Songs with local radio station call letters placed into the lyrics

Cafe Society
1

I recently heard the song “Fire” by the Pointer Sisters and remembered how the
local radio station would insert it’s call letters into the lyrics. Like this:

I’m ridin’ in your car
You turn on the radio
K-Earth 101
You’re pullin’ me close
I just say no…

Was this done on radio stations in other parts of the country or just here in L.A.?
Were there other songs like this where a station’s call letters were inserted into
the lyrics? I think there were some others but can’t remember which ones.

2
3

I remember hearing versions of Starship’s “We Built this City” where the talking part was replaced with a plug for whatever radio station was playing the song.

4

I remember a version of Blue Swede’s “Hooked On A Feeling” with the local radio station call letters inserted into the opening "ooga chaka"s.

5

“Heard it on the X” by ZZ Top refers to X-Rock 80, a border blaster radio station that annoyed U.S. broadcasters for years.

6

When Harry Chapin did his WOLD when visiting Champaign Illinois, he put the name of the for-profit student station in place of those call letters. I assume he did that everywhere.

7

WKRP in Cincinnati:

8

Flipping the OP’s premise around, New York’s radio station WPLJ was named after a song by the Four Deuces (later covered by Frank Zappa).

9

I remembered another one. In the song “Life is a Rock (But The Radio Rolled Me)”
the line:
“Life is a rock but the radio rolled me”
was altered to be:
“Life is a rock but KHJ rolled me”

10

WOUB in Athens Ohio would play its specialty version of the Chapin song often.

11

The Who’s 1967 album “The Who Sell Out” is a concept album whose songs are bound together by fictional radio announcements, jingles and ads. Some of those skits name-drop Radio London. My favorite has always been “Radio London reminds you: go to the Church of your choice”.

ETA: the Queens Of The Stone Age album “Songs For The Deaf” has a similar concept and also mentions radio stations, but I don’t know American radio well enough to assess if they are real or fictional.

12

They did that all over the US with that song. For example, where lived, one of the local Top 40 stations substituted “97 KREM” in the “turn on the radio” line.

13

Baltimore, too.

14

Heh. I’m used to the old Bruce Springsteen version where he calls out KFI (this was back in the days of Lohman & Barkley and Hudson & Landry, before KFI became a RWNJ talk station).

15

I should have googled my question first. I just now found a page with more info:

Like NDP says in his post above this was done all across the USA.

16

The long-defunct Detroit station WDRQ would insert a stuttering “Q-Q-Q” into a song at every opportunity.

Two examples l remember:

From Smokin’ in the Boys Room: “You know that’s my cue-cue-cue…”

From Every Picture Tells a Story: “…or steal my daddy’s cue-cue-cue…”

mmm

17

Maggie May, to be precise.

18

U2 “Angel of Harlem”

“… On BLS I heard the sound
Of an angel.”

19

This was the first thing I thought of.

20

The very first time I heard Eminems “Without Me” it was a bootleg from the radio version so it went “Two Trailer Park Girls Go Round the Outside, Round the Outside, Round the Outside, Two Trailer Park Girls Go Radio One Outside, Radio One Outside, Radio One Outside” with Radio One crudely overlapping the original.