Elton John once claimed hip-hop was “killing radio”
Every significant musical movement is driven by technology. While many people are grumbling about how the invention of the iPod killed music in the 2000s, the same thing was happening in the 1980s with the unveiling of MTV and the introduction of music videos to the world. Radio has always been a constant, but Elton John thought that the rise in hip-hop had overtaken the diversity of music on the airwaves.
Granted, it’s not like rock and roll has suddenly been rendered obsolete. There are still incredible songwriters like Haim tearing up the charts, and even Billie Eilish has made records that fit in with the rock and roll mould more than anything hip-hop-focused. But John came from the world of songwriters like James Taylor and Leon Russell, and that version of rock stars has been replaced with rap poets.
Although rock gets much credit for ushering in a new form of music in the 1950s, hip-hop did the same thing in the late 1970s. Instead of Chuck Berry, we had Sugarhill Gang, and while it was difficult for many to admit at the time, people like Run-DMC should stand alongside acts like The Beatles as one of the most influential acts of all time, considering how many people bought their records and made their rap groups afterwards.
While there was still a firm balance of artists in the 1990s, John noticed the tide starting to turn around the turn of the century. It wasn’t out of the question for the mainstream charts to cater to everything from Nirvana to Tupac to Celine Dion, but up until recently, John thought that hip-hop had too much of a foothold in radio.
As much as John loved acts like Moby for their brilliant songwriting, he thought that the oversaturation of hip-hop marked a turning point for radio, telling Billboard, “[The U.S. was] the slowest to get onto Moby, and it’s so formatted that people like Rufus Wainwright or Kings Of Leon for example don’t get any play. If you don’t fit into a certain format here, you’ve had it. Pop radio, CHR, is all one kind of thing; it’s hip-hop or nothing else, and it’s killing radio.”
That’s not to say that John dislikes working with new types of music. His collaboration with Eminem at the Grammys is still one of the more progressive moves the ceremony has ever done, and his most recent contribution to Gorillaz and Kanye West albums shows that he’s at least aware of how to insert himself into that context.
However, the massive hip-hop presence on the radio has more to do with the format than anything else. After all, the radio is meant to play what people want to hear on their way to work when they aren’t using streaming services. Since a lot of hip-hop artists have been making bold strides in terms of production and songwriting, it’s easy to see radio outlets prefer them over a songwriter that is a lot more tasteful.
Hip-hop certainly deserves its place as one of the biggest genres in the world, but John does make a good point about the importance of mixing things up on the radio. Because if all that people get spoonfed is just one genre, the art of mixing together everything under the sun will start to fall apart.
