As everyone is forced into this new-normal way of home-based working across our industry for the foreseeable future, it has been interesting this week to see and note how some of our listening and viewing habits have changed in just a short space of time. Since we can’t go out in the evenings, it’s been a key factor in terrestrial TV reaching some stellar overnight figures for many primetime shows. Ant & Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway last weekend delivered its highest-ever rating, with 13 million+ at peak, and we noted that
Olly Murs 2011 hit
Dance With Me Tonight has had a huge upswing in streaming plays over the past five days after being featured as the closing performance on the programme, when it was backed with a video montage of thousands of people all dancing and lip-syncing to the tune.
We seem to be gravitating more towards upbeat, positive, familiar, feel-good songs at this time of uncertainty and fear, which is totally understandable of course. But we’ve read conflicting stories on whether or not streaming numbers are actually up or down during the coronavirus crisis. We dig more into those stats over the coming weeks to see if it’s a long term trend. Anecdotally, many are saying that podcast consumption is noticeably down, possibly due to fewer weekday work commutes where much of that listening often takes place. One thing of note though is that the arrival of the new album by
The Weeknd last Friday certainly didn’t quite set streaming services alight in the way many might have expected it to. Yes, there’s been a major upswing in plays for his no.1 song
Blinding Lights, (interestingly too, it looks like he’s about to hit ACR mode on that track) but we’re not going to see two of the other songs from the album high on this weekend’s Top 10 singles chart. Which is a bit of a surprise. Expect total sales for
After Hours to be somewhere between about 22-25k, which is a good result considering most retail outlets are closed indefinitely. However, the rush-release of the
Dua Lipa album
Future Nostalgia this Friday will almost certainly have even more of an impact. After all, she currently has two big songs already inside the Top 10 with
Physical and
Don’t Start Now, so adding a third (namely
Break My Heart , which received its video premiere online on Wednesday evening) isn’t going to be that much of a stretch. The album’s already had its first glowing five-star review from Rhian Daly at
NME.com , describing it as
‘powerful pop perfection for a star unafraid to speak her mind’.
Dare we mention
Dance Monkey again? It’s climbing once more on midweeks stats and could be back in the Top 15 tomorrow, 34 weeks after it first charted in the lower end of the Top 100. If it weren’t on ACR right now, it’d still be Top 3.
The timing of Radio 2’s big
90s Day last Friday couldn’t have been more perfect. Although it was all planned weeks ago when Covid-19 meant almost nothing to the public at large, it proved to be exactly the kind of nostalgic programming that reflected what so many listeners wanted that day. Primarily it was intended as a launch of the station’s new Sounds Of The 90s weekly show with Fearne Cotton, but it unwittingly became something even bigger last weekend as we headed into lockdown mode. And there’s no question that it’ll have helped bring in a younger under-35-45 female focused demographic to the network, which will stand it in good stead for years to come.
At one point last Saturday afternoon, following the news of his death at the age of 81, country music legend
Kenny Rogers had five songs inside the UK iTunes Top 20. Now, everyone seems to be moving away from individual track purchases and heading instead towards his
All The Hits & All New Love Songs collection, which will land strongly inside the Top 10 on the album chart tomorrow with its sales this week being 100% digital, something that normally only happens these days when a US rapper drops their latest piece of work, like Childish Gambino this week, for instance. And as ever, you can always rely on BBC 5 Live’s Entertainment correspondent to find a unique twist on any showbiz story. Kenny’s passing saw him dig out
this audio interview from Glastonbury 2013 where he revealed that Rogers once had a World Tennis Ranking in doubles higher than Wimbledon legend Bjorn Borg.
Liz Kershaw certainly doesn’t seem very happy that her Saturday show on BBC 6 Music has been dropped for the time being to accommodate a streamlined weekend schedule during the current crisis. She tweeted to her followers on Wednesday evening that the decision was ‘
not my choice. Was there for you guys.’ And when asked by one fan why she couldn’t do the show from home, she replied
‘Not given that option’. But we’re assured that both her and Amy Lamé will return, with the station tweeting ‘
we look forward to welcoming (them)
back to the airwaves soon.’
Wondering how widespread the London lockdown is right now? Put it this way, click onto the iconic
Abbey Road webcam here, and there’s barely anyone in sight. And certainly not packs of overseas tourists dodging the traffic on that famous zebra crossing, as would normally be the case in the spring sunshine.
One joyful trend over the past few days has been seeing various people heading into the lofts and attics and finding all sorts of music-related nonsense that they’ve then shared with us via social media. Gems that we’ve seen so far having included two faxed memos sent by Bernadette Russell, the ex-Picture Editor at
Smash Hits magazine in the early ‘00s. The first, addressed to Andy at Falcon Cars, simply says
‘I would like to hire a white limousine for a shoot with Steps on Monday 6 August from midday to 4pm”, and the second, sent to Animal World in Buckinghamshire, is the two-line
classic “I would like to order a dove and a snake for a shoot with Victoria Beckham on Friday 27 July 2001. Could you please be at the studio by 10am on that date ?” Those were the days, eh?
Another former Smash Hits contributor, the excellent Hannah Verdier, wrote a lovely piece
here for The Guardian on how music radio’s tone has changed to reflect these troubled times in the past week, but how it’s been perfectly in-step with the nation’s mood as a result. It’s a nice, recommended read.
One unexpected re-emergence this week has been that of
Andy Roberts, the former boss at Kiss UK, who left his role with station-owners Bauer last August, after more than 20 years there. Being the great music programmer that he is, he’s popped suddenly up on social media (we hadn’t heard a peep from him for almost eight months until now) with links to a whole bunch of new themed Spotify playlists that he’s put together, many with a cool dance edge of course. All named under the banner of
Social DisDance, we particularly love his
Old Skool All Day 10hr+ list, as well as the excellent
Indie Bar one that includes Kasabian, The Fratellis, Arctic Monkeys and more. He’s knocked up a load of lists, with more on the way, by the look of things. We’re not sure if this is his way of angling for a gig with a major music streaming service, or if he’s already got one but can’t announce it yet. Or maybe he’s just bored at home like so many other people and keeping himself amused. Whatever the case, those music programming skills are certainly still as sharp as ever.
Everyone's experience of coronavirus will be different, and we sincerely hope you don't contract it. All we can offer is a couple of firsthand tips. From PS's experience so far, we found the headaches very tough to deal with, and paracetamol was little, but some help. There's no desire to drink coffee, but the withdrawal from that won't have helped. The lack of being able to taste anything was difficult, helped only by lime cordial. Soup and fruit was the only food that was eaten for several days. The breathlessness is, frankly, scary but there's nothing I found to help with that.
The NHS website has a list of questions to answer, but really, the only conclusion seems you just have to ride it out at home, unless you are really, really struggling. We wish you well.
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