Slower Charts and the Summer Song Of 2007

In May, when the candidates for Summer Song of 2007 were last examined, it had to be pointed out that Justin Timberlake “SexyBack” had come out of nowhere a few weeks “after Memorial Day 2006”–the biggest in a slew of mid-summer superstar releases, and ultimately the biggest Top 40 record in a long time.
As it turned out, there was no need to hedge my bets. The superstar rush that brought us new Beyonce and Christina Aguilera along with Justin last summer did not materialize this year. There are fast-breaking Top 40 hits that have emerged since May–Sean Kingston’s “Me Love”; Will.I.Am’s “I Got It From My Mama”; T-Pain’s “Bartender”; Justin’s follow up, “Lovestoned;” Kanye West’s “Stronger”–but nothing that has reached “SexyBack” status by summer’s ending.
If any such SexyBack-tracking was required this year, it would be on behalf of songs like Rihanna’s “Umbrella” that I thought would run their course sometime during June. Instead, “Umbrella” held on for most of the summer, all but outlasting its follow-up, “Shut Up And Drive.” Similarly, Pink’s “Who Knew” needed the entire summer to finally emerge from “U + Ur Hand’s” shadow, at least in some markets.
If the hits of summer 2007 often felt like the hits of spring 2007, it says a lot about the state of Top 40 radio, which has felt for a while like it was holding on to records longer and creating fewer hits for a variety of reasons. Financially strapped labels have been putting fewer records out there. Tastemaker stations have dwindled down to a relative handful. Songs often show their biggest spin increase weeks after they hit the Top 10–meaning that the best way to have a hit is to already be a hit.
If any record illustrates this, it’s “Me Love.” It came out when Kingston’s “Beautiful Girls” was dominating the format. It was as obvious and accessible a hit record as its predecessor. You might have thought that it would explode on impact–rushed in to “power new” rotation on to every Top 40 and Rhythmic in America. But on the day after it first surfaced, “Me Love” was on only a relative handful of stations–most of them in major-markets, igniting over the course of weeks, not days.
There was a similar slow ramp-up, by the way, for Avril Lavigne’s “Girlfriend,” which surfaced in the twilight weeks of “Keep Holding On”), “Who Knew,” and “Shut Up And Drive” (not ultimately a smash on the order of the others, but a record that did pick up speed eventually). All of which makes you wonder: Has Top 40 developed a fear of playing two songs at a time even by core artists? Do impact dates actually determine when even the obvious hits get played? Are PDs so constricted now that even playing the follow-up to “Beautiful Girls” out-of-the-box invites corporate scrutiny?
The only possible positive explanation is if Top 40 PDs just felt that there were so many hits they couldn’t get to them all right away. Through the summer, 2007 remained good to both Top 40 music and the stations that played it. That said, going through the candidates at summer’s end, there isn’t a lot of tempo–always a hallmark of a healthy format–among the true smashes.
If it weren’t for my rule that a true summer song has to be uptempo, the biggest summer song would clearly be Fergie’s “Big Girls Don’t Cry” and the runner-up would be Plain White T’s “Hey There Delilah.” Both had the sort of multi-format ubiquity that one looks for from the summer song. Both pleasantly surprised the industry–“Big Girls” turning Fergie from increasingly legitimate hitmaker to sudden CHR core artist. But neither song feels like it had to be a hit in summer.
What of some of the other candidates? Kat DeLuna’s “Wine Up,” the most calculated of the entries in terms of content and timing, languished mid-summer. Epic is now going after it again, citing resurgent callout, but even if it rebounds, the timing keeps it from being the summer song.
Amy Winehouse’s “Rehab,” a record that Top 40 PDs might have dismissed, like Lily Allen, as too exotic, instead got the airplay it deserved but ran its course quickly, without even a boost at the end from its artist’s real-life notoriety. But it will be one of the two songs by which I most fondly recall the summer, along with …
Rihanna’s “Umbrella,” which, as previously stated, worked out better in terms of timing than expected. And as hit singles went, it was beautifully crafted with that repetitive hook that straddled the line between irritating and irresistible. It also built to the sort of end-of-the-bridge explosion that you more often find in R&B records from 35 years ago.
But for multi-format domination and seasonal feel, our summery, summary judgment ultimately has to go to DeLuna’s label-mate Sean Kingston. “Beautiful Girls” is barely more uptempo than “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” but the Caribbean feel instantly made it a summer record. And in New York, it played everywhere from Urban WQHT (Hot 97) to AC WLTW. And as with “SexyBack,” Kingston’s ability to immediately squeeze off another hit provides a little extra legitimacy.
And now for your thoughts: What was the Summer Song of 2007? And is Top 40 indeed getting slower and why?