As various platforms and streaming services tabulate all the previous year’s data to show you your most played songs, videos, or paper towel purchases—local radio station KHNS’ year-end wrap-up shows that once again, Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, and Led Zeppelin are in the lead.
General manager Mike Rafone said, “Since 1980, this station has been tallying year-end statistics, long before Spotafly or Youtoo and yep, Cash and Hank are usually up there. Zeppelin. Sometimes Neil Young. One unfortunate year it was Kenny Loggins.” He said that originally, the station used an abacus to tally song plays, then switched to pen and paper in 1997.
One of the longtime music DJs, Rusty Nail, told reporters, “There’s Cash, uh, Willy, Waylon, Hank, Hank Jr., Hank III.…Those are the only artists I’ve ever heard. Is there any other music?”
Vern Vinyl, who has been spinning records and wax cylinders since the station’s inception, said he had been trying to get Rush and Jethro Tull up the listings on KHNS Wrapped for decades. “No respect for the classics,” he said, “Aqualung is a seminal record, and Rush’s Moving Pictures should be mandatory in public schools. Peart’s drum fills at minute two-and-a-half changed the freakin’ game: duh nuh nuh nuh neeeer brap buh bap bumbumblap—” Vinyl proceeded to air-drum until reporters left the studio.
According to Rafone, sometimes DJs even tried to influence the results: “There was one time, maybe about 10 years ago, when a production assistant decided to play a little prank and replaced the automated midnight to four a.m.. programming with just “Baby Shark” on repeat.”
“Nobody was the wiser for about a week until I eventually got a call from police dispatch. I guess her iPod had broken and she was forced to pipe the radio into the public safety building which also went throughout the jail. One person, picked up for driving drunk or something, suffered a complete mental breakdown and had to be medevaced. Another almost drowned in the sink, convinced they were a shark. But “Baby Shark” broke the top three on the wrap that year. Cash was still numero uno.”