We Can Dance Until We Die

I began my popular music education in the mid-1970s with KCBQ, a San Diego-based Top 40 AM radio station. The hits on the air at the time included Van McCoy and the Soul City Symphony's "The Hustle", Redbone's "Come and Get Your Love", Ace's "How Long", and the Bee Gees' "Jive Talkin'" - good stuff! (Admittedly, Morris Albert's "Feelings" was not such good stuff.) In due course I graduated to FM rock radio and left KCBQ behind. KCBQ is at present a talk radio station, although it hasn't abandoned music completely, namely, it broadcasts a "Sock Hop" program (some of whose past shows are archived here) on Saturday night and a "Moldie Oldies Radio" program on Sunday night.

In today's post we'll check in with KFMB-FM, which is part of the Jack FM family of radio stations and is a Top 40 station for all intents and purposes. Wikipedia variously describes the KFMB format as adult hits, variety hits, or modern adult contemporary - whatever. Vis-à-vis the radio stations I used to listen to in New Orleans, KFMB is somewhat similar to B97 and Magic 101.9 but is more straightforwardly grounded in pop music than those stations are, more specifically, it doesn't have B97's urban feel and it doesn't play nearly as many ballads as Magic 101.9 does.

The music

Three weeks ago Wednesday (12 November) I tuned in to http://www.sandiegojack.com/ and did some live listening for almost an hour and a half. KFMB says that its online streaming is unable to be heard outside of the San Diego area, regardless of device: although I live in North San Diego County and not in San Diego itself, I was able to use the KFMB Online Player without any problems. Here's a list of the songs that I heard, in chronological order:

The Neighbourhood: "Sweater Weather"
One Direction: "Story of My Life"
U2: "Pride (in the Name of Love)"
Katy Perry: "Teenage Dream"
Maroon 5: "Animals"
Ella Henderson: "Ghost"
Ed Sheeran: "Sing"
Sam Smith: "Stay with Me"
Vance Joy: "Riptide"
The Cranberries: "Dreams"
Tove Lo: "Habits (Stay High)"
Switchfoot: "Meant to Live"
Meghan Trainor: "Lips Are Movin'"
Echosmith: "Cool Kids"
Lorde: "Royals"
Phillip Phillips: "Raging Fire"
Gwen Stefani: "Baby Don't Lie"
Taylor Swift: "Blank Space"

The KFMB Online Player also provides brief bios, album discographies, and photos for the songs' artists.

History

The oldest song is U2's "Pride (in the Name of Love)", which dates to 1984.
The Cranberries' "Dreams" goes back to 1992.
Switchfoot's "Meant to Live" goes back to 2003.
Katy Perry's "Teenage Dream" was released in 2010.
The remaining 14 songs have all been released within the last two years.

Solo artist commentary

• As for our KPRI visit the list contains a lot of singer-songwriter material but this time we've got a 7:4 female/male ratio. Vance Joy is from Oz, Tove Lo is Swedish, and Lorde is a Kiwi; the rest of these artists are either American or English.

• Ella Henderson's "Ghost", with its muscular R&B sound, is the song in this category I like best. Honorable mention goes to Meghan Trainor's "Lips Are Movin'", which is noteworthy in that it has one foot in vintage (circa 1960) rock and roll.

• Sam Smith's "Stay with Me" is the one point of overlap with the KPRI song list. Smith was recently profiled by the Associated Press.

• BTW, Magic 101.9 plays a version of Katy Perry's "Teenage Dream" that removes the song's in my skin-tight jeans lines; there was no bowdlerization on KFMB's part.

Band commentary

• Interestingly, there's a hard rock song in the list, that being Switchfoot's "Meant to Live": as Switchfoot is from San Diego, perhaps this is a "they're local boys" thing.

• I'm glad that The Neighbourhood's "Sweater Weather" is a hit because it's kind of a dark track musically.

• Echosmith's "Cool Kids" has a vaguely retro-1980s pop-rock sound, which is OK, I'd much rather hear that than a empty dance track.

The spice of radio

The Jack FM brand has a semi-smug Playing What We Want slogan. If Jack FM stations are content to play Top 40 hits with a few 'oldies' mixed in, then fair enough, I suppose, but the slogan implies that those stations should go off the beaten track some of the time, and that clearly doesn't happen at KFMB, or at least it didn't during my listening session; if a varied playlist is what you're after, KPRI is a better choice.

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We'll go after KROQ in the next post.