While we rooted on our favorite songs on their way to the #1 spot on the Billboard Top 40, there were changes behind the scenes in the 1980s. ABC bought Watermark, the syndication company that Tom Rounds and Ron Jacobs formed in 1969. Casey Kasem and Don Bustany created AT40 for Watermark and Watermark distributed the show. With ABC owning Watermark, ABC had more leverage with radio stations on playing other-ABC owned radio programming. If they did not want to do it, then the station would lose AT40. Well, one of the stations that did not want to do it was KIIS - KISS- in Los Angeles and, in some ways, this is going to pave the road for the end of Casey’s tenure with the show that he created.

music, music historyAmy LivelyFebruary 1, 2025music, music history, American Top 40

Episode 3: Were the "Filthy 15" Really So Filthy?

If she knew anything at all about Prince, she would not have been surprised at all to hear a song like "Darling Nikki" appear on a Prince album. I don’t think the fact that "Purple Rain," the movie, was rated R is all that relevant, but the artist was and it seems like a bad idea to just drop his CD in the CD player and hit play without checking into the content first. After all, the man’s second album, "Dirty Mind," released in 1980, has songs about incest, oral sex, and and threesomes, among other things. Prince said 20 years later,"I wouldn't stand out today if I was brand-new and came like that. But see, back then nobody else was doing that, and I knew that would get me over. I didn't dress like anybody, I didn't look like anybody, I didn't sound like anybody. We still try to do that."

music, history, music historyAmy LivelyAugust 25, 2024prince, censorship, pmrc, madonna, music warning labels

Episode 1: 80s Heartland Rock is Not Just about the Heartland

“These are all HIS stories. I don’t know if Springsteen ever worked on the highway, and I feel like I SHOULD know all that Springsteen did. I can hear Bob Seger getting up in the morning on these records. You can see him walking around the house in his socks and pouring coffee. It’s like he’s saying, “Here’s another day, so what have I got to say?”

—-Timothy Smith on Bob Seger