Off the Clock and Off the Charts: The Songs Star 94 DJs Play Only for Themselves
The Playlist Nobody Hears
There's the version of a DJ you hear through your car speakers at 8 a.m. — confident, upbeat, riding the energy of whatever's hot right now. And then there's the version that goes home, kicks off their shoes, and puts on something completely different.
We asked the Star 94 crew to pull back the curtain a little. Not on the big hits or the carefully programmed sets — on the other stuff. The songs they come back to when nobody's watching. The tracks that shaped how they hear music, even if those tracks will never, ever make it into rotation.
What we got back was more honest — and more interesting — than we expected.
DJ Reena: "I Have a Whole Folder Called 'Don't Judge Me'"
Afternoon drive host DJ Reena is one of the most recognizable voices on Star 94. Her sets are tight, current, and built for people in motion. Off the clock, though? She goes somewhere else entirely.
"I have this deep obsession with early 2000s Japanese pop," she admits, laughing. "Like, full-on J-pop. Hikaru Utada, some older Namie Amuro. I discovered it in middle school and I never left. There's something about the production style — it's maximalist in a way that Western pop kind of moved away from — and I find it genuinely comforting."
She's quick to acknowledge the irony. "I play the most streamlined, hooks-forward pop on air, and then I go home and listen to six-minute J-pop ballads with key changes that would make a Star 94 listener's head spin. But honestly? I think that's part of why I can hear a good hook from a mile away. I've heard so many of them, in so many different contexts."
Her other go-to? Late-night Sade. "Always Sade. I don't care what year it is."
Caleb Owens: The Music Director With a Classic Country Secret
Star 94 music director Caleb Owens is the person most responsible for what actually makes it onto the station's playlist. He's deeply plugged into the contemporary pop landscape — new releases, emerging artists, format trends. He knows what works for the audience.
He also has a folder of old Merle Haggard records that he listens to on Sunday mornings.
"People who know me from work would be very confused," he says. "But there's something about classic country storytelling that I find really grounding. Haggard, early Dolly Parton, some Townes Van Zandt. These are songs that just say something. No production tricks. No algorithm considerations. Just a story and a melody."
Caleb is thoughtful about how this private listening shapes his professional instincts. "When I'm evaluating a new pop track for rotation, one of the things