RFI: Market-specific and station-specific radio edits

In the Heart of Rock & Roll thread, Gregorianpants posted

So Weren't there versions of this record sent to radio DJs that had the city names re-recorded specifically for various different markets (ie. Toronto, Miami, Milwaukee, etc.) or did I make that up?

No, g.pants did not make that up. I vividly remember that St. Louis definitely had a version that said "SAINT LOUIS! Champaign, Illinois!" I didn't realize until much later that this might not, in fact, have been the national release.

Different radio stations also had specific edits of "Rock Me Amadeus." During the chronology bit they'd say like, "1986, Q107 is the first to play... Rock me Amadeus!"

Oneeyeopen posted

quintessential example of this has gotta be "High School USA" by Tommy Facenda, where he recorded a few dozen different versions for different cities, namechecking all the high schools in that area

Then I thought of one more. Eddie Money's "I Wanna Go Back" begins "I was listening to the radio," but Q107 (or whatever) had a version that went "I was listening to Q107." You could tell it wasn't quite Eddie but a studio guy trying to sound like Eddie, but no one cared.

More examples please

last year, Wisconsin radio stations were censoring Lizzo's "Truth Hurts" to remove the reference to the Minnesota Vikings

lol that's just weak

Boston's KISS 108 FM played a version of Shania Twain's "That Don't Impress Me Much" that replaced "ok, so you're Brad Pitt" with "ok, so you're Matt Siegel", in reference to their morning show host. it sounded exactly like Shania, so I assume that Matty and his buddies coaxed her to record the line during an appearance

I remember the heart of rock & roll being touted as beating in Vancouver, which... oh god

Also “We Built This City” had a local edit where the DJ voice said “Looking out over the Lions Gate Bridge something something bumper to bumper traffic.” (Also Vancouver) (same station)

the pop remix of "cruise" by florida georgia line has a line that goes "i got my windows down and my radio up / get yer radio up" repeat a few times toward the end. i remember some stations playing a version that subbed in the station's name on the last line

i don't recall hearing it myself, but i think i remember reading a post here saying that ne-yo's "so sick" was played with substitutions like that by some stations (ofc on the "why can't i turn off the radio?" line)

many terrestrial stations played a version of black eyed peas "boom boom pow" w/ the word 'satellite' edited out of "here we go, here we go, satellite radio"

xp Re: “We Built This City”:

The song includes a local DJ’s voice-over during the song’s bridge. It mentions the Golden Gate Bridge and “the city by the Bay,” referring to San Francisco, Jefferson Airplane’s home.

Yet, when the song was played around the country, it was often tailored for the particular market — even though it wasn’t Starship singing.

“We did a bunch of them; it was pretty believable,” says Jonathan Wolfert, president of JAM Creative Productions, Inc., which has sung and produced radio jingles for 40 years.

Wolfert said it was a challenge to assemble a group of singers that could sound like Starship. “We got a good copy of the generic mix, and we’d sing over it.”

In most cases, the audience “thought the band had done it, when in fact it was us.”

Albie Dee, a longtime fixture in Washington radio and currently the program director at WOCQ/OC 104, remembers playing the localized version when he spun the record at WKSS in Hartford.

“You couldn’t tell it was jingle singers,” says Dee.

Chris Roth played the single often in the Washington area, at Mix 107.3, WASH-FM and Big 100.3.

I love a locational shout-out in a record

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIQ_FmVUJjI

"I can tell it was a UK thing, Agent X remixing"

"You and I" by Lady Gaga does this.