Lady Gaga – “The Dead Dance”: From season 2 of “Wednesday” on Netflix. Gaga features the Tim Burton-directed music video, sure to get you in the Halloween mood. It could become a yearly favorite, is fun and upbeat, and perfect for parties and clubs. It’s also featured on the digital reissue of her album “MAYHEM” which gave us the Top 10 hit “Abracadabra,, her first hit, aside from the ballads “Die With A Smile” and “Shallow,” in over 10 years. She performed it on the VMAs and absolutely crushed it, despite the horrible audio quality. “The Dead Dance” is #8 on Shazam, #89 on Spotify (not exceptional) and debuted #17 in requests on Liveline this week. This could be much bigger toward Halloween.
sombr – “back to friends”: Our function is to provide observations based on actual audience response from nightly national requests and verified with corollary streaming activity and rankings. A radio colleague tells us his Top 40 station won’t play “back to friends” because he feels it’s meant to be the “Alternative radio” single, while “undressed” is geared more for Pop. That mindset cheats Hit Radio’s credibility as the mainstream hit music source, the place where listeners find the very best songs from all genres.
Based on streaming numbers and nightly requests to Liveline, “back to friends” is a far more popular song than “undressed,” and sombr could likely become that rarest of items, a newly minted major music career superstar. It’s now #2 on Spotify and has been Top 10 for four months. Stations shouldn’t let label priorities keep them from playing hits any more than they should be hurting Top 04 ratings with stiffs to get free t-shirts. Why are we fine with Sabrina Carpenter having three songs simultaneously on the Top 40 chart, yet making a big deal about “artist separation” and “focusing on one song at a time” when it comes to sombr? “back to friends” will go down as one of 2025’s Top 5 songs. It was our most-requested last night for the first time ever. It’s #2 on Spotify (“undressed” is only #20) and has been Top 10 for four months! People love the song!
If that’s not enough, Sombr has another single creeping up the streaming charts which we’ve also received requests for, “12 to 12” currently #12 (funny enough), off the album “I Barely Know Her” which came out August 22. Will radio reject that one too? The label priority may be getting “undressed” to #1. Are we in the radio business, or the music business?
Fall Songs
As we officially close out the summer of 2025, imaging your station with music that matches a mood and fits what people are feeling is meaningful. Some songs that are already resurging with nightly Liveline requests and daily Spotify streams are “Sweater Weather” by The Neighborhood (a Top 20 request every year lasting for 3-4 months straight), “Sailor Song” by Gigi Perez (one of the most-streamed–1.4 billion–songs globally of the past two years). It was a Top 3 request on Liveline and re-entered our Top 20 this week. Currently it’s #43 on Spotify.
Buried Treasure of the Week
Yellowcard – “Ocean Avenue”: Digging deep into the iPod-emo-skinny jean-Limewire era of 2004 brought back this now alt-favorite that came out just as punk/pop was starting to take hold at radio. Only getting to #13 on Top 40, #21 in Alternative and #37 on Billboard, it became Yellowcard’s only enduring hit, now with over 457 million streams in Spotify. We’ve gotten half a dozen requests for it in the last few months and even played it for “Who Sings It?” on Monday, to which all 5 lines it up… big surprise! The easier we make it, the less people call. This was definitely a tough one!
This story first appeared on radioinsight.com