Alternatively: a list of the best songs ever recorded.
Also, I do remember when z100 went alt-rock. Those were the days, man!
Who remembers LovePhones with Dr. Judy?
1983: The Police - “Every Breath You Take”
1984: Prince - “When Doves Cry”
1985: Wham! - “Careless Whisper”
1986: Patti LaBelle ft. Michael McDonald - “On My Own”
1987: Atlantic Starr - “Always”
1988: George Michael - “One More Try”
1989: Bon Jovi - “I’ll Be There for You”
1990: Madonna -…
Z100 was the soundtrack of my 20-mile, 45-minute ride to and from school every day from 3rd grade to senior year, first from Hawthorne, then from Upper Saddle River to Englewood, New Jersey. As I remember it, the changeover to alternative rock and back to Top 40 was pretty gradual, so much so that I didn’t realize it happened until someone told me a couple years later.
Even as far as local top-40 stations go, Z100 was a pretty weak one. It was probably the worst during the top-40 dark ages of about 1998-2000, when it was all Britney Spears, 10 bajillion Destiny’s Child soundalikes, Celine Dion, and boy bands. The Morning Zoo became monotonous after Elliot left for DC, and the afternoon guy, Paul “Cubby” Bryant, was an annoying doofus. As a geography nerd I also couldn’t stand the insufferable charade of saying that the station’s studios were at the top of the Empire State Building, when they were really broadcasting out of Newark with an antenna atop the ESB. When I could pick them up , I listened to “fringe” stations instead, usually 104.7 “K-104” from Poughkeepsie or 97.5 (now 94.5) WPST from Trenton.
Z100 still has heavy nostalgia value for me, although Elvis Duran is probably my least favorite radio host with the exception of the talk-radio conservatives. I’ll always remember Pete Toriello’s traffic reports, the obsession with Party of Five/Felicity/Dawson’s Creek, call-in segments that seemed to attract only middle-aged women from Long Island with ridiculously broad accents, and most of all, contests in which whatever high school got the most votes would get a free concert from a boy band. The winner was always an all-girls Catholic school like Immaculate Heart Academy or Holy Angels, usually by some ridiculous margin in the thousands of votes. Them girls were crazy.
