Kip Moore is sick of hearing the same old thing on the radio. And I think the country music star has some credibility when he says that, considering a) radio has helped him a lot in his career and b) he’s just might be the most interesting man in the country music world. He loves to ride a wave surfing out on the ocean just as much as he likes to ride a hit onto the country charts, and he appreciates keeping life exciting… like when he ran into the cartel during a motorcycle trip through Mexico. The “Damn Love” singer loves to live life on the wilder side, which is probably partly why he hates the predictability of modern day radio. Moore joined TL’s Road House, a podcast hosted by Tracy Lawrence, to talk about his life and the latest news of his career. One of the things the pair dove into early on in their conversation was how Kip Moore has become very popular in Europe, Australia, and South Africa… almost all by word of mouth. The country singer admitted that it’s been a crazy time in his life seeing his music connect with fans organically, which doesn’t really happen at all anymore. Moore even told a story about how one radio station – and actually one specific DJ – helped Moore blow up in South Africa. As the story goes, the radio host who simply loves everything about music and wants to introduce listeners to the best of the best, heard Moore’s “Heart’s Desire” and started playing it on South African radio. Soon, it has a massive connection with people there, as he explained: “I love radio. I say this because I want radio to win, because I discovered all my favorite artists on radio. But we’ve somehow lost our way where it’s all about ‘there’s got to be some kind of viral moment’ or ‘there’s got to be this.’ And this guy just said, ‘I’m gonna introduce you guys to an artist and I think it’s gonna work.’ And it did. It connected on every dot. It wasn’t like it had to stream a certain amount of times before they put it on. It just exploded. Then everything shot to the top of the charts. By the time I got there, I had 10 songs in a matter of a year and a half that were all top 10 songs.” Moore booked multiple concerts across the pond only a couple of months in advance, and almost every single one of them sold out. And the country music artist firmly credits the power of radio, and the belief of one South African DJ, for that success. Though Kip is happy that he’s been helped by the radio over in places like South Africa, it all just reminds him that radio stations in America aren’t what they used to be: “It’s all over the place. It’s one of those places where, as a radio station, you can find anything. You never know what’s gonna be introduced to you. And it’s not just the same cycle over and over and over again. The wild thing now, and once again, I’m pulling for radio to figure this out, but it’s like… I love listening to the radio. I had to turn it off. I couldn’t take it anymore. I did a road trip recently and it was the same playlist when I left Tennessee when I went through Kentucky, and when I went through the Carolinas. It was all the same songs over and over again.” Kip Moore pointed out that it makes no sense to play all of the same music all across the country. He brought up that artists could be playing multiple concerts in the same state, just a couple of hours apart, and night one and night two could be two completely different places. Not only that, people from different states think and prefer different things musically, yet the music that’s played on the radio acts as though everyone across the board is the same. That frustrates Kip Moore: “I don’t know how we’ve gotten into this homogenized box of thinking that people out in Phoenix, Arizona and California are the same as people in Paducah, Kentucky. Man it’s wild. It’s not just somebody that’s running their station that’s learning their audience.” Moore and Tracy Lawrence went on discuss the micromanagement of radio stations and what they play, and how organic growth for musicians through radio is basically a thing of the past. And like Kip Moore says, it’s a real shame that radio stations across the country don’t represent the tastes and personality of the area they are located in anymore. It’s all just the same, algorithm-driven slop… and that’s not good for country music or any other genre. You can hear more from Moore and Lawrence on the matter in the latest episode of TL’s Road House: The post Kip Moore Weighs In On The Homogeneity Of Country Radio Stations: “We’ve Somehow Lost Our Way” first appeared on Whiskey Riff.