Phil Collins, Elton John, and Gloria Estefan dominated Adult Contemporary radio back in the 1980s and '90s, yet have disappeared from modern radio. Seemingly, the only time you ever hear them is at the grocery store or your local CVS. This blog remembers the music, the stories and the quirky characters from my days working in Adult Contemporary radio.
At first listen, you may credit "Fascinated" to Taylor Dayne. The female vocals certainly sound like Taylor, but credit the group Company B for the synth and drum machine heavy freestyle song. The catchy tune found a home at nightclubs and Top 40 radio in 1987.
Gwen Stefani broke from No Doubt in 2004 and released her solo effort: Love. Angel. Music. Baby. With her synthpop hit "Cool", Gwen took a cue from the '80s sounds that made Madonna and Cyndi Lauper phenomenons.
I once worked for a radio station that featured an all '80s & '90s format with a playlist that consisted of only about 340 songs. (Is that a lot of songs, you're asking? No, it was not.) Hearing the same tired '80s and '90s tunes really wore on me (and apparently our listeners since the station's ratings showed that we had very few of them). When the station first launched, we'd get lots of requests for cool '80s and '90s songs that we all would have loved to hear, but instead we were stuck playing the same John Mellencamp and Rod Stewart tunes each day. As a remedy, we pitched an idea of a daily '80s feature to our bosses. Each morning we would play a forgotten '80s tune (outside of the 340 songs that we already played) and then would cross-promote the station's "Lost '80s Lunch" feature. Surprisingly, the bosses gave our idea the green light. To those of us in the studio each morning, the feature was a success because it meant one less time we had to play The Rembrandts' "I'll Be There For You". I distinctly remember this same guy calling in every couple of weeks to request "Electric Blue" from the group Icehouse. I would always give him the standard line: "Yeah, we'll try to get that one on for you," but I knew that we would never play it. Then, nearly a year later, we finally played "Electric Blue" as part of the aforementioned '80s feature. I always hoped that the guy was listening that the day when we finally answered his request, but my gut tells me that he had stopped listening long before then.