While driving to Mt. Monadnock last Saturday, we turned on the radio. One station touted their ongoing “Whatever Weekend” after every song. Wow, whatever – a perfect example of the current popularity of random radio. Instead of catering to one genre of music (“The same 1000 classic rock songs!” “Today’s biggest hits, played until you are sick of them.” “Your only option for corporate alternative radio!”), stations are reaching out to variety-craving audiences who don’t care how a song is branded, they only care if it’s generally acknowledged to be an auditory delight. But they also want to be in constant suspense over the next song to come on the radio. They want zany surprises. They want whatever.
This shuffle-friendly radio listener likes rock and roll from any decade. Eighties pop is also essential, although novelty is eschewed in favor of respectable artists like Boy George, Bon Jovi, and Belinda Carlisle. They do like to be exposed to today’s latest hits, but with strict filters on teenybopper garbage. They’ll also groove on the occasional mainstream rap and country cross-overs, as well as tried and true oldies that have enjoyed a recent resurgence in pop culture.
Just as important as the niche-free content is the perceived randomness of the song order. Here’s an actual sample “Whatever” playlist: Madonna’s “Who’s that Girl” followed by Green Day’s “Holiday” followed by Tom Petty’s “Running Down a Dream” followed by Beyonce’s “Ring the Alarm” followed by UB40’s “Red Red Wine” followed by REM’s “Shiny Happy People” followed by Staind’s “It’s Been While” followed by the Police’s “Message in a Bottle” followed by Otis Redding’s “Dock of the Bay.”
For being so random, it flows suspiciously well, with extreme selections like “Holiday” and “Ring the Alarm” and “It’s Been Awhile” buffered by reassuring classics that anyone with a foothold into popular culture can enjoy on some level. In fact, the songs are too random. i-Pod users are familiar with that eerie occurrence when they are given two Beastie Boys songs in a row during shuffle mode, from a library of 5000 songs. Coincidence is a natural result of randomness, after all. On commercial radio, even the randomness is formulaic.
