Posted January 5, 201115 yr A-List Adele - Rolling In The Deep Bruno Mars - Grenade Cee-Lo - It's OK Chase & Status - Blind Faith David Guetta featuring Rihanna - Who's That Chick Diddy-Dirty Money - Coming Home Eliza Doolittle - Skinny Genes Ellie Goulding - Your Song Jessie J - Do It Like A Dude Katy B featuring Ms Dynamite - Lights On Kesha - We R Who We R Kings Of Leon - Pyro My Chemical Romance - Sing Nero - Me & You Professor Green - Jungle Rihanna featuring Drake - What's My Name Tinie Tempah featuring Kelly Rowland - Invincible White Lies - Bigger Than Us Wretch 32 - Traktor B-List 30 Seconds To Mars featuring Kanye West - Hurricane * B.O.B - I'll Be In The Sky Cheryl Cole - The Flood * Chipmunk featuring Chris Brown - Champion Devlin featuring Labrinth - Let It Go * Eric Prydz - Niton (The Reason) Everything Everything - Photoshop Handsome Funeral Party - Friend James Blake - Limit To Your Love Jodie Connor featuring Wiley - Now Or Never Martin Solveig featuring Dragonette - Hello * Nelly featuring T-Pain & Akon - Move That Body Pendulum - Crush The Wanted - Lose My Mind The Wombats - Jump Into The Fog Tinchy Stryder - Gangsta? C-List * Danny Byrd - Tonight * Fenech Soler - Demons Matt Cardle - When We Collide * Neon Trees - Animal * Skepta vs N-Dubz - So Alive The Joy Formidable - Austere The Vaccines - Post Break Up Sex * Two Door Cinema Club - What You Know Yasmin - On My Own 1-Upfront Architects - Learn To Paint * Camo & Krooked - Nothing Is Older Than Yesterday * Modestep - Feel Good Warpaint - Shadows (Neon Lights remix) Out: BEP Bullet For my Valentine Coldplay Plan B Take That Usher Willow Armand Van Helden Avicii Deadmau5 The Pretty Reckless Pixie Lott The Naked & Famous
January 5, 201115 yr I'm pleasantly surprised they kept Martin Solveig/Dragonette. I hope this can climb more, though I doubt it.
January 5, 201115 yr Author Well it would probably be too many dance removals had they taken out Martin Solveig this week
January 5, 201115 yr Fantastic for Yasmin! Really hoping for this to be a hit for her. That Neon Trees song is awful though. I checked it out after seeing it do well in the US, but it's awful.
January 5, 201115 yr Author Fantastic for Yasmin! Really hoping for this to be a hit for her. That Neon Trees song is awful though. I checked it out after seeing it do well in the US, but it's awful. Agreed. Though I expected Yasmin to be B-listed at least. It's out in a few weeks.
January 5, 201115 yr Are there normally that many songs straight to the B-list at this time of year? :o The Chipmunk song is ok, the B.o.B song isn't a great single choice imo :( Not heard the rest yet. The only new C-list song I know is Neon Trees, and that's decent enough I guess.
