{"id":239485,"date":"2026-01-18T10:38:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-18T10:38:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/239485\/"},"modified":"2026-01-18T10:38:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-18T10:38:10","slug":"what-is-the-most-played-content-in-bbc-radio-1-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/239485\/","title":{"rendered":"What is the most played content in BBC Radio 1 history?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"BBC<\/p>\n

(Credits: BBC)<\/p>\n

Sat 17 January 2026 14:42, UK <\/p>\n

It won\u2019t be that much longer before the BBC<\/a> will be celebrating the diamond anniversary of its flagship Radio 1 station, next year in fact.<\/p>\n

It took the BBC enough time to catch up to pop\u2019s rapidly evolving trends, London in full swing and the Summer of Love just passing, when the corporation finally sought to receive the countercultural memo sent by the Radio Caroline and Radio London pirate stations operating outside UK jurisdictions, playing the Top 40 hits the kids cared about while BBC programming was still struck on the dreary Light Programme scheduling.<\/p>\n

So, on the morning of September 30th, 1967, the BBC split the station into two, BBC Radio 1 and 2. After Tony Blackburn\u2019s official introduction, the first full song spun was that week\u2019s number two, \u2018Flowers in the Rain\u2019 by The Move, skirting past the chart-topping \u2018The Last Waltz\u2019 by Engelbert Humperdinck, considered far too staid for the fresh new station.<\/p>\n

From then on, BBC Radio 1 has stood as a national musical fixture, soldiering through its own identity crises when even the Caroline heroes became old hat across the 1980s, facing off the plethora of DAB challengers, questions of relevance in the shifting cultural and racial make-up of the country, and the perennial tussle between keeping a finger on the pulse and the BBC\u2019s de facto duties as the voice of the establishment<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Still, it looks like Radio 1 isn\u2019t going anywhere soon, still racking up millions of weekly listeners and branching off into the much-loved spin-off stations Anthems, Dance, and 1Xtra. Even as late as the 2010s, Radio 1 was still able to garner intense listener engagement, boasting one broadcast that broke serious records in the station\u2019s entire history.<\/p>\n

So, what is BBC Radio 1\u2019s most played content?<\/p>\n

Across the early 2010s, EDM and dubstep culture were at their commercial peak, finding a presence beyond dance culture and into the realms of rock and metal festivals around the world. At its centre was Sonny Moore. Fronting the post-hardcore band From First to Last, Moore began indulging in an electronic side-project under the moniker Skrillex, and after a string of highly successful releases, Skrillex was catapulted to superstar status in the converging worlds of headlining metal and arena-filling club music.<\/p>\n

It was during this career explosion that Skrillex gifted BBC Radio 1 with their curious milestone. Only a few months after the Leaving EP, Skrillex took part in the station\u2019s acclaimed Essential Mix series, offering a two-hour mashup twisting across electronic acts and remixed artists as diverse as Disclosure, Deftones<\/a>, Kendrick Lamar, and old favourites Boys Noize.<\/p>\n

Listeners certainly dug it. First broadcast in the early hours of Saturday, June 15th, 2013, Skrillex\u2019s record label tweeted that his Essential Mix was the \u201csingle most played piece of content in BBC Radio 1 history across all media.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Essential Mix is no longer available to stream on BBC now, but Skrillex\u2019s official YouTube upload counts some respectable numbers for a mere mix, boasting over 3.2million views in 2026.<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: BBC) Sat 17 January 2026 14:42, UK It won\u2019t be that much longer before the BBC will…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":239486,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[2974,141090,156,157,111,139,69,141091],"class_list":{"0":"post-239485","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-bbc","9":"tag-bbc-radio-1","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-music","12":"tag-new-zealand","13":"tag-newzealand","14":"tag-nz","15":"tag-skrillex"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239485"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239485\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/239486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}