No more BELA105

So. A Portland radio station went off the air: BELA105. I’m irritated because they played women artists, and my longtime favorite station, KINKFM, never plays women anymore. KINK used to play women. That’s where I first heard Jonatha Brooke, Suzanne Santo of HONEYHONEY, Mindy Smith, Kasey Chambers-a host of Americana and indie artists. That’s where I first heard Lucinda Williams sing “Can’t Let Go.” And now it’s just bunch of angsty white guys.

Oh, they might throw in a little Billie Eilish now and then, but rarely.

I speak to the manager

I called KINK once and asked why they never play women. The program manager, who was DJing that afternoon, told me that their women artists get play on pop stations and then KINK can’t play them anymore. Well then, this happens all the time with male artists. Hozier? Teddy Swims? I can go on but those artists get plenty of Top 40 play and KINK still plays them.

Anyway.

BELA105 had a mix of current and older hits. Great radio music, lots of women’s voices, and maybe the worst sound bites of any station I’ve ever listened to. They ran with “Bella” as the personification of their listener, and she was into the gym, shopping, pumpkin-spice lattes (I do like those) and her job at NIKE. I think it was maybe Sheila Hamilton doing the voice work in this Cali-girl voice she uses. I found the whole Bella persona thing insulting and tone deaf, but I put up with it for the music.

So now I’m hunting around the dial for a third station. I still have KINK and Z100, but Z100 leans too heavily on John Jay and Rich, three people who talk all the time. I’m not much for excessive talking on the radio. I used to listen to Daria, Mitch and Ted, but Mitch migrated to KINK (he is absolutely wonderful as a DJ) and I don’t know where Daria and Ted went, and I don’t really care, because I do still have Mitch.

My point is, I am not that interested in listening to people talk on the radio.

I want music.

When my husband and I commuted together, back before the pandemic shutdown, he would have the radio tuned to the morning show on KINK, which was Mitch and Staci. He would turn down the radio whenever they played a song. When Mitch and Staci would start talking, he’d turn it back up.  I was so confused. This is the exact opposite of what I do. I was baffled, but silent, as I do not talk much in the morning. That’s fine because my husband talks enough for the both of us.

But that was years ago. I no longer commute, but in the car, I want music. My husband always listens to sports talk radio. When I’m riding with him, he turns it off. I don’t even have to ask.

All this is dull to you non-Portlanders, I’m sure. But I do have a larger point (aside from the fact that I still listen to the radio in my car, like a dinosaur or something). I also have the jazz station and the classical station to listen to, but that is not car music. That is work-from-home music.

Car music is different. Car music makes you think and remember. Car music makes you want to work on your own fiction, instead of whatever you’ll be writing at the office that day. Most of all, it makes you sing along.

And you never know what you’ll be wanting to sing. It might be Earth, Wind and Fire. It might be Steve Earle. It might be Beyonce. I need ALL KINDS of music at my beck and call, because I am a musical omnivore and I want to devour it all.

My musical history

I come from a family of musical omnivores. I have never understood how you could choose one type of music, elevate it above all others, and declare this the one true music before which all others must submit. No one in my family did that, and we likewise extended that same tolerance to each other’s singular passions; my older brother’s jazz, my mother’s opera, my younger brother’s Johnny Cash. For me and sister, this was even true of our early taste for teen-idol pop, or bubblegum music. 

It would be so easy to dismiss the Jackson 5 and “ABC.” Or the Osmonds’ “Puppy Love.” Sappy, poppy songs sung by boys whose voices hadn’t changed. But my sister and I loved these songs, which we tuned in on the tiny tinny transistor radios we found in our Christmas stockings in 1971. These boys sang in a register like our own, which added a special layer of enjoyment. 

Jack Wild was not a gifted vocalist, but no one ever laughed at us or asked us to turn down his records. We played it loud and proud. When the Partridge Family came along, we devoured that first album, oblivious to the fact that David Cassidy wasn’t even singing on “I Think I Love You.” These were our songs, this was our music. We played it on the record player in our room, not the big stereo my dad shipped home while he was in Vietnam, but the avocado green record player with the square speakers.

Alongside these records, we played my parents’ albums by The Who, Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin. It wasn’t all bubblegum, just partly. But that sweet pop was important to us.

All told, I don’t think our bubblegum phase lasted all that long. When I was thirteen, we fell in love with Cat Stevens, and wore out Carole King’s ‘Tapestry’. The soundtrack to HR Pufnstuf was replaced by the soundtrack to Jesus Christ Superstar. And then my older brother started bringing us home new music; Todd Rundgren, Joni Mitchell, Bonnie Raitt. I bought my own Carly Simon records, even though I had trouble singing along with her. I have a head voice, and hers is all throat.

Today, that makes me…different.

My tastes matured right along with me, or perhaps my tastes enlarged along with the rest of me, but I still love all of it. I have no guilty pleasures. I’ll still belt out “Different.”

Disco? Love it. Retro funk? Blast it. 80s boy bands? Pump up the volume. I want it that way.

My early love of bubble gum has left me with a lifelong taste for Top 40 music, which I listen to in the car. I don’t apologize for it, despite the lip-curling disdain, the open contempt with which most of my peers speak of radio hits. I want to hear Sabrina Carpenter and Chappell Roan just as much as any girl does.

Which brings me to my theory, of course. For the most part:

Who (mostly) listens to bubblegum?

Who (mostly) listens to Top 40?

Who (mostly) listens to KPop?

Why does society routinely take a big, gleeful dump on whatever girls like?

My conclusion

It is culturally demanded that whatever inspires happiness and excitement in girls and young women will be sneered at and dismissed. And women participate in it. We announce our graduation from girl to woman through rejection of whatever previously thrilled us. We are serious now. We can’t like the bubblegum. We have to grow up and set aside our childish things.

Maybe that’s what BELA105 was trying to defend with their snotty sound bites that championed a woman’s right to her pop music, aligning it with shopping, workouts, seasonal Starbucks and the like.

Well, pay attention, women. If you like it, it must be dismissed from the airwaves. In fact, what’s at 105 now? Sports talk radio. My husband’s station. I know he’s not personally responsible for this, but I’ve made it a point to forgive him anyway, because I have a big heart and all that.

A big heart, and no Top 40.