Radio Quirks: A Short History of Top 40 Radio

 

If you are of a certain age, you will remember radio as something that was exciting. Radio has become kind of boring. Playlists that have the same songs that everyone knows that are repeated daily only with slight variation. I say this not to complain (too much) but to introduce this week's topic of what made radio interesting. What do I mean by this? Radio was once the land of the unknown, the unpredictable and the exciting. There were things that made listening worthwhile. One of the mainstays of radio over the past 70 years has been the concept of Top 40 radio. Where did it start and how does it work now? And how does the Top 40 reflect us as a society? Today we are going to talk about Top 40 radio.   

One of the most enduring concepts that has dominated radio over the past 70 years or so has been the idea of a Top 40 list. How did it begin and why has it lasted so long. Let us explore this. Like anything worthwhile in music history, the beginnings of the Top 40 is clouded in mystery. There are a couple of stories floating around, but they center around one person, Todd Storz. One story of the beginning of the Top 40 list had Storz sitting in a saloon with a jukebox. He observed the people going to the jukebox and playing the same songs over and over again. When he asked why, they simply replied because we like them. He sat there and made a list of the top songs that were played and developed the Top 40 list. Another story has Stolz making a Top 40 list because a rival radio station had a Top 20 list. 20 is good, 40 is better! Whichever story is true (although the story of Stolz making a list from what was being played in jukeboxes is more widely accepted), the idea of the Top 40 quickly began to spread.

Before Storz implemented the Top 40, radio was basically a free for all. DJs controlled the airwaves, playing what they wanted because they liked the song, or their closeness with independent record labels or because of payola. Whatever the reason, this freedom allowed for more exposure for black artists, many of which would never get any airplay from larger stations. Popular DJs such as Alan Freed were instrumental in the early popularization of rock and roll. That changed drastically when the Top 40 list came around. Now music was controlled by a new position in radio, the station programmer. 

The programmer used the idea of not only how many songs were played but most importantly what songs were played. America of the 1950s was still largely segregated and that meant songs by clean white performers that offered little threat were given priority. Often, the clean version of a R&B song was played over the original. The clean version, inevitably played by a clean cut white person named Bobby overtook the original version by a black artist in the charts. The Top 40 made radio once again white and middle-class and further segregated rock and roll.

With the growth of rock and roll and the subsequent blanching of the music by the end of the 1950s, AM radio was the dominant force for radio. The Top 40 concept had a tight reign of who and what was being played on the radio. By the 1960s, the glut of AM radio stations and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issuing regulations to form new radio stations, FM radio began to rise in popularity. FM bandwidth had been around since the 1930s but there were few radios that could broadcast FM signals and those that could were vastly more expensive. Once the cost of parts lowered as radio became more common, broadcasting on the more superior and less prone to interference FM bandwidth became easier and cheaper to do. In the 1960s FM radio was very much a DIY act. Lacking the funds the bigger AM radio stations had, they took a page from the independent radio stations of the late 1940s and early 1950s. They completely rejected the idea of the Top 40 concept, often playing artists and songs that the AM stations would not touch. In some cases, the DJ, which on FM radio became a throwback to the DJs of the early 1950s, would play an entire album from one artist or at least one side of the album. A cultural war developed between AM and FM radio, with AM on the conservative side, playing safe, short songs and FM representing the counterculture playing everything AM would not touch, including songs with references to drugs and sex. The 1960s FM counterculture  represented what young people were like at the time. Free flowing and free thinking. If AM radio represented kids trying to rebel against their parents, FM radio represented kids rebelling against everything else.

By the 1970s, the Top 40 was in a decline. Fm radio was dominant as AM radio began to fade into an obscurity of white washed contemporary music. The idea of peace and love had given way to the idea of selfish individualism and many songs of that era reflected the mood of society. The Top 40 idea was saved by a would be television and voice actor named Casey Kasem. From 1970 to 1988, Kasem hosted the American Top 40. The show became popular as Cassey would countdown the weekly Top 40 but added trivia and biographical information about the artists. This was at a time when there was no Internet and Casey offered a rare glimpse into a favourite artist's life. He also connected with his audience on a personal level, offering long distance dedications, reading letters from people wishing to dedicate songs to distant loved ones. 

The 1990s began to see a shift in the Top 40 sound. Up to this point, the Top 40 was dominated by AM pop music. The innovation of Soundscan in 1991 completely shifted what was being played on the radio. Although there was some pop and rock being played, grunge and R&B began to make inroads. Genres began to blend and the idea of musical tribes became less important to listeners. Now it was okay to like different bands from different genres. The Top 40 sound was still there but now it was less homogeneous and more diverse. 

As the 1990s moved on and into the 2000s, what was played on Top 40 changed as well. Classic rock, a term developed by radio AR to describe music of the 1950s and 1960s, had become more open to what was being included. Now the 1980s were in that group. This forced the Top 40 to focus on more youth oriented pop music, reflecting the split of the 1960s, except now the Top 40 represented the youth and classic rock was becoming the norm. 

As streaming began to dominate music over physical media, the Top 40 shifted once again to represent what was popular online. There is still an element of Top 40 on the radio but it has been taken over by streaming services such as Spotify and Apple Music. Billboard Top 100, once affected by what was being bought in the stores is now affected by what is being streamed. As songs come and go so quickly on streaming platforms, the Top 40 lists change on an almost daily basis. Radio play is still a factor although the charts have changed. While the Billboard Top 100 takes streaming, radio play, and physical sales into account, the Billboard Pop Airplay (Mainstream Top 40) is the dominant list when it comes to radio. The chart is based on the number of times a song is played and how many people have heard it, depending on station size and time of play. This chart is actually a better reflection of what is played on Top 40 radio, rather than streaming.

The Top 40 list was initially made to play the most popular songs. The list was varied and it often reflected what was going on in society at the time. Depending on what was happening in the world, the songs that made it onto the Top 40 would reflect it. As an example, during COVID, reflective or escapist songs were popular. If the economy was good, the songs reflected that by being upbeat. Often songs about social issues made it into the Top 40.In the 1960s with events such as the Vietnam War happening, protest and heavily political songs often cracked the Top 40 and even the Top 10. Today songs about racial injustice, gender identity, and empowerment are dominating the Top 40 lists. The Internet and globalization have also affected the Top 40, introducing songs from Spanish artists, K-Pop and Afro beats, making it a truly global list. 

The Top 40 list has gone through many variations, shifting and changing because of popularity, gatekeepers who decide what is being played, and technological advancements such as the Internet and streaming. Although it is not a perfect representation of what is happening in society, the Top 40 often gives a fairly accurate snapshot of what is going on. The Top 40 is not just a collection of popular songs, it is a collection of what we as a society are thinking and feeling at any given time. 

Sources for this article include:

Rock’n America: A Social and Cultural History by Deena Weinstein ( University of Toronto Press, 2015).