The Top Overplayed Songs On Radio (at least in my book)

You know the ones....

My daughter and I were riding down the highway the other day when she was scanning through the stations on SiriusXM and came upon Ricky Martin’s, “Livin’ La Vida Loca”. I tried to listen, but to my daughter’s disappointment, I had to turn to another channel. I explained that the song was on every radio station and played every hour on the hour when it was released in 1999. You couldn’t escape it. It was so overplayed, and now when I hear the opening upbeat swing of the horns and keys it makes my skin crawl. I feel the same about a lot of songs.

Led Zeppelin’s, “Black Dog”, Black Sabbath’s, “Paranoid” and Green Day’s, “When September Ends” have been on heavy rotation at every rock station on both terrestrial radio and SiriusXM since they were originally released. To be fair that speaks to how well these songs were crafted. They are great, classic songs that have survived for decades and are still finding popularity with listeners.

I also have to be transparent and mention that I founded and operated a large chain of music schools for 26 years. I have been credited with starting one of the first “school of rock” programs back in the early 90’s where we put our music students into performing bands that rehearsed for a week with a “band coach” leading up to a week ending grand finale concert. Every summer when our Rock Academy summer camps rolled around we had lists of songs that were not allowed to be played by the student bands. There was no “Stairway To Heaven”, “Back In Black”, “We Will Rock You” or “I Wanna Be Sedated” allowed. The list expanded every year to include songs like The Cranberries’ “Zombie” and Joan Jett’s, “I Love Rock N’ Roll”.

Again, these are all great songs by talented artists, and I certainly have never written a tune that ended up in the charts or earned me a Grammy, but everything can overstay it’s welcome.

One of the reasons I subscribe to SiriusXM is to escape the tendency for FM radio to overplay certain songs, but even XM radio can have its steady rotation of songs that are seemingly stuck on repeat.

Here’s a few more excellent songs in no particular order that are the darlings of DJ’s.

“Don’t Stop Believin’”, Journey (1981)

“Believe”, Cher (1998)

“Pour Some Sugar On Me”, Def Leppard (1987)

“Freebird”, probably tied with “Sweet Home Alabama”, Lynyrd Skynyrd (1973 and 1974)

There’s so many songs that get a lot of airplay, and I’m sure there’s a lot of lists out there. What’s your list? Let’s discuss it further in comments.