I definitely heard this song somewhere the other day, perhaps in a shopping mall or something, and Matt pointed out to me that it's by John Lennon. I definitely wasn't familiar with it. I was just thinking that "God is a concept" is definitely wrong, but "'God' is a concept" might be right. And the line about believing in Hitler or Kennedy is probably about being a follower of Hitler or Kennedy, and not about actually believing they exist. The phrase "believe in" is always somewhat confusing.
Also, I'm not sure why you would attribute "the intelligence of crowdsourcing" to the radio. Mainstream radio is pretty transparently controlled by public relations companies. Just thinking of Lady Gaga, is there any reason why the songs Poker Face and Just Dance are any worse now than they were a year ago? If not, then why aren't they played any more, and instead we're hearing Bad Romance and Alejandro (or whatever the new single is).
I think the issue is that certain songs are chosen as the "singles" from an album, and if they are popular enough then more singles are released from the same album. But if something is never a single, then it never gets saturation airplay, and so it never becomes familiar. And then most of what people like in music played on the radio is familiarity, which is entirely shaped by which songs have already been played on the radio.
Even my local "eclectic" station (KCRW - they have an "eclectic 24" stream online which was Matt's favorite internet radio station even before we had a Los Angeles connection) definitely doesn't do terribly good coverage. It definitely gets lots of interesting songs that I haven't heard, but there are definitely songs that it plays multiple times a week, which seems to me to guarantee that they're still selecting from a relatively limited list.
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Also, I'm not sure why you would attribute "the intelligence of crowdsourcing" to the radio. Mainstream radio is pretty transparently controlled by public relations companies. Just thinking of Lady Gaga, is there any reason why the songs Poker Face and Just Dance are any worse now than they were a year ago? If not, then why aren't they played any more, and instead we're hearing Bad Romance and Alejandro (or whatever the new single is).
I think the issue is that certain songs are chosen as the "singles" from an album, and if they are popular enough then more singles are released from the same album. But if something is never a single, then it never gets saturation airplay, and so it never becomes familiar. And then most of what people like in music played on the radio is familiarity, which is entirely shaped by which songs have already been played on the radio.
Even my local "eclectic" station (KCRW - they have an "eclectic 24" stream online which was Matt's favorite internet radio station even before we had a Los Angeles connection) definitely doesn't do terribly good coverage. It definitely gets lots of interesting songs that I haven't heard, but there are definitely songs that it plays multiple times a week, which seems to me to guarantee that they're still selecting from a relatively limited list.