January 5, 201115 yr I've only heard 2 of the new additions (Eric and Skepta) The Skepta song is quite good, Niton sounds like a Pjanoo clone from what I remember but I heard it ages ago. AMAZING (but predictable, but amazing nonetheless) to see C&S get another A-List, hopefully Blind Faith will go top 10 but I can't help feeling it's not commercial enough :( Also great for Wretch 32, Everything Everything, Pendulum and Yasmin moving up. And great to see James Blake is still playlisted :D Hopefully it'll finally go top 40 this week, it's top 40 on iTunes again and he's almost certain to be top 2 on Sound of 2011, those announcements caused big climbs for Clare, Jamie and The Vaccines on iTunes. (Clare and The Vaccines aren't top 100, granted, but they were still huge climbs) Edited January 5, 201115 yr by ★BlindFaithBray★
January 5, 201115 yr Oo really glad they added Chipmunk and didn't snub him due to the Chris Brown collab :D & Tinchy Stryder ? Is he not releasing the song with Melanie Fiona next ? Hopefully they'll add Eyes Wide Shut next week
January 5, 201115 yr Yay for Grenade. If Avril isn't added next week then get ready for FLOP. :lol: :(
January 8, 201115 yr AN INTERESTING READ - FROM THE GUARDIAN - Radio 1's daytime takeover: liked Tinie? Try this lotDoes Radio 1 still have the power to make – and break – new bands? As its night-time 'specialist' DJs take over its prime-time shows, Alexis Petridis talks to people behind the playlists So long Smashie and Nicey . . . Tinie Tempah, 2010's Radio 1-backed success story, being interviewed by DJ Nick Grimshaw Photograph: Frantzesco Kangaris for the Guardian Zane Lowe sounds excited. There are those who might wryly suggest this isn't the most unprecedented turn of events in history. After all, unbridled enthusiasm – of a kind that either endears him to listeners or leaves them wistfully recalling the days when alternative music on Radio 1 meant a laconic Scouse voice dolefully introducing the Wedding Present – is very much the 37-year-old DJ's thing, as he admits: "It's pretty clear if you've listened to the radio what music does to me." Perhaps today, however, even his detractors might forgive his ebullience, which stems from the fact that Lowe has been gifted, albeit temporarily, what's widely considered to be the biggest prize in British radio, the Radio 1 Breakfast Show, as part of the station's Daytime Takeover, which this week sees other night-time DJs including Annie Mac, Nick Grimshaw and Huw Stephens briefly upgraded to prime-time shows. "This is amazing," Lowe says happily. "It's a chance to play Jay Electronica at 8:30 in the morning." Quite what the listeners who normally tune in to hear Chris Moyles presiding over the Celebrity Raspberry quiz and yukking it up with "Comedy" Dave Vitty will make of Jay Electronica at 8:30 in the morning is open to question. "There is a risk," notes Radio 1's head of music, George Ergatoudis. "What we normally do in the daytime is a balancing act. We really carefully balance the exciting, the innovative and the new alongside the popular and successful. If you get that balance right, you get 11 million people tuning in every week." The point of the Daytime Takeover, he says, is to affirm Radio 1's commitment to new music. "The big pull for me is that if radio is going to survive long-term, new music is a really important unique selling point. Radio is the single most important place people discover it. At Radio 1, we sell, and sell hard, the fact that we're about new music. Radio 1 takes those risks, unlike commercial radio, which wants to be as risk-averse as possible. We hang our hat on that. You've got to stand for something in order to cut through and mean anything these days." You could argue that parachuting night-time specialist DJs into daytime slots is a tacit acceptance that something slightly naff clings to Radio 1's image, an echo of the Smashie and Nicey years, when daytime Radio 1 DJs were known for their wilful resistance to playing anything different – be it Mike Read recoiling in horror from Frankie Goes to Hollywood's Relax or Peter Powell dismissing acid house as "the closest thing to mass organised zombiedom" – and the station's then-controller Derek Chinnery describing John Peel's listeners as "unemployed yobbos". Doesn't temporarily replacing Chris Moyles with Zane Lowe and Fearne Cotton with Annie Mac suggest that, whatever your research says, no one's really tuning in to hear the regular daytime DJs promoting cutting-edge music, that no one really trusts or gives a monkey's about Cotton's opinions on what's hot in dubstep? Ergatoudis laughs. "No, not at all. What the mainstream presenters are incredibly skilled at is introducing music in a careful, measured way. This is about making a bold statement: this is where we're at, we're about breaking new music, for five days our specialist champions are taking over." Ergatoudis is proud that Radio 1 had a role to play in breaking both the xx and Mumford and Sons into the mainstream. "The first time we put their tracks on the daytime playlist, a lot of the reaction was 'What the hell is this?'" – which in the case of Mumford and Sons perhaps speaks louder about Radio 1's daytime listenership than it does about the head-spinning innovation of their sound. That said, Radio 1's current playlist includes electronic singer-songwriter James Blake, whose opaque music is no one's idea of a sure commercial thing. Annie Mac says she's particularly pleased that Tensnake's joyous old-school house track Coma Cat