The Same Basic Songs Now Competing with Each Other on Country Radio

Radio/Media 107 Comments


You really do have to feel for the folks who’ve bet their future on corporate country radio. Every day it’s a war of attrition, and a waiting game for when the final pink slips will be dispersed, and yet another morning show team or local afternoon drive personality will be replaced by syndicated programming orchestrated by an algorithm.

But instead of seeing the impending doom where big corporate radio is not even part of the picture anymore and making bold moves to try and resuscitate the format, mainstream country radio is becoming even more narrow in its focus, and more risk averse, and trying to continuously cost cut its way back to profitability. Now it’s trying to squeeze the same basic songs into the same narrow window where copycat tracks are competing with each other directly.

Cody Johnson and Carrie Underwood recently released a new single called “I’m Gonna Love You,” complete with a video full of galloping horses and heavy emotion. It’s a pretty good example of contemporary country pop. And though the melodramatic approach will probably be too much for some people, the performances are pretty powerful, and the production is inoffensive.

Combining the star power of Cody Johnson and Carrie Underwood has also meant the prospects for the single are quite advantageous. It shot up the charts to #21 on the Billboard Country Airplay charts almost immediately, and in a predictable manner, will power its way to #1 whenever it is most advantageous for it to do so according to the master plan of the record label.

But this single presents a problem for the pop project Parmalee. How this band is even still around is quite the marvel, and speaks to the power of radio-centric projects and the way they can take on a zombie state well beyond their shelf life simply from focusing on chart performance. Parmalee currently has a terrible exclusively pop Peter Cetera-sounding single that just crested the Top 10 called “Gonna Love You.”

All of a sudden, you have Cody/Carrie’s “I’m Gonna Love You” competing with Parmalee’s “Gonna Love You” for the same spins. Granted, they’re not the same song, though both are mid tempo power ballads with pretty much the same lyrical hook. It’s like when Shannen Doherty and Jennie Garth showed up to the prom in the same dress on Beverly Hills 90210 (five points if you get that reference).

But the coincidences currently haunting country radio go further than that. Sitting at #1 on the Billboard Country Airplay chart at the moment is Justin Moore’s “This Is My Dirt.” Considered in a vacuum, it’s not a terrible song, pushing aside the programmed beat at the beginning. The song is about refusing to sell the old family farm to a developer.

But if it sounds like you’ve heard that premise before from a recent hit song, it’s because you have. It’s the same exact scenario and approach of Cody Johnson’s Certified Platinum “Dirt Cheap,” which was released in March of this year, peaked on radio recently at #5 on the Billboard Country Airplay chart, #1 on Country Aircheck, and is still receiving recurrent spins. It’s a good song, especially for country radio. But chased by Justin Moore’s “This Is My Dirt,” they both work to undermine each other.

Billboard’s country radio reporter Tom Roland ran down some other similar song titles of recent releases, but the similarities of the above examples go deeper than just the titles themselves. Roland talks about the risks of so many similarities and how professionals are now having to navigate them like air traffic controllers.

This is one of the problems with modern popular country radio: the pervasive sameness and predictability. You can seen the next turn-of-phrase coming from a mile away because you’ve heard the same basic song 100 times before. Good songs do offer something familiar to an audience to latch onto, but then they must offer something original or unpredictable to become memorable or compelling.

As listeners smarten up and discover better options than nationalized radio playlists delivered by syndicated personalities, country radio is going to have to diversify to serve the public what they want to hear. We now see big mainstream festivals with folks like Zach Bryan, Tyler Childers, and The Red Clay Strays on the roster, yet you still won’t hear them on the radio. How long does country radio expect to hold out only serving audiences half of what they want to hear?

The massive and long-running Country Radio Seminar that happens every February in Nashville just announced their expanding the “Digital Music Summit” portion of programming from one day to all three days of the convention. This is to meet the rising demand for streaming, podcasting, and other digital media that is quickly replacing radio. Even country music’s biggest convention every year is sensing radio is becoming obsolete.

It’s easy to be cynical about the future of the country radio format, but it’s also important to understand that the implosion of radio also means the loss of livelihoods and an important part of local communities. Recently, YouTube made the 2013 documentary film Corporate FM available for free (it’s really worth watching). Even though it’s over 10 years old, it perfectly illustrates the problems with radio consolidation that are even more pronounced here a decade later.

It feels like a broken record complaining about radio. But there doesn’t seem to be anyone forwarding solutions to a problem everyone seems to acknowledge. Perhaps it will take country radio’s absolute implosion before more independent and local voices begin to return to important frequencies and try to turn the tide. But at that point, will anyone still be listening? Perhaps they won’t. Because they’ve already heard that song before, just from a different performer.





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