Best Week Ever Radio - December, 2008

[Hervard]

Best Week Ever Radio - December 7, 2008

Hour 1
Chasing Pavements/Adele - #16
Love Remains The Same/Gavin Rossdale - #6
Hot N Cold/Katy Perry - #5
Shattered (Turn The Car Around)/O.A.R. - #3
Gotta Be Somebody/Nickelback - #4
Broken/Lifehouse - #7
Fall For You/Secondhand Serenade - #12
Better In Time/Leona Lewis - #8

Hour 2
Let Me Be Myself/3 Doors Down - #17
Addicted/Saving Abel - #13
Beating My Heart/Jon McLaughlin - #19
What About Now/Daughtry - #9
I'm Yours/Jason Mraz - #1
Light On/David Cook - #14
Viva La Vida/Coldplay - #10
So What/Pink - #2

Songs in the Top 20 of the 11/28/08 Hot AC chart not played this week
#11: Come On Get Higher/Gavin Rossdale
#15: Crush/David Archuleta
#18: One Step At A Time/Jordin Sparks
#20: Disturbia/Rihanna

Personal notes from this week's show

- Only sixteen songs played this week, but at least they were all in the Top 20. Oddly enough, none of the skipped songs were tired, old songs that have been on the Hot AC chart forever (although "Come On Get Higher" by Matt Nathanson has been on for 27 weeks, but I think that song might still have some life in it and besides, it did not hit the Top Five.)

- One premiere song this week, but it's a good one. The first hit by Jon McLaughlin, "Beating My Heart" had been dog-paddling in the lower half of the Hot AC chart for the past four months, but this week, it takes a good-sized four-spot move to #19. The song reminds me a little of "Beautiful Day" by U2, which charted in early 2001.

- I only heard Hour 2 of this week's show, so I hopped over to yes.com to check Hour 1 and saw only seven songs. But I took a look at the times that were listed at which each song was played and there was a large gap between "Hot And Cold" and "Gotta Be Somebody", so I'm thinking that KLZR had technical difficulties. It wasn't too hard to figure out which song was skipped, however, as you can see.

- This week's "song to watch" is Taylor Swift's new song "Love Story". The country singer's first pop crossover hit "Teardrops On My Guitar" got a lot of play on "Best Week Ever Radio" in early 2008, and I feel that her second Hot AC hit ("Our Song" fell short of the chart) has hit potential.

[Hervard]

Best Week Ever Radio - December 14, 2008

Hour 1
Hot 'N Cold/Katy Perry - #4
Shattered (Turn The Car Around)/O.A.R. - #3
What About Now/Daughtry - #9
Beating My Heart/Jon McLaughlin - #18
One Step At A Time/Jordin Sparks - #20
I'm Yours/Jason Mraz - #1
Better In Time/Leona Lewis - #6
Broken/Lifehouse - #8
Chasing Pavements/Adele - #17

Hour 2
Viva La Vida/Coldplay - #10
Light On/David Cook - #13
Gotta Be Somebody/Nickelback - #5
Love Remains The Same/Gavin Rossdale - #7
Disturbia/Rihanna - #21
Crush/David Archuleta - #15
Let Me Be Myself/3 Doors Down - #16
So What/Pink - #2
Addicted/Saving Abel - #12

Songs in the Top 20 of the 12/5/08 Hot AC chart not played this week
#11: Come On Get Higher/Matt Nathanson
#14: Fall For You/Secondhand Serenade
#19: You Found Me/The Fray

Personal notes from this week's show

- Back to the usual 18 songs this week. And, since there were three skipped songs, that means they played one song that's not in this week's Top 20. "Disturbia" by Rihanna did hit the Top 20 last week, but this week, falls back a spot to #21. But the song regained its bullet, so maybe that's why they decided to play it.

- I'm kind of surprised that they actually nixed "Fall For You" by Secondhand Serenade. They got that one on extra early, way before it hit the Top 20. In fact, it had just barely hit the Top 30 of the Hot AC chart when they premiered the song. Perhaps they felt they were too lenient with it?

- Another surprise is that they actually played "One Step At A Time" by Jordin Sparks, as they'd been avoiding the song for over a month. (Heck, had there been a technical difficulty like that of last week, I would have assumed that "Fall For You" was the song they played instead of this one!) Anyway. the song falls back two spots to #20, looking like it's just about done. In fact, barring a resurgence (which is possible), the song will be gone in three weeks, so this would possibly be the last time that we hear the song (more on that in a moment)

- This week's "song to watch" is "You Found Me" by The Fray. Yes, I know that the "song to watch" is virtually always a song in the lower half of the chart, but there were really no songs showing significant growth below #20, so, since they didn't play "You Found Me", it technically does qualify as a "song to watch". Anyway, the song makes a spectacular debut at #19 on this week's Hot AC chart, tying with "Gotta Be Somebody" by Nickelback for the highest debut of the year. Usually, they're right on songs like that. Oh well, they'll definitely get to playing it, most likely on the first show of 2009

- Some of you might be wondering why I don't predict the song to premiere on the show next week? Well, that's because they start the year-end show, on which they'll be playing songs that did well on the year-end chart. And, since "Fall For You" hit the chart so late in the year, there's no way they're going to play it on the year-end show - unless they decide to mix in new songs with high rankers on the year-end chart. And as for Jordin Sparks "One Step At A Time", since that song didn't quite hit the Top Ten (and they avoided the song for many weeks), they might not play that one. We'll have to see what happens.