made the coveted path from her specialist dance show on to the daytime playlist, a slightly Byzantine-sounding process that involves being recommended by a specialist show's producer at something called a weekly In New Music We Trust meeting, being nominated as "essential" by the other producers at that meeting and thus forwarded to the station's weekly mainstream playlist meeting – an event deemed so important that its participants are kept secret – for consideration for the C, B or A list, the latter guaranteeing around 27 plays a week. The white-van demographic Ergatoudis claims they decide what new music makes it without recourse to market research. "We do music research, but only after we're heavily committed to an artist or track – we don't do it predictively. We run on belief and gut instinct, and make decisions on that basis. We can spot-play tracks on the daytime shows we think will work best, and from that you can gauge where the audience are at. Research is valid and gives us some insight, but you're just relying on the audience that bother to take part." He laughs. "We've got some very vociferous people, but they're not necessarily bleeding-edge music consumers. They're white-van drivers who know what they like and they're going to text in and tell you about it." Despite daytime support, Coma Cat only reached No 89 in the charts – proof, Mac says, that the station makes decisions about what to play on musical merit rather than sales potential. "It depends what area or genre the artist is in," says Ergatoudis. "If you're trying to be a mass-market crossover pop success and we heavily support you and you fail, hmmm, we're probably going to look at that with a little more scrutiny and a little more distaste, potentially. If you're doing something original, interesting and different and we support you, frankly we don't care. It would be nice to see a hit develop out of it, but it's not about that." He says an artist Radio 1 "really commits to – heavy A-list rotation" gets three chances to click with the public. "If, by the time the third single comes, nothing's happening, then we have to question it." Radio 1's commitment to new music is not without its critics. Sean Adams, editor of the influential website and label Drowned in Sound, worries it contributes to rock and pop's ongoing neophilia, encouraging a belief that new automatically equals good, fuelling the overheated career trajectories of artists who are expected to arrive fully formed, but struggle to develop and lose the public's attention after their debut album. "Bands on their second or third albums miss out, because it's all about new music. Huw Stephens is absolutely lovely, but a band like Midlake is probably not something he can play, because they don't fit within the remit of being a new band." Nor is he certain that Radio 1, in a world of blogs and file-sharing, is quite the go-to destination for new music that Ergatoudis claims. "Our messageboards hardly ever have threads about 'I've just heard this on the radio, it was great.' Now it's 'I've just downloaded this off Stereogum.' That noisy minority aren't tuning in any more." "That's absolutely a fallacy about blogs," counters Ergatoudis. "There's a small number of people who are using online resources. Obviously, some of those people are the most passionate about music. But the mass market, they'll say they're passionate about music, too, but they're happy with the radio and buying a few CDs a year. Radio 1's there to serve all that range, a massive gradation of people." 'Career is a dirty word' What no one disputes is Radio 1's unparalleled effectiveness in breaking new music to that mass market. Adams says bands on Drowned in Sound's label who failed to get Radio 1 support "hit a glass ceiling", regardless of the enthusiasm of other radio stations such as Xfm or MTV2. "Ever since Sky changed their packaging and the music channels became an opt-in, passive consumers don't have anywhere else to spoonfeed them music." Tina Skinner, director of radio at Parlophone records, agrees: Radio 1's support was "crucial" in the success of rapper Tinie Tempah. "You can break an artist without Radio 1 – we broke country band Lady Antebellum this year through Smooth FM, Magic FM and Radio 2 – but for an artist like Tinie, you need Radio 1, because it's urban and it provides a route through. Pass Out didn't even have a release date, but it went from 1Xtra to Zane Lowe to Nick Grimshaw to A-list to No 1. Other stations were on it early – Kiss and Galaxy were amazing – but Radio 1 was key." You could argue long into the night about whether it's entirely healthy for one media outlet to have such a controlling interest in what rock and pop music makes it to the mass-market's ears, but, given there's currently not a single prime-time TV outlet for music that isn't The X Factor, it's not a state of affairs that shows any sign of changing in the immediate future. All of which makes Zane Lowe a hugely important figure: something it's perhaps worth remembering next time you're moved to mock his puppyish enthusiasm. "When you see bands you've played on the daytime playlist and it makes sense in context of all these big pop tunes and club tracks, I do feel a sense of satisfaction, that a band is getting a real shot at a lasting career." He pauses. "I sometimes think career is a dirty word among musicians. There's nothing wrong with having healthy ambition, is there?" • Radio 1's specialist DJ takeover runs every day this week
Create an account or sign in to comment