The Hey Jude chorus and radio edits in general

[CAwasinNJ]

I was listening to KOOL a little while ago and they played Hey Jude. Predictably, they cut off the chorus (about a minute and a half's worth.) Yeah I know it's long, but that's the way it was released. So I'm wondering, does any station that plays the song actually play the whole thing? I heard The Beatles did that intentionally to dare the Top 40 stations of the era to edit it. I don't know how true that story is, but it wouldn't surprise me. There's a funny story about how DJ's back then actually LIKED that the song was so long, but I'll save that for another day.

That leads to a bigger topic: the Trimmed For Time Radio Edit. I'll admit my bias up front. I hate them. I also understand why they exist. In my humble opinion, stations should play what the artist intended. If it's a good song, listeners will listen. If it's not, they shouldn't be playing it anyway. What makes it worse is that most of the edits screw up the song in one way or another. Usually it's just a tempo/flow issue, but the best (or worst depending on your thinking) example is Leader of the Pack. With the radio edit the plot makes no sense. It's just crazy.

So what do you all think?

[amanuensis]

Billy Joel made a song about it -- The Entertainer. Which never seems to get airplay. And neither does "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant" which is the song I assume that Joel is alluding to in these lyrics:

You heard my latest record
It's been on the radio
Ah, it took me years to write it
They were the best years of my life
It was a beautiful song but it ran too long
If you're gonna have a hit you gotta make it fit

So they cut it down to 3:05

And speaking of Billy Joel, the DJs often stop playing "Still Rock and Roll to Me" before he does the whoop at the end, just because there is a couple of seconds of silence before that. It's as if the DJ is afraid I will change the station if I don't hear anything for a moment or two.

[CAwasinNJ]

Great point about The Entertainer, but unless one of Mr Joel's many talents is time travel it couldn't be about Italian Restaurant. The Entertainer was on Streetlife Serenade, which came out in 1974. Italian Restaurant was on The Stranger in 1977. Wikipedia thinks the reference is to Piano Man which was on the previous album. Maybe somebody else could check that out.

If you want to expand the topic even further to trimming the last few seconds, every song on the radio that doesn't have a cold end gets cut off in the crossfade to the next song/jingle/etc. MTV & VH1 used to do that too back when they actually played music. The music video cut off that was particularly annoying to me was Stay by Lisa Loeb. At the end of the video Lisa walks out the door then turns around and looks at the camera. In almost every airing they went on to the next element before she turns around. That 5 seconds completely changes the song!

[amanuensis]

I just want to know what a "real estate novelist" is. And why he never had time for a wife.

[friendlee]

Ever listen to the full version of The Tornadoes "Telstar"? Usually the last 5-8 seconds is cut-off but Joe Meek put a rather cool ending on it.

Moody Blues - Nights in White Satin: Even if you don't care for the song, one has to admit the three-minute edit is a bit of a train wreck, the four-minute version is much more palatable.

10cc - I'm Not In Love.....oh pullease! The awful, blatant, obvious, jarring edit at the end of the song. There is a much better way to do it that only increases the length of the selection by about 15 seconds (some might argue that even that's too much!) but it ends up sounding so much nicer.

So many examples, so little time, so many questions such as "Why would anyone do that to a song?" But even if Hey Jude does get a little long-winded...long live the album versions!

[fmdj1]

While I tried to use the full-length songs on the Goat, (American Pie and Life's Been Good as 2 of the longer examples) I too have used radio edits including on Hey Jude (Sorry CA, I couldn't take all those na-na's ). But it should be noted that many stations get their music through subscription services and only receive a radio edit. Also, usually it's the PD that loads the music into the automation system, so most DJs couldn't even bring in a full-version from a CD if they wanted to (I haven't seen a CD player in a studio in years. Don't ask me what they'd do if the computer died)

[CAwasinNJ]

If you'd like to get some insight into Billy Joel I'd suggest listening to Disc 4 of The Complete Hits Collection, which is a recording of a Q&A session where he talks about the writing of his songs. He specifically talks about Paul. He was a real estate broker who was working on the Great American Novel. There's no explanation of the lack of a wife.

