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.
Showing posts with label Hootie & The Blowfish. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hootie & The Blowfish. Show all posts
Some popular '90s phenomenons that I somehow avoided:
AOL Chat Rooms
Overalls and flannel shirts
Melrose Place, Seinfeld & Friends
Hootie & the Blowfish, Nirvana & the Grunge movement
I hopped on the Seinfeld wagon in the 2000s but never really embraced anything else on this list especially Friends. Someone once described the show as a bunch of wimpy dudes who managed to date hot girls in an over-sized New York apartment. No arguments here.
The assistant chef at the banquet hall where I worked in high school was wrong. While "Only Wanna Be With You" played on the grease-covered radio in the kitchen for what had to be the zillionth time that day, my fellow busboy Steve questioned the lyrics: "I'm such a baby cause the Dolphins make me cry."
Without hesitation, Patrick (the assistant chef) told Steve that dolphins are supposed to make people happy and that they didn't make Hootie happy. Therefore Hootie is a baby. In reality, Hootie (Darius Rucker) sings about the Miami Dolphins and their championship drought in their 1995 song.
In another case of "Oh, no...I guess I'm not young anymore", '90s radio staples Hootie & the Blowfish will team up with Barenaked Ladies for a 2019 tour. Their forthcoming "Group Therapy Tour" will celebrate the 25th anniversary (hot damn, 25 years ?!?) of Hootie's super-duper mega-successful Cracked Rear View. Yes, the album that featured five singles Adult Contemporary radio stations played to death. As a young radio intern during the fall of '95, listeners would send faxes to the radio station begging to stop playing Hootie songs. In fact, I think it's a brilliant promotional idea where you promise listeners you won't play a certain artist's music for an entire day/weekend -- think: "No Adele Weekend" or "Taylor Swiftless Tuesday". It could happen...
I graduated from high school during the summer of 1995 and spent many late nights cruising around Northwest Indiana with my small but solid group of friends who would soon be heading to different colleges than me. I planned to spend my freshman year of college locally at Indiana University Northwest whereas my friends were headed to Ball State, Purdue or Indiana University in Bloomington. Since I didn't have a curfew, I tried to make the most of late nights that year and usually stayed up until the sun started to rise. My older brother worked for United Airlines that year and his alarm would sound around at the ripe time of 3:45am. One particular early morning, I remember him passing me on his walk to the bathroom while muttering, "You're still up and I'm getting up for work...what's wrong with this picture?" That unusually hot summer featured hits from TLC, Hootie & The Blowfish and Green Day on the radio, but I also remember many late nights in the car when I would come across Bruce Hornsby's "Walk in the Sun". The jazzy soft rock tune played on many Adult Contemporary radio stations during that hot summer and, like many of my high school friends, disappeared in the autumn...
Music from Hootie & The Blowfish spun in heavy rotation on Adult Contemporary radio stations during the mid-1990s. In other words, radio stations played the crap out of everything from the band's breakthrough album Cracked Rear View. While interning for WPNT-FM in Chicago in 1996, the radio station received a fax (remember, it was the '90s!) from an office of ladies who threatened to change the station if we didn't stop playing Hootie. As you probably guessed, the station didn't stop the Hootie and those folks likely all have Spotify subscriptions today. If for whatever reason they are longing for a Hootie reunion tour, the band announced they'll reunite for one night only this summer in Atlanta.
By 1994 standards, Top 40 radio heavily leaned on R&B and Hip-Hop artists and music. A peak further down the Top 100 of 1994 turned up music from artists such as Salt-n-Peppa, R. Kelly, Coolio, and Warren G. This gave the pop-rock group Hootie & The Blowfish some struggles to find a mainstream radio format to embrace the band. Somehow, the Adult Contemporary format answered the call and immediately helped launch Hootie's career. Within 12 months, AC radio stations playlists featured four songs from Cracked Rear View (Hootie's debut album) as well as "I Go Blind" (prominently featured on the TV show Friends). Soon, Top 40 added Hootie's music--though most song charted higher on the Adult Contemporary Chart than the Hot 100--and the band's over-saturation likely attributed to its demise.
Adult Contemporary radio in 1996 continued its transformation from "safe" core artists such as Rod Stewart, Phil Collins, and Elton John as well as embracing newer contemporary artists like Sheryl Crow, Jewel, and Hootie & The Blowfish. At that time, instrumentals on Adult Contemporary stations were considered a thing of the past that died along with the "beautiful music" format long popular in the 70s and 80s. Somehow, the year 1996 proved to be an exception as three instrumentals found their way back on AC and Top 40 radio station: Robert Miles' "Children" and"Theme from Mission: Impossible" from Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr. (of U2) joined Kenny G's "The Moment" with significant airplay on the radio.
"Tucker's Town" was Hootie & The Blowfish's sixth and final song to chart on the Hot 100. The band's explosive popularity led to their music getting played on nearly every radio station from 1994-1997. That sort of over-exposure could be credited and also blamed for their meteoric rise to and fall from fame. The band did go on to place six other singles on the Adult Contemporary Chart, but none found mainstream success. Lead singer Darius Rucker found success after later re-inventing himself as a country artist.
The year 1995 was a pivotal one for the Adult Contemporary format. While format stalwarts like Gloria Estefan, Elton John, and Bryan Adams still provided plenty of radio-friendly ballads, bands such as Hootie & The Blowfish, Blues Traveler and Dave Matthews Band also entered the musical landscape. Suddenly, the format faced music decisions that would mean bringing a new sound to the office-friendly Adult Contemporary format. AC Program Directors rarely added an unfamilar song to their rotation as they tended to play proven and "safe" songs. A year later, stations grappled over whether or not to add music from Alanis Morissette's edgy Jagged Little Pill album. Soon stations would branch off into "Bright AC' and "Soft AC" sub-formats causing Bright AC stations to adopt the "no light, sleepy music" positioning statement. In the case of Dave Matthews Band's "What Would You Say" only managed to chart at #30 on the Adult Contemporary Chart, but the tune helped usher in a more upbeat sound that would soon become commonplace.
Adult Contemporary radio started turning in 1995. Artists such as Alanis Morissette and Hootie & The Blowfish started turning up on AC radio stations. Known particularly for ballads and "safe" music, AC radio started to get more contemporary. Dionne Farris' "I Know" was one such song that AC radio played to death during the latter part of 1995. Before long, core artists such as Amy Grant, Lionel Richie, and Billy Joel would soon fall off stations' playlists.
Radio killed Hootie & The Blowfish. The group's Cracked Rear View album burst onto the scene in 1994 and produced immediate hits: "Hold My Hand", "Only Wanna Be With You", "Let Her Cry", and "Time". Before long, every radio station was pumping out Hootie & The Blowfish. With four hit singles, you couldn't go an hour (or less) without hearing Hootie. This led to people violently screaming whenever they heard a Hootie song or even at the mere mention of the word "Hootie". I remember being a young intern at a radio station and someone sent a fax to the radio station declaring if we played another Hootie song, they would change the station. Yeah, good luck finding a station that wasn't playing Hootie (classical music, anyone?). Though commercially successful, Hootie & The Blowfish's follow up album could not replicate the success of Cracked Rear View, and the band began a slow fade into obscurity. To lead singer Darius Rucker's credit, he reinvented himself as a successful country artist.