Sunny Sweeney - "Bad Girl Phase"

[Kurt]

Lead single from Sunny Sweeney's PledgeMusic-funded album Provoked - it impacts June 16 after having premiered on SXM The Highway a few weeks ago, according to Play MPE.

[tim]

^This is a fun song! I'm going to be jamming out to this for the rest of the week. Although radio probably won't touch this it's good to have new music from Sunny.

[carriekins]

I love this. It's creating quite the buzz since premiering on the Highway - I see it quoted a lot on my Twitter feed. I'd love for this to become a hit for Sunny.

[.indulgecountry]

Ah, I was hoping this would be released to radio soon! I absolutely love this and I love Sunny's voice. I'd be thrilled if this could make a decent dent on the country charts, but either way I will definitely be looking forward to Provoked as Concrete was one of my favorite albums of the last few years. The more we hear of her the better as far as I'm considered; this girl is seriously so talented and deserves much more success than she's had.

[sabre14]

I love that Sunny is back and like carriekins said, this has been getting spun already on the Highway and creating a lot of buzz. Unfortunately I'm predicting this will do next to nothing at terrestrial radio. But perhaps it can make a good run on the indicator and musicrow charts.

[Zazie]

This and the new Lee Ann Womack song arriving the same week? That's hard to believe. I still love country radio, at least one week a year.

[Tylerjamesnerd]

This is such a Great song! There must be something wrong with me because i just heard her from a table away for the first time yesterday! She is so talented and should get more recognition... Man i think im just gonna die of happiness right now because i have great new music to listen to!!! :) Hope everything turns out alright for her....

[tvoss20]

Great song!

[Deleted]

"The devil on my shoulder's got my ear right now
The devil on my shoulder wants a beer right now
...and a cigarette, and a new boyfriend or two"

Such great (and funny) lines! I really enjoy this. It's such a shame that Sunny lost her major record deal with Republic. Looking back, it's hard for me to believe that "From A Table Away" went top 10, but that was almost 3 1/2 years ago already. I fear that, had such a song been released now, it wouldn't even do that well Today's country radio just doesn't make room for such songs.

I am hoping that this one can at least chart, but I don't know if it will. It looks like independent team Crescendo Music will be handling promotional duties for this, and they did help get Will Hoge's "Strong" on to the chart, so perhaps there's a sliver of hope for this one. "Strong" did get to #41 on Billboard, and I think it may have snuck in a week at #40 on Mediabase (sabre14 might know..?)

[sabre14]

May 22, 2014 17:11:14 GMT -5 jhomes87 said:

I am hoping that this one can at least chart, but I don't know if it will. It looks like independent team Crescendo Music will be handling promotional duties for this, and they did help get Will Hoge's "Strong" on to the chart, so perhaps there's a sliver of hope for this one. "Strong" did get to #41 on Billboard, and I think it may have snuck in a week at #40 on Mediabase (sabre14 might know..?)

"Strong" only got to #43 on Mediabase on the chart week for December 2nd last year. :)

The lack of major station support might have contributed to it not being able to sneak in the top 40. It fell about 407 points short of "Let's Go There" by the Brothers Osborne who held the #40 position. 

I hope that "Bad Girl Phase" can at least chart and make a run to that top 40 but anything with Thirty Tigers name attached to it leaves me pessimistic, along with not having enough past knowledge other than "Strong" to draw conclusions on how well Crescendo Music can promote singles.

[Deleted]

May 22, 2014 19:09:49 GMT -5 sabre14 said:

I hope that "Bad Girl Phase" can at least chart and make a run to that top 40 but anything with Sugar Hill's name attached to it leaves me pessimistic, along with not having enough past knowledge other than "Strong" to draw conclusions on how well Crescendo Music can promote singles.

I don't know too much about Crescendo either but it's led by independent promoter Pamela J Newman; Crescendo is also working Randy Rogers Band's new single "Satellite" to radio, and they picked up promotion for Mumford & Sons' "I Will Wait", getting that one into the top 40. Most of the other projects/singles that Pamela has been associated with didn't really do much chart-wise (some stuff for Ashley Monroe, Josh Abbott, Holly Williams, etc.)

