Not wanting to quote your entire piece (extremely well written, by the way!) on Kings of Leon and the "played it on the radio and ruined it" phenomenon, but I would like to say that yes, I agree that people often do consider a song/artiste ruined when they play them on the radio, but why? After all, radio is, or was, the main medium through which artistes get exposure to the public. I know I'm coming from a much earlier time here, but I got into artistes like Chris de Burgh, Bob Seger, Dan Fogelberg and even Jeff Wayne via radio. It was the place to hear new music. So really, in some ways, back then, NOT hearing a band on the radio was their ruination, or could be: if you didn't hear them you may not know of them and consequently --- in an era before MTV never mind YouTube and itunes --- you had less chance of ever hearing them.
If the complaint had been, though, that a band/song/artiste was ruined through TOO MUCH radio airplay, I might agree, and yet as you say that's really a personal thing, where someone hears so much of song A by Artiste B that they won't buy or listen to album C. Case in point, my good friend James Blunt. Everyone (and I mean everyone) hated "You're beautiful" --- including me --- but was that because the song was crap? Well, yes, but really people didn't think the song was that bad, per se, but playing it every ten minutes or so on the radio drove people to murder their families. Almost.
As a result of this, many many people decided they hated James Blunt, and yet I listened to his "Back to Bedlam" album and was amazed by how good it is, mostly, with some excellent tracks. Now, "You're beautiful" remains an annoying, simpering, annoying, inane, annoying, nonsensical, annoying song, but it should not define either the rest of the album or the possibility that someone will never listen to his music.
What about Britney? At the same time as they were forcefeeding us "You're beautiful", the same could be said about "Toxic": it was never OFF the radio! And yet, no-one wrote in asking, nay demanding that it be taken off the airplay list, as they did about Blunt's song. Is this because Britney conjures up images of sex and fantasy? Is it because she was a more established artiste at the time than James? Is it, (is it?) because she's a girl? The two songs were equally annoying, equally earworms and equally bombarded across the airwaves like a salvo on Homs (sorry, poor taste I know, but you have to stay current, don't you?) and yet it's Blunt whose record sales (miniscuely) suffered and who became the poster boy for hatred of the radio.
So what does all this prove? Who knows, but I do know that if you let one bad experience colour your perception of an artiste you may be doing yourself, and them, a disservice, and I also know that it's not the artiste's fault that their record is played so often on the radio: what? Do you think they control the playlist? If so, then surely every major or upcoming artist would be ensuring their songs received maximum airplay every time?
In the end, radio is not to blame. You are, if you're so shallow that you end up hating an artiste due to oversaturation on the radio (a single/track, fine, an artiste deserves more of your attention and patience), and let me let you into a little secret if you keep hearing a song too much on the radio. One's called the tuning knob, and the other the off switch.
Try them some time. You'd be amazed how well they work.
And now, I go back to whatever it is I do...
