Drowning In a Sea of Sameness – How Classic Rock Radio Stations & Playlists Are Failing Listeners

When I’m driving in my car I usually have the radio tuned to either a classic rock station, or an oldies station. Similarly, when I’m at the gym, I prefer when there’s some sort of ‘80s, or ‘90s playlist going. The problem I’ve been running into is that when it comes to classic rock radio stations, and playlists – if you’ve heard one, you’ve heard ‘em all.

With classic rock radio, their decade range is impressive, oftentimes being as wide as from the mid ‘60s to the early ‘00s, but it’s always the same songs from these bands.

Era-specific playlists on Spotify have this issue, as well, and it’s maddening.

It’s almost as if someone said – OK, here’s the list of bands, and here are the songs you’re allowed to play for each band. This is all that will represent them until the end of time.

Variety is supposed to be the spice of life, but I don’t think radio programmers, and playlist curators, received the memo.

I’m not saying I don’t love the hits. I love the hits just as much as anyone, but I fear the kid who tunes in to classic rock radio, or listens to one of these playlists, may think The Doors only have three songs.

Break on through … to the other side of their catalog

Another issue that’s a major limiting factor is that classic rock radio is still very much a boys club, to the point where if you listen for long enough you might wonder if women rockers other than Heart, Joan Jett, and Pat Benatar ever existed. This is also true of the playlists.

Even when I choose a playlist, or “radio station,” based on a band like Blondie, Garbage, or Hole, the majority of the tunes end up from bands filled with dudes.

All of this seems like a giant missed opportunity.

First off, if you’re a radio station, why not include some random b-sides, and deep album cuts each day? You have DJs that know what they’re talking about, so the listeners who might not know about the songs could receive a little education, and the rest of us could enjoy a song we don’t normally hear.

Playlist curators should also be knowledgeable enough to go deeper into the catalogs of classic artists – they literally have access to every song – and if they aren’t that level of knowledgeable they probably shouldn’t be playlist curators.

Secondly, give the ladies some love! There have been so many amazing women throughout the history of rock, and when they aren’t included on these radio stations, and in these playlists, they’re essentially being erased. Give me some Vercua Salt, The Donnas, L7, The Motels, and Lunachicks, with my Nirvana, and Led Zeppelin.

We could all use some “Volcano Girls” every now and then

The other day a buddy of mine at the gym was really excited to tell me he found an ‘80s playlist that had some deep cuts. There were just three of us at there at the time, all around the same age, so he put it on, and we were lovin’ being reminded of songs we hadn’t heard in years.

This is what classic rock / oldies playlists, and radio stations should be like – a mix of songs that everybody knows, and songs that don’t immediately come to mind, but that we’d all fondly remember if we heard them.

Heck, I’d even love it if I had to Shazam something, and ended up going down a rabbit hole!

Until changes are made, however, we’ll all continue drowning in a sea of sameness, listening to the same songs over and over again.