Despite it’s obvious popularity and impressive sales record, Disney-pop has been a non-starter on the radio. With the exception of Miley Cyrus, no Disney-associated act, including the Jonas Brothers, has been able to make much of an impression. So unless you’re listening to the cable-only Radio Disney (a doubtful prospect if you don’t have children of a certain age), you’re not going to hear the likes of Aly & AJ, Demi Lovato, or Selena Gomez. There is one other place you can find them, however, or at least one of them: dance clubs. Gomez’s “Naturally” (which has almost surpassed Aly & AJ’s “Potential Breakup Song” as my favorite piece of Disney-pop) has been on Billboard’s Hot Dance Club Play chart for ten weeks, six of those in the top ten, and last week at number one. This isn’t a surprise—”Naturally” is a near perfect piece of dance pop that would fit seamlessly with the records currently topping the charts (its basic structure owes a lot to Lady GaGa’s “Bad Romance”), if it could ever get some mainstream airplay.
The only reason this record isn’t all over the radio is the Disney connection: radio programmers see it as kids music, and are afraid of turning off their more “mature” listeners (despite the fact that “Naturally” is, in almost every way, a far more mature record than, say, Ke$ha’s “Tik Tok”, or any number of other “adult” pop records). Club listeners, thank God, just want to dance; they don’t care who makes the music. If only radio programmers were as open-minded.
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Tags: Aly & AJ, Demi Lovato, Disney pop, Jonas Brothers, Ke$ha, Lady GaGa, Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez