Oldies
Oldies is a term for musical genres such as pop music, rock and roll, doo-wop, surf music (broadly characterized as classic rock and pop rock) from the second half of the 20th century, specifically from around the mid-1950s to the 1980s, as well as for a radio format playing this music.
"Oldie" redirects here. For the magazine, see The Oldie. For the Ukrainian writers, see H. L. Oldie. For the Odd Future song, see The OF Tape Vol. 2.Since 2000, 1970s music has been increasingly included in this genre.[1] "Classic hits" have been seen as a successor to the oldies format on the radio, with music from the 1980s serving as the core example.
Description[edit]
This category includes styles as diverse as doo-wop, early rock and roll, novelty songs, bubblegum music, folk rock, psychedelic rock, baroque pop, surf music, soul music, rhythm and blues, classic rock, some blues, and some country music.[2]
Golden Oldies usually refers to music exclusively from the 1950s and 1960s.[2] Oldies radio typically features artists such as Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, The Beatles, Jerry Lee Lewis, The Beach Boys, Frankie Avalon, The Four Seasons,[3] Paul Anka, Neil Sedaka, Little Richard[4] and Sam Cooke; as well as such musical movements and genres as early rock and roll, rockabilly, doo-wop, soul music, Motown, British Invasion, early girl groups, surf music, teen idol singers, teenage tragedy songs, and bubblegum pop. Music from the folk revival and instrumental beautiful music are among the most commonly excluded recordings from the oldies era.[5]
Most traditional oldies stations limit their on-air playlists to no more than 300 songs, based on the programming strategy that average listeners and passive listeners will stay tuned provided they are familiar with the hits being played. A drawback to this concept is the constant heavy rotation and repetition of the station's program library, as well as rejection of the format by active listeners. This can be avoided either through the use of a broader playlist or by rotating different songs from the oldies era into and out of the playlist every few weeks.
Oldies has some overlap with the classic hits and classic rock formats. Classic hits features pop and rock hits from the early 1970s to early 1990s, while classic rock focuses on album rock from the late 1960s to 1990s (sometimes playing newer material made in the same style as the older songs). As formats have drifted in time with their target audiences, classic hits and classic rock have moved further away from pure oldies, which has largely remained a static format.
The term "oldies" in the early days of the rock era and before referred to the traditional pop songs of previous decades; a 1953 record review in Billboard describes 1925's "Yes Sir, That's My Baby" as an "oldie."[6] Oldies is known for the near-total and sometimes arbitrary exclusion of some acts that were very popular in their time, including The Osmonds[7] and Barbra Streisand.[8]
Other radio stations[edit]
The oldies format remains one of the most popular formats on radio in markets where it is still active. Some of the most successful major-market oldies stations today really lean towards the Classic Hits format and include KRTH "K-Earth 101" in Los Angeles, XHPRS-FM "105.7 the Walrus" in Tijuana-San Diego, KOLA 99.9 in Riverside-San Bernardino, KYNO in Fresno, California, 98.1 WOGL in Philadelphia, WMJI "Majic 105.7" in Cleveland, and KSPF in Dallas. WLS-FM in Chicago, however is similar to the way oldies stations sounded several years back. They still play one or two pre-1964 songs an hour during the day and as many as 4 an hour at night. However, to illustrate the continued decline in the format, San Francisco's KFRC moved toward Classic Hits in 2005 and dropped this format entirely in 2006 in favor of the Rhythmic AC "MOViN" format which left most of Northern California without an oldies station until the debut of KCCL (K-Hits 92.1) in Sacramento in January 2007. (However, KFRC had already evolved its format and positioning to classic hits at the time it changed to "Movin".) But KFRC was not gone for long. On May 17, 2007, with Free FM hot talk format failing on 106.9 KIFR CBS relaunched KFRC with a rock leaning classic hits format on 106.9. But KFRC was not back for long either. On October 27, 2008, 106.9 KFRC FM became an all news 740 KCBS AM simulcast. KFRC now only airs on 106.9 FM HD-2 and online at KFRC.com. But KFRC came back again. On January 1, 2009, KFRC returned on the radio at 1550 AM, as true oldies.
KZQZ, which aired in St. Louis, Missouri and began playing oldies in March 2008, held onto the traditional oldies format, playing a wide variety of top 40 Billboard hits from the 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s, until the FCC forced the station off the air in 2020. Non-commercial WXRB, 95.1 FM in Dudley, Massachusetts (one of the first non-commercial all-oldies stations in North America) began playing Golden Oldies on March 6, 2005, at 1:00pm, focusing on the years 1954 through 1979.
On August 27, 2009, Grand Rapids, Michigan station WGVU became the first public radio station to feature an all-oldies format. The format has since been imitated by other public radio stations; for example, WCNY-FM in Syracuse, New York has begun broadcasting a personality-based oldies format on its HD Radio digital subchannel.
Jones Radio Networks, Waitt Radio Networks and Transtar Radio Networks also offered 24-hour satellite-distributed oldies formats; since those companies have integrated into the Dial Global corporation, the networks have merged into one, Kool Gold. Satellite Music Network offered "Oldies Radio;" Oldies Radio survived until its acquisition by ABC but has since rebranded as Classic Hits Radio under current owner Cumulus Media Networks, focusing on music primarily from the 1970s and 1980s, with some limited 1960s music.
ABC also offered The True Oldies Channel, a 24-hour oldies network programmed and voice tracked at all hours by Scott Shannon, at the time morning show host at ABC's WPLJ. The True Oldies Channel was conceived on the concept of avoiding the drift into 1970s and 1980s music that the oldies format was undergoing in the first years of the 21st century. Eventually, by the end of the network's terrestrial run in 2014, it had taken a hybrid approach, with both 1960s and 1970s music being featured at the core of the network, with some limited 1980s music included.
In North America, satellite radio broadcasters XM and Sirius launched in 2001 and 2002, respectively, with more than a dozen oldies radio channels, with XM offering separate stations for each decade from the 1940s to the 1990s, and Sirius doing the same for the 1950s through the 1980s, initially all in prime single-digit channel positions. These companies also offered specific genre channels for disco and dance hits, garage rock, classic rock, classic country, and vintage R&B and soul hits.[14][15] These pay radio channels boasted thousands of songs in their libraries, ensuring far less repetition than traditional broadcast stations. (In November 2008, following a merger of Sirius and XM, the two services shifted to a unified group of "decades" channels, with the playlists for most cut back to reflect a more conventional style of oldies programming. SiriusXM further marginalized its oldies stations over the years, moving its 40s channel off channel 4 in 2015, then in 2021 by moving its 50s and 60s channels out of their 5 and 6 channel slots respectively.) Music Choice similarly offers an interruption-free oldies station (which covers the 1950s and 1960s, primarily from the rock and roll era) as well as decades channels for the 1970s through the 1990s. A number of Internet radio stations also carry the format.
From the late 2010s until 2022, shortwave radio station WTWW operated an oldies service in the evening hours.[16][17][18] In November 2022, WTWW lead engineer Ted Randall left the station and took the oldies programming to a dedicated transmitter on WRMI a short distance down the dial from WTWW on the 60-meter band.[19]