"radio ready."

(15 demerits to anyone to names a no-mark indie guitar thing or crazy free improv noise ensemble in the interests of being "wacky".)

I find this criticism more annoying than the use of "radio-friendly", although that one annoys me a lot too.

but then it's all too possible that it isn't meant that way BUT it's how my cynical mind would use it oh yesss

(a) "If more people enjoyed the sort of music we enjoy, this is the sort of thing that would be on pop radio and on charts."

(b) "Here is a sub-section of the music we enjoy that's actually palatable and appropriate to the format of pop radio; it would be interesting if it were actually there."

And the thing is that it does happen: plenty of rock bands who would otherwise be selling to an indie market just happen to score a radio hit with their catchiest single -- and this leads fans of such bands to believe that there really is an untapped pop market for others. I don't think that's necessarily an awful thing to suspect, so long as one doesn't get too worked up about it: plenty of trad-indie records have big pop singles on them that, given the right push of marketing and airplay, plenty of people would enjoy.

It strikes me that there have been various periods where that process -- a non-pop genre artist scoring a pop hit, then going home again -- has been a lot more possible than at other times, based on both industry factors and musical trends (e.g., the early 80s). I would say that now is not a particularly good time for it, but then Andrew W.K. is precisely the sort of thing I'm talking about: a single that doesn't really fit any overarching pop format is nonetheless picked up and enjoyed by people.

So I don't mind saying "radio-friendly" or "radio-ready" of things that we actually don't expect to be on the radio: it's a way of saying "it won't, but it's the sort of thing that could be."

i certainly wouldn't want to live in a world where freaky/unexpected/"out there"/"john peel" (circa 1976-88) records (or "just plain good records, maaan") couldn't make it into the pop consciousness.

hmmm...it happens just as often in genres other than rock (cf. oh, let's say nappy roots & cee-lo, fer instance. could the initial wave of nu-soul ala alicia/india arie/jill scott/et al be considered similarly?) yet "oddball" hiphop momentarily in the spotlight doesn't seem to engender the same "'BOUT DAMN TIME!!" rhetoric as in rock. (dance is sort of a gray area, as it's been chart pop in europe for years, and over here its boosters were just as bad circa the first chems/fatboy go round.)

I think a lot of the time the problem is that the people thinking their favourite band has recorded a "radio ready" song don't actually listen to much radio so have a somewhat odd idea about what gets on it. A 'catchy tune' is much lower down the pecking order now than 'a hot beat with a series of good hooks', so actually stuff like "What Do You Want Me To Say?" doesn't at all sound 'radio-ready' to this particular radio listener and D-Plan liker.

Nickleback is Canadian, right?

I remember The Beta Band moaning ib an interview a while back about getting radio play. One of them said something like (blatant vaguely-remembered paraphrase) "It's scary enough that Radio 1 have so much power they can send a track back to the label saying 'it's too long, chorus doesn't come in soon enough, cut the solo' etc - it's even scarier that we [The Beta Band] then allowed exactly those changes to take place"

Everybody knows that radio sells bands more than record shops. And it seems that compromise is key when it comes to radio-readiness. How this applies to a band like Idlewild, who've always sounded alt-radio friendly to these ears anyway, is anyone's guess.