in a few certain markets where they’re near the top. I also came across a slew of usually serviceable Alabama titles at the bottom of a Country test . . . in the Northeast. And interspersed with them were “Redneck Girl” and “Hicktown.”
There have been AC tests where Mercy Me’s Christian crossover “I Can Only Imagine” was at the bottom in one not-so-heartland market. There have even been tests with AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long” (no, not the Celine Dion version) at the bottom, although, to be fair, we had to go to Eastern Europe to find that one.
In other words, it’s why there is no such thing as a national safe list. Even if you could safely assume that the stations you’re looking at all did their own testing – and you can’t – there are too many variables, and the listeners often have their own ideas about what they want.

Sean Ross is available to help your station find some good songs to test this fall, too. Call 908-707-4707 for information about Edison Research music testing.

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