It's pretty much certain at any of the major corporate stations that even if there was a way a DJ could play a CD on air, it wouldn't be allowed. I don't even think DJ's at such stations have even selected their own playlists for decades. It's all done by the suits and suits aren't known for their knowledge of the artistic side of the business.

[amanuensis]

Thanks CA for pointing to where I can find the answer.

A few years ago, one of the SLC stations (forget which one) had a computer melt-down. The obviously frazzled DJ apologized at one point for the longer than usual silence between each song because he was literally having to take CDs in and out of a single drive. And he apologized for some of the songs not being what were usually played because he was limited to what was on hand. (To me, the unusual play list was a feature, not a bug).

[oldiesfunhouse]

I used to get so mad when stations would cut off, for example, "Mama Told Me Not to Come" by Three Dog Night before the last note. Then I started using a software called Station Playlist Studio to do radio shows. You can check several songs at a time and they'll play one right after the other and "cross-fade" right into each other and that automation cut off that last note. I apologized to my listeners for that. (This is hobby internet radio where there are no "suits") and now, when I play that song I make sure no songs after it are checked. At my internet station (may I do a shameless plug? which can be found at oldiesfunhouse.com, or ask your smartspeaker to play Oldies Funhouse radio) we ALWAYS play the long versions, including Hey Jude in its entirety. Well, I shouldn't say always because we get programming from various syndicators and they will often play shorter versions of things but when it's just our automation, most of our songs are the long versions. Since, after Labor Day, Halloween is the next big thing, the 8 minute 15 second version of D.O.A. by Bloodrock is much better than the 4 some odd minute version, and the long version is the one I play on my Oldies Deathhouse show. That will actually be on Halloween this year since it falls on a Sunday. I'm on from 5 to 7 PM Mountain Time Sunday evenings if anyone wants to give me a listen. Just remember it's not a money making operation and if you tune in with low expectations, then you won't be disappointed. I'm just a blind guy doing internet radio from the spare room in our house with an old Windows 7 computer, a microphone, a couple of mixers, and a version of Station Playlist Studio that is several years old. So professional I'm not but a music lover I am. Have a great Labor Day weekend all and maybe we'll wake up Tuesday morning to 92.1 KOOL FM. Oops! wrong thread!

[CAwasinNJ]

I haven't used Station Playlist myself but I know at least one station that does and it seems well liked. I know that in a similar automation system Zararadio there's an override for the automatic crossfade. Here's how they describe it: "By default, the value selected for overlapping applies to all tracks. Nevertheless, it is possible to give a specific value of overlapping to each song. The file must be renamed by adding ~overlap to the file name, where overlap is a positive integer or a float value. For example, in the file Blues~1.mp3, one second will be the overlap value." I'd be willing to bet Station Playlist has something similar.

The occasional shameless plug is fine. Just a note though. Halloween is on a Monday this year. There was a big to-do last year over whether to Trick-or-Treat on Saturday or Sunday.

[friendlee]

As a 24/7 Zara user, ~0 is your friend!

[oldiesfunhouse]

Oh Yes SPL Studio has provisions to change the cross fade. I've just never learned them. And CA, thank you so much for the correction. My Halloween hshow will indeed be on October 30.

[CAwasinNJ]

Sept 6, 2022 7:50:12 GMT -6 friendlee said:

As a 24/7 Zara user, ~0 is your friend!

Depending on how much dead air is at the end of the track......

What station(s) are you using it on? I'm also curious about your settings. I have the overlap at 8 seconds, the fade at 4, and the end of song detection on at -26db. It comes out pretty loose.

[friendlee]

I use Zara on KVWJ-LP (along with Tobasco's Clockwheel and some hand-written software) and it sounds pretty darn good. 8 second overlap, 4 second fade, and -19db on the EOS sense. I also trim files to eliminate the silence after the fade is complete. ~0 is most handy if a selection has a cold ending with a false cold within it. It also keeps the crossfade from taking place at the end of announcements or ID's, liners, etc.

[CAwasinNJ]

Thanks. I'm going to give -19 a try.