The 885 Greatest Songs by Women on WXPN

As voted on by the listeners of the Philly public radio station

File under: Not so shameless promotion for the radio station I work at dept:

This past Tuesday morning, the radio station where I work at in Philly started our annual super fun, super big programming “stunt," a countdown/playback of the 885 Greatest Songs by Women, as voted on by our listeners and members. It will run until next Tuesday afternoon.

If you don’t know XPN, we’re a public radio station in Philly. We produce the nationally syndicated World Cafe, distributed by NPR.

Twenty plus (?) years ago we began these countdowns (best/greatest songs, albums, years, artists, musical moments, as well as various A-Z’s). We like to have fun with music. We also like to ask our listeners to vote on these countdowns. Our DJs and our community really gets into, especially during the playback - happening now.

This year’s theme - the 885 Greatest Songs By Women (As Chosen by You) came about because we wanted to celebrate women’s voices. It would also be a countdown where The Boss, The Beatles, and The Stones wouldn’t even show up.

As I write this, we’re playing song #525, Sinead O’Connor’s “The Last Day Of Our Acquaintance.” It’s not a song by Sinead one would typically hear on radio. By radio “industry” standards Sinead only really had one “hit,” so I guess this would count as one of those “deep tracks.”

The countdown has been a combo of deep tracks and stone cold solid “hits.” Because XPN plays various genres, decades, and lots of different musicians (known and not well known), our listeners, like our DJs, have sophisticated, often obsessive music knowledge. Across the board, its our collective passion for music discovery that drives us. So okay, now we’re at song #522, Maggie Rogers’ “Alaska,” and right around the corner is Nina Simone’s “My Baby Just Cares For Me.” We’ve had over 190 unique artists play - The Supremes and solo Diana; Laura Nyro, Taylor, Joni, Aretha, Billies Eilish and Holiday, Mariah, The Breeders, PJ, Queen Latifah, Jill Scott, Ani DiFranco, Tori, Joanna Newsom, Joans Armatrading and Baez, Portishead, Cocteau Twins, Tracy Chapman, Althea & Donna, etc. One of the best things about this when listening, you never know what’s going to come next.

Here’s a list of the most played artists so far (4:50pm ET)

Here’s a list of the number of songs from most played decades so far.

As one music fan to another, I invite you to listen. The schedule for the next five days is: Friday 8am until 4p; Saturday 10a-6p; Sunday 11a-3p; and the last two days (next Monday and Tuesday) we’ll go 8am until 5pm. All times are East Coast. You can listen on our web site; our app, your smart speaker, and damn, if you live in our broadcast area and you have one, try the good old fashioned radio in these areas in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and portions of Delaware and Maryland.

• 88.5 FM Philadelphia/South Jersey/Wilmington

• 88.7 FM Lancaster/York

• 90.5 FM Worton/Baltimore

• 91.9 FM North Jersey/Poconos

• 99.7 FM Harrisburg

• 104.9 FM Lehigh Valley

Sure, I work at XPN, but this is some gosh darn fun, great radio programming. Spotify can’t do this. Commercial radio can’t do this. But public radio can, and does. Let me know if you swing by. Thanks for listening. Now playing, “Tell Me Something Good,” by Rufus ft. Chaka Khan.