Diamond Rio “In God We Trust” hoax

In Allpar’s mailbag today was a note telling us how radio stations have banned the Diamond Rio song “In God We Trust” to be banned from the airwaves.

Or not. A quick look on Snopes showed that the song was not actively banned; first played in 2005, it was not released as a single, and only appeared in a playable format in mid-2006, as part of a “best of” album. By then, Snopes said, it had to compete with a large number of fresher, newer songs along the same theme. So the radio stations hadn’t played it because they couldn’t – they had no recordings to play. No conservative, liberal, anti-religionist,or oversensitive-liberal conspiracy here – radio stations can’t play what they don’t have, and when a song’s ratings are poor, it gets dropped, no matter how good it is. (I haven’t heard it so I can’t judge its quality, but I haven’t generally found my musical tastes to be  in line with most radio stations anyway  - especially not since the once-mighty WPLJ’s format change away from “album rock” back in the late 80s or 1990s.)

Coming up tomorrow: something more on-topic, I hope.