MADONNA’S “LIVING FOR LOVE” BECOMES ONE OF POP’S 50 MOST-PLAYED SONGS

BY BRIAN CANTOR

Following its strong Valentine's Day performance, Madonna's "Living for Love" now ranks as one of the pop format's 50 most-played songs.

Thanks to a big Valentine’s Day push, Madonna’s “Living for Love” now registers as one of the fifty most-played songs at pop radio.

The song, which made an underwhelming pop radio impact last week, registers at #49 on Monday’s edition of the rolling Mediabase pop radio chart.

That #49 position is attributable to the 427 spins “Living for Love” received between February 9 and 15. Reports indicate that 205 of those spins came on Valentine’s Day.

Whether this weekend’s airplay represents an anomaly or the beginning of a momentum swing remains to be seen, but it certainly breeds some optimism for those discouraged by previous status reports.

Per last week’s Mediabase add board, only fifteen monitored stations added “Living for Love” in conjunction with its official radio impact (and on the heels of its Grammmy Awards showcase).

That it had gained virtually no traction ahead of its official impact date–Mediabase says it only received 10 pop radio spins during the week between February 2 and 8 despite its weeks of pre-impact buzz and availability–provided further reason to doubt the extent to which radio programmers were “Living for Love.”

If audiences reacted favorably to the song they started to hear more frequently over Valentine’s Day weekend, that could change.