one year in: the fall and rise of Ken Bruce
PopMaster general thrives in post-BBC life at a radio station crafting a relatively novel take on popular music nostalgia compared with its rivals
at this time of year, the prevailing winds of some trend in popular music catch me and i’d normally get caught up in the hype of an album release from a breakout (or primed) chart act of the year, or i’d anticipate an industry-adjacent issue and speculate how it might change the future of music as we know it. 2024, however, has presented nothing interesting of note, even in this ‘brat summer’ (no, not even the Drake vs Kendrick Lamar beef, one of the least interesting battles in rap. who was thinking Drake would win that? when has he ever said anything that was worth paying attention to outside of your weekly shop at the local mall.
besides, so-called AI and the looming litigation feuds that come with it continue to suck all the vibrancy out of the industry at the commercially elite level.
to escape this sterile landscape. i have sought the soothing retrospective sounds of 20th century music radio, in particular the rising popularity of a relatively new commercial station spearheaded by a familiar name.
Rajar listening figures suggest disc-jockey Ken Bruce, once of the mid-morning slot at BBC Radio 2 with his flagship pop music quiz PopMaster, is revelling at his new home on Greatest Hits Radio, attracting 1.6 million more listeners (+73%) a year into the job (Guardian, 16 may).
if, dear reader, you identify with the ‘who listens to radio anymore’ streaming playlists camp, allow me, a man who is allergic to today’s preferred audio medium to explain: every now and again, britain’s national broadcasting corporation faces the dilemma of deciding when to axe its television and radio presenters, partly for ratings, partly to reduce the wage bill. nobody ever thinks they get it right, and typically there is outrage among the fanbase who grew up and old with the deposed when it happens.
it felt particularly odd to let Ken Bruce go though. for what little i know, i’d rarely (well, never) come across an mor music show quite like his. Bruce seemed to strike the right tone of warmth, calm, and gentle quirkiness that kept a non-regular listener like me tuning in from time to time.
ever the music savant, Bruce appeared to be interested in the canon of pop through the ages too, rather than what he had to say in-between songs, which was hands down better than whatever went on across the hallway at BBC Radio 1.
but most importantly, he had a wildly popular pop music quiz. this is the hook that made him seemingly indispensable*. you might think the BBC could have kept the show and swapped in a new host. but if you listen to past episodes presented by other djs standing in for Bruce over the years, it feels like something is lacking. much like how Stars in their Eyes wasn’t the same without Matthew Kelly, or like when Phil Collins left Genesis and they brought in some other guy called… well i forget who he even was… and the whole enterprise folded after one album. maybe sometimes a person can be bigger than the band.
so Ken Bruce upped and left — taking PopMaster with him — for Greatest Hits Radio, which i started listening to a few months ago, and it has already replaced the likes of Smooth and Magic as my go-to station for chart music. it’s on the recall list alongside BBC Radio 3 if i’m feeling posh, Rinse FM if i’m feeling street, Resonance FM if i’m feeling daring, and a couple of talk radio stations if i want to wind myself up.
the remit of the station seems straightforward enough: it feels as though the djs are free to play pretty much any songs that made the uk top 75 chart from 1967 to 2000. what you get is a mix of smash hits and excuses to play lesser-known songs and one-hit wonders you forgot existed and overall a pleasant reminder that popular music at its best is really rather varied and full of surprises and that the british record-buying public has helped make this possible.
in doing all this, Greatest Hits Radio never forgets its core business: to comfort its audience with a soundtrack to memories past. indeed, one of its taglines is ‘good times sounds like this’, and they make sure you know about it on the odd occasion when an ad break rolls into a song from a particular decade, and a voiceover says something like ‘remember bouncing along to this on your space hopper?’ ‘remember writing the name of this tune down in your Filofax?’. nostalgia’s not just the preserve of millennials, it seems. we all want better times, and we kinda know we ain’t getting them any time soon.
so, with Ken Bruce at the helm, steering us through the uncertain waters of the present, we are transported to pop’s past. listening over the course of a day, you’ll hear him voiceover some of the in-house ads, and glean more references to his show than any other. there are other well known names on the Greatest Hits Radio roster: Simon Mayo, Martin Kemp, Jenny Powell, Kate Thornton, to name a few. but the sum total is like one of those 1990s premier league football sides where the team is built around one mercurial figure. think Eric Cantona at Manchester United, Steve McManaman at Liverpool, or Gianfranco Zola at Chelsea.
and that feels like vindication for Bruce, who is more in demand than ever after leaving the BBC. having the foresight to trademark the show’s name, the shrewdness to keep its format simple, and a genuine belief in pop music as a ‘great unifier’ of the people that comes across in his presenting style, Bruce is reaping the rewards, not only with his Greatest Hits Radio slot but also a televised version of the PopMaster quiz on Channel 4. meanwhile, Vernon Kay presents the mid-morning slot on BBC Radio 2 featuring a pop music quiz called Ten To The Top. Kay is familiar to the millennial generation — i remember him presenting T4 back in the day, so i understand the move in that sense — but again, listening in, it feels like something is lacking. Bruce may be as good an example of the cult of personality as any dictator. and he never needed to coerce anyone into thinking he had something special about him either.
’*’ to a type. the sort that wants to know in what year Sultans of Swing by Dire Straits, Never Let Her Slip Away by Andrew Gold, and I Wonder Why by Showaddywaddy, were released. i am that type. it was 1978.