[Hervard]

Best Week Ever Radio - December 21 & 28, 2008[/b]

December 21, 2008

Hour 1
Love Song/Sara Bareilles - #1
Feels Like Tonight/Daughtry - #3
Whatever It Takes - #2
Sorry/Buckcherry - #5
Bleeding Love/Leona Lewis - #6
It's Not My Time/3 Doors Down - #4
Paralyzer/Finger Eleven - #7
Stop And Stare/OneRepublic - #12
I'm Yours/Jason Mraz - #10
Won't Go Home Without You/Maroon 5 - #16

Hour 2
Love Remains The Same/Gavin Rossdale - #11
Bubbly/Colbie Caillat - #14
Apologize/Timbaland f/OneRepublic - #9
Mercy/Duffy - #41
Chasing Pavements/Adele - #56
Pocketful Of Sunshine/Natasha Bedingfield - #13
Say/John Mayer - #24
Who Knew/Pink - #25
In Love With A Girl/Gavin DeGraw - #18
All Summer Long/Kid Rock - #15

December 28, 2008

Hour 1
Shadow Of The Day/Linkin' Park - #19
No One/Alicia Keys - #28
Over You/Daughtry - #20
Shattered (Turn The Car Around)/O.A.R. - #22
How Far We've Come/Matchbox Twenty - #32
Big Girls Don't Cry/Fergie - #53
The Time Of My Life/David Cook - #26
Teardrops On My Guitar/Taylor Swift - #30
The Way I Am/Ingrid Michaelson - #39
Never Too Late/Three Days Grace - #43

Hour 2
Come On Get Higher/Matt Nathanson - #31
So What/Pink - #35
No Air/Jordin Sparks f/Chris Brown- #37
What About Now/Daughtry - #21
If I Never See Your Face Again/Maroon 5 f/Rihanna - #34
Pictures Of You/The Last Goodnight - #38
Realize/Colbie Caillat - #17
I Kissed A Girl/Katy Perry - #42
Better In Time/Leona Lewis - #45
Viva La Vida/Coldplay - #8

Songs in the Top 40 of the Year-End Hot AC chart not played
#23: Into The Night/Santana f/Chad Kroeger
#27: Wake Up Call/Maroon 5
#29: These Hard Times/Matchbox Twenty
#33: Broken/Lifehouse
#36: Tattoo/Jordin Sparks
#40: Shake It/Metro Station

Personal notes from this week's show

- As you can see, I doubled up the two year-end shows. I figured it would be easier to read that way.

- According to Yes.com, KLZR had ten songs played in the first hour of the December 21 show and nine played in the second hour. However, it appears that the show started off before the top of the hour, because "Love Song" was the last song in the 6:00 hour and the rest of the songs appear to be regular programming. And, seeing that "Love Song" wasn't played on the second half of the year-end show, I decided that the show starting slightly ahead of time was a logical assumption. (By the way, the reason I didn't hear the first half of the show is because WIMS played the same damn show as last week!)

- As much as I enjoyed listening to this show, I couldn't help but think that it was pretty much played backwards. They played most of the Top Ten hits of the year in the first hour of the first half of the show, and most of the Top 20 hits were played on the first half of the show. They should have played the lower charters during the first half of the show and saved the top songs of the year for the second half, ending with "Love Song" by Sara Bareilles, since that was the #1 song of the year. Starting the show off with that song didn't seem right. But that's just me.

- As expected, they did not play "One Step At A Time" by Jordin Sparks. Surprisingly, however, they played "No Air", but skipped over "Tattoo", which seemed kind of odd, since the latter got more plays on the show than the former.

- I sort of wonder how they determined which songs to play on the show. Perhaps they computed their own year-end chart and the songs they played make up the Top 40. I don't believe they used a different Mediabase update than what R&R uses, since if they used an earlier one, that would explain why "Big Girls Don't Cry" made it, since on R&R, that song was at #53, but then "Chasing Pavements" wouldn't have made it. Vice versa for if they used a later update. Of course, "Big Girls Don't Cry" did have a lot of recurrent airplay, which R&R no longer uses in computing the year-end chart - just plays during each song's charted weeks.

- Could the show possibly have a boycott on "Into The Night" by Santana featuring Chad Kroeger? They stopped playing it completely the week after it peaked at #2, and they did not play it on the year-end show. Hmm....

- This would normally be where I post my song to watch, but unfortunately, that's kind of useless at this point. Why, you ask? Well, I'm sorry to say that this was the final edition of Best Week Ever Radio. At least that's what Rachel Perry said at the end of the show. She said in the outro, "And that's going to do it for us...forever. That's right, this is the last episode of Best Week Ever Radio, so seriously, from Rachel Perry, our production team...we just want to say thank you and we hope that you had as much fun listening as we have had making this show." Then she said to continue watching the show on VH1 and checking them out on the Internet. I'm thinking that they didn't have enough stations subscribing to the show, because the only large market left airing the show was Kansas City. Not sure what small market stations still aired the show, because those don't register on yes.com. So I guess I should have sort of realized that the show was in trouble when I found this out. Not sure if they're going to start doing another show (since they previously had a radio show called "VH1 Weekly Rewind", which was a Top 15 countdown), but from what she said, it doesn't sound like it. So I just want to say that I've had fun posting the lists for you and hope you've enjoyed reading them. Even though I didn't get many comments about it, I know you've been checking them out, because the board shows that they've been read many times. I guess I didn't get comments was because I pretty much said it all with my personal notes from each show. Anyway, if VH1 starts another radio show somewhere down the line, if a station in my area starts running it, I'll be sure to post it, if I find it interesting. Thanks again, everyone! :)