Hip-Hop’s Hot But Suddenly, Guitars And Ballads Also Rule CHR.

Story by Inside Radio/Billboard

Hip-hop continues its dominance on the Billboard Hot 100, with the genre scoring a record-tying five No. 1 singles on the chart in 2017. But a host of acoustic guitar-laden male singer/songwriters are suddenly also making waves at CHR.

According to a story in Billboard, “Over the last 12-15 months, a parade of guitar-toting male troubadours have climbed, slowly and sensitively, onto pop radio. These strum-happy tracks, which tend to be subdued even while expressing desire or angst, offer the opposite of rap’s buoyant energy.”

Leading the way is Ed Sheeran. “He had the same sound that came off so adult contemporary, but you went to his shows and saw 12-year-old girls,” said Nadine Santos, director of Programming for Music Choice. “Everyone picked up on that, and this year you saw a lot more of it.”

Other hits have come from the likes of James Arthur, with “Say You Won’t Let Go,” and singles from former One Direction members Harry Styles and Niall Horan. Nick Jonas’ single “Find You,” a hit on Billboard’s Pop Songs chart, also fits the mold, as have MAX with “Lights Down Low,” Nick Fradiani’s successful single “All On You,” and Sam Hunt’s “Body Like a Back Road.”

Billboard suggests that these acoustic ballads stand out as much for what they’re not as what they are. “For every musical action, there is a reaction: The Rolling Stones fashioned themselves as a more rugged alternative to the clean-cut Fab Four, Americana coalesced as a genre in opposition to bro country, and the likes of Mumford & Sons offered a reprieve from all the high-octane, high-compression dance music that invaded the mainstream in 2012.”

For the singer-songwriter trend, “In a world where everyone pays fealty to hip-hop, the opposite sound cuts through precisely because it does nothing of the sort,” the story said.

In addition, the ballads are gaining traction because they rely on guitars at a time when rock is struggling for presence within CHR. “It’s very hard to be as creative on an electric guitar these days as it used to be; a lot of it’s been done,” said songwriter Jamie Hartmann. “There’s so much technology-based music that can be made now, and people are using so many different types of instruments that people are a lot bit more restricted by guitars.”

Clearly, though, some listeners still crave a guitar fix. Added Mike McVay, executive VP, Content & Programming, Cumulus Media and Westwood One, “I think these records fill a guitar void.”

The shift is also likely due to an overall trend of less tempo at CHR—for better or worse. In 2011, when Calvin Harris’ “We Found Love” and Katy Perry’s “Firework” ruled the charts, artists were focused on creating tracks at around 120 beats per minute. Billboard reports that a drastic fall in the average tempo of top 40 pop over the past few years has made it easier to fit stately ballads into rotation. “Radio has its own idea of what the tempo of the times are; right now it’s about 102 or 103 [beats per minute],” said Hartmann. As a result, the tempo gap between ballads and upbeat records is now negligible. “Pop’s downshift naturally means that new doors opened for unhurried ballads,” Billboard wrote.

But will this all lead to a glut of the singer-songwriter troubadour sound? “If you’re programming an hour of music, you would not want to have similar-sounding artists with similar-sounding songs back to back because then it really eliminates the feel of variety that we all try to present,” McVay said.

From the artist standpoint, as “MAX” Schneider put it, “People need to stop going, ‘you need this many up-tempos or whatever.’ You don’t just have to go with whatever’s wavy, whatever’s booming. Just create.”