Where Love Lives – Retro Hit Radio

November 5, 2025 55 5

The UK department store, JOHN LEWIS sums it up in their 2025 Christmas campaign – WHERE LOVE LIVES.

Nostalgia is at the heart of what we do as a radio station, playing the songs that we grew up with during our formative years, teens and into adulthood. This is the stuff we’ll keep coming back to. The big hits, the guilty pleasures, the ones you first heard at the club, or a family favourite around the house enjoying a BBQ.. yet time marches on and we’re not complacent or ‘stuck in the past’.

We’re on the edge as we always have been, our generation drives innovation – heck, we invented Google – so it’s no surprise to anyone that we love new music. Whatever it may be, we often have no boundaries on what we like and we’re pretty open to any genre because that’s what we’re built on.

As the charts in the 80s reflected new wave, country, ballads, metal, rap and dance we were surround by it on radio, movies and TV. Magazines reflected it visually, music TV like RTR Countdown, and Radio With Pictures brought the music videos, and radio sound-tracked our world of homegrown NZ music and the massive hits from around the world into our lives.

People have always held on to their favorite songs, but they also like being introduced to their next favorite.
– Sean Ross

Despite losing many of the biggest artists we grew up with, like Prince, David Bowie, Michael Jackson and countless more, everyone else is still making incredible music and they still draw huge numbers when they are touring.

We reflect that as a radio station by showcasing new music, and informing you when tours are announced. We often miss out in NZ, but many artists can include cities across the ditch, and who doesn’t love a trip to aussie to see what could be a once in a lifetime gig, or to share it with your family!

We’re all ambassadors of our youth; buying new and classic vinyl, gigging to see new artists and legacy artists, sharing playlists – the new mixtapes, using socials to share what we’re up to, and in life, 80s or 90s theme parties, trivia, and movie remakes, reboots and sequels (for better or worse) are the heroes of our youth.

A Keith Haring watch, square, coloured with pink and green stylized with a dancing figure with a clock for a head — We’re all ambassadors of our youth 😉

Somehow, we’re still popular according to hollywood, emerging artists are inspired by or sampling our music, the arts and theatre still can’t get enough of us. Have we mentioned retro merch? I have a Keith Haring swatch watch for goodness sake.

Saatchi & Saatchi created the 2025 Christmas campaign for UK retailer John Lewis, by using the 1990 classic ‘Where Love Lives’ by Alison Limerick as a key part of the narrative – a track many of us danced to in the clubs during ’90s – a narrative that reinforces our youth and relevance today.

This is us.

We’re your radio station, made in NZ, for kiwis at home and abroad, travelling into the future of music together. Blasting that boombox, echoing down the street, or as we like to say, rocks the block!

Written by: Retro Crew

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