johnny gill "fairweather friend"

Is anyone aware of a shorter radio edit that might exist for "Fairweather Friend"?

Cha-ching! Outstanding information as always, Jim! Judging by the track listing, the CD45-1026 promo CD appears to have been primarily catered for rhythmic/dance and urban radio stations. Did your station play any of the tracks on that disc, Jim?

Yes, it appears the record label was very careless with its incorrect run time listing for Track 1 on your promo CD copy of "Fairweather Friend", Jim! Chances are that other radio stations around the country also declined to play the song due to the erroneously inflated time listing. It makes me wonder if this had a negative impact on national airplay signficant enough to contribute to the song's disappointing #28 peak on the Billboard Hot 100! Historically, record labels are much more likely to deliberately list a much shorter run time for a song to enourage radio station airplay.

aaronk wrote: It's possible; however... 1) the record promoters were (or should have been) pushing the song, and 2) it did hit the top 40, therefore, a good PD/MD would have at least put the CD in to listen to it. If they liked it enough to listen all the way through, they would've realized the time was wrong. Even if it had actually run over six minutes, any station with a reel-to-reel and cart machine could've made their own edit. While you could argue that a long run time may discourage a PD from even giving it a listen in the first place, I would argue that a he/she could press the stop button at any moment while previewing it.

Aaron, for the heck of it I just pulled out my old station playlists for Nov/Dec 1990. Despite it's Top 40 peak, we never did add "Fairweather Friend" at our station. Since we'd probably already come to a "final" decision on it, barring a "late chart resurgence", the remixes CD would've been of no real concern/interest to us. Although the early 90s were Motown's last real "hot streak" chart-wise, their 1990 promotion team was FAR from being among the most "relentless" of labels we dealt with, to us at least. Just because we had made a decision, right or wrong, to pass on that song and focus on many other worthy song candidates to possibly start playing, doesn't necessarily mean we weren't "a good PD/MD." If we'd added it, we probably would've noticed the (2:02) timing error. That big a timing mistake is HIGHLY unusual. While we would, on occasion, do our own "custom edits," it was probably done only about 5-6 times a year. We were pure Top 40, and while we played our fair share of urban/soul, we'd rarely if ever go to ALL the bother of (then) reel-to-reel custom edits, just for a slight song improvement. They were different times then. With all of today's user-friendly digital toys, I'm sure we'd have done MANY more, but remember, this was 1990. We only had one production studio - it was always VERY busy, recording commercials, etc. It was hard enough for me just to get in there to "cart" (an 8-track shaped thing most Top 40 radio recorded the songs onto, in lieu of playing the song off of a 45) up the music every Tuesday (Top 40 radio's official "add/update the current music" day, for as long as I can remember.) This might not be the "utopian, perfect world" answer, Aaron, but that was indeed our reality then.

jimct wrote: No, Todd. We took one look at the long times, and had no use for it. If they had put the CORRECT time on Track 1, we would've given it a listen - I just noticed this (2:02) time difference today - obviously WAY too late to help Johnny with radio airplay!

I'm sorry, Jim. When I made my post, I had not noticed that you typed this message above. I was not trying to say that you weren't good programmers. The point is that you had already heard the song (prior to receiving the remixes), and you had already determined that your station was not going to play it.

My argument is simply that long run times don't necessarily prevent a song from becoming a big radio hit. If it's a great song, radio will play the long version or shorten it themselves.