Boulevard of Broken Dreams

[Hervard]

mstgator said:

It actually did debut on the Billboard airplay chart at #2 (which allowed it to blast onto the Hot 100 at #13). It was a case of a much hyped song by a major superstar that radio stations played to death for the first couple of weeks it was released; but apparently the song didn't live up to its hype, probably didn't test well with listeners, so radio backed off of it and it started slipping down the chart almost immediately.

Had R&R been using monitored airplay back then, you would have seen a similar run on their pop chart (and on Casey's Top 40).

That's sort of what happened to "Human Touch" by Bruce Springsteen earlier that year. The song was the first new Springsteen single in several years, so radio stations played the hell out of it in its first week in release, which caused it to debut on the Airplay chart (which was 75 positions) at number 21. The week after, it moved up to #14, but the week after that, the listeners realized it wasn't that great of a song, so the song slipped to #18 and didn't get any higher during the rest of its run. On the R&R chart, its chart run was 38-26-20-14-9-8-8-21-35. This also was back when the charts were compiled by station playlists, some of which weren't very accurate (or so it seemed). So many radio stations listed it in their Top Ten even though it wasn't necessarily one of the ten most played songs. Small market stations played it more, since it went to #1 for a week in Gavin magazine, whose Top 40 chart was made of many small market stations while larger markets reported to R&R.

[Jeffster]

ulij20 said:

That's sort of what happened to "Human Touch" by Bruce Springsteen earlier that year. The song was the first new Springsteen single in several years, so radio stations played the hell out of it in its first week in release, which caused it to debut on the Airplay chart (which was 75 positions) at number 21. The week after, it moved up to #14, but the week after that, the listeners realized it wasn't that great of a song,

Well, there's some revisionist history. "Human Touch" is an awesome song. I think you meant, the dumb radio stations ignored the listeners and stopped playing the great song. Happy I could correct your mistake.

[Hervard]

Well, actually, most of the people I worked with back in 1992 said that they thought "Human Touch" was rather boring. And, most radio stations back in those days took requests. I doubt that they'd ignore someone's request to play a current song, especially if lots of requests came in. But, on the other hand, I don't know of any radio station that bases its programming solely on requests, so, in that case, you're right - they should have played it more often.

And, as I said, many small market stations played it a lot, since it was #1 in Gavin back in the spring of 1992.