[sabre14]

May 22, 2014 19:16:31 GMT -5 jhomes87 said:

May 22, 2014 19:09:49 GMT -5 sabre14 said:

I hope that "Bad Girl Phase" can at least chart and make a run to that top 40 but anything with Sugar Hill's name attached to it leaves me pessimistic, along with not having enough past knowledge other than "Strong" to draw conclusions on how well Crescendo Music can promote singles.

I don't know too much about Crescendo either but it's led by independent promoter Pamela J Newman; Crescendo is also working Randy Rogers Band's new single "Satellite" to radio, and they picked up promotion for Mumford & Sons' "I Will Wait", getting that one into the top 40. Most of the other projects/singles that Pamela has been associated with didn't really do much chart-wise (some stuff for Ashley Monroe, Josh Abbott, Holly Williams, etc.)

I think this can definitely make headway on the secondary charts (Indicator, Music Row, etc.) but the best I see is maybe sneaking into the top 60 at some point. The fact that "I Will Wait" got that high is a pretty encouraging but overall I have to see it to believe it. Pamela J Newman does have some past experience with promotion at Elektra and Sony Nashville which is good.

The fact that Sunny is now a known name to programmers with the success of "From A Table Away" and two other top 40's with "Staying's Worse Than Leaving" and "Drink Myself Single" I'm sure can only help her cause but all I can think now is what a crying shame it was she lost her major label deal with Republic. 

[Zazie]

The #60 song on the current (5/31) Billboard had about 600k in audience. And the number needed for next week's #60 will probably be a good bit less, with a housecleaning on the way and lots of songs leaving the chart. There should be a few charts coming up on which 450k or less is good enough to crack the top 60.

I realize that Sunny getting a massive hit or even a top 20 is prohibitively unlikely. But getting 450k worth of airplay -- is country radio so rigid that a song like this can't find a few stations to spin it? Aren't there (for instance) any women programming country radio stations? Any PD's, male or female, who have an interest in adding one atypical song?

This is what drives me nuts about country radio. I don't care if songs I don't like dominate the airwaves, but I do care if there's absolutely no room for songs I do like. I'll settle for the occasional spin on the occasional station. There is an audience for Bad Girl Phase. Not as big as the audience for the latest from FGL, but still an audience.

[rsmatto]

May 23, 2014 11:09:39 GMT -5 Zazie said:

The #60 song on the current (5/31) Billboard had about 600k in audience. And the number needed for next week's #60 will probably be a good bit less, with a housecleaning on the way and lots of songs leaving the chart. There should be a few charts coming up on which 450k or less is good enough to crack the top 60.

I realize that Sunny getting a massive hit or even a top 20 is prohibitively unlikely. But getting 450k worth of airplay -- is country radio so rigid that a song like this can't find a few stations to spin it? Aren't there (for instance) any women programming country radio stations? Any PD's, male or female, who have an interest in adding one atypical song?

This is what drives me nuts about country radio. I don't care if songs I don't like dominate the airwaves, but I do care if there's absolutely no room for songs I do like. I'll settle for the occasional spin on the occasional station. There is an audience for Bad Girl Phase. Not as big as the audience for the latest from FGL, but still an audience.

If Cumulus' new station idea gets off the ground (and other radio companies jump onto it too) songs like this WILL have a home again, even if that 'format' initially gets heavy with classic star tracks. Eventually they'll add other artists, like Sunny Sweeney to it. :)

[.indulgecountry]

This may have been a bust on the big charts, but this just hit #1 on the Texas country chart, making Sunny Sweeney the first female to top that chart since May 2003 (so, in over 11 years). Shame she couldn't get traction on the Billboard Country Airplay, but this is a great accomplishment nonetheless!

[Ten Pound Hammer]

I bet it's also probably the first song since 2003 to top that chart and NOT be about Texas in some way.

[countrysuperfan]

Let me enjoy this while the idiots at radio keep playing FGL songs.

[rsmatto]

It may have never really did anything on mainstream but in Texas, "Bad Girl Phase" is a #1 record (Edit: as I see .indulgecountry posted)