We've all been there: we're travelling by car, sitting in the office, cleaning the flat or whirling around in the kitchen - and the radio has been playing as a faithful companion for decades.
The average Rod Stewart fan is particularly happy when a song by the Brit with the stubbly hair and grater's voice comes out of the speakers. This lifts the spirits and certainly encourages some people to pop their favourite album into the CD player or put it on the record player.
However, you get the feeling that Rod Stewart songs are rarely played on the radio and when they are, it's always the same ones. Yet many of us, especially those of us who have been following Sir Rod's career for almost as long as he has been on stage, are always hoping that a radio station will devote itself to one of the rather unknown gems that have accumulated in Stewart's discography over the years and decades. In most cases, however, the hope remains. As far as we know, musical gems from Rod's endless song list such as Only a Boy or Hard Lesson To Learn have never been played on a German radio station.
But now we wanted to find out: Which Rod songs are actually played on German radio stations? Over the past few days, we have been trawling through the playlists of five major German radio stations. We decided to focus our research on the stations Bayern 1 from Munich, NDR 90.3 from Hamburg, Antenne Brandenburg (rbb) from Potsdam/Berlin, WDR4 from Cologne and SWR1 from Stuttgart and Mainz. The attentive observer will not have failed to notice that these are the stations that have presented Sir Rod's concerts in Germany as the local radio partners over the last ten years.
During our research, we decided to take a closer look at the station playlists of the last six days.
NDR 90.3 and WDR4 at the top
The result was that NDR 90.3 and WDR4 play Rod Stewart songs most frequently in their programmes - both played 15 songs in the period from 10 to 15 October. STORYTELLER would like to express its heartfelt thanks for this - but we still agree with the old butcher's adage: it can be a bit more!
Third place in the station ranking is shared by Antenne Brandenburg and Bayern 1, which have added a total of eleven songs to their programme over the last few days. In contrast, the programme structure of the station SWR1, which ‘only’ used grating music eight times in its programme, could be improved. The film industry would certainly award the Golden Raspberry for that. Do it better, SWR!
Now, dear readers, you will certainly and urgently want to know which songs are on the radio stations' playlists. But to dash your hopes right away: all in all, it's the usual suspects.
Let's start at the back: In the period from 10 to 15 October, the following were played once each: Motown Song, This Old Heart Of Mine, Tom Traubert's Blues (Waltzing Matilda) and Forever Young.
The following were played twice: Downtown Train, Every Beat Of My Heart, Some Guys Have All The Luck and Maggie May.
They were closely followed by three ‘radio appearances’ each: You're In My Heart’.
Let's move on to the podium - third place (4 times each) and thus a place on the podium is shared by: What Am I Gonna Do (I'm So In Love With You), Sailing, I Don't Want To Talk About It, Baby Jane, Rhythm Of My Heart, Tonight's The Night and Young Turks.
Second place and the ‘silver medals’ go to Have I Told You Lately and Da Ya Think I'm Sexy. Both songs were played on the radio a total of five times in the last six days.
And the Winner is and thus the favourite song of the German radio stations of the last week: The First Cut Is The Deepest, which made it onto the station playlists six times.
All in all, it can be said that we in Germany are actually quite spoilt with Stewart songs on the radio. 60 songs in a week is certainly room for improvement, but compared to the UK it's top.
Weak ratings in the UK
We also took the trouble to scrutinise two of the biggest radio stations in the UK. The result was that Smooth Radio from London played a Rod Stewart disc three times between 10 and 15 October: twice they played I Don't Want To Talk About It and once You're In My Heart. Things looked even bleaker at Rod's ‘home and yard station’ BBC Radio2. The station, where Stewart is a regular guest on talk shows and even made an impromptu appearance in the studio with Michael Buble, has not played a single song by Sir Rod in the last week. That's nothing but sad. So we did much better with our radio stations in Germany. Amd here are the rankings - both staions
Station ranking (this is how often Rod Stewart songs were played)
1. NDR 90.3, WDR 4 (15 each)
2. Antenne Brandenburg (11), Bayern 1 (11)
3. SWR (8)
Song ranking (how often the Rod Stewart songs were played on German radio)
1. the first cut is the deepest (6)
2 Have I Told You Lately, Da Ya Think I'm Sexy (5 each)
3. What Am I Gonna Do (I'm So In Love With You), Sailing, I Don't Want To Talk About It, Baby Jane, Rhythm Of My Heart, Tonight's The Night, Young Turks (4 each)
4 You're In My Heart (3)
5. Downtown Train, Every Beart Of My Heart, Some Guys Have All The Luck, Maggie May (2 each)
6. Forever Young, Tom Traubert's Blues (Waltzing Matilda), Motown Song, This Old Heart Of Mine (1 each)
All data refer to the period from 10 to 15 October 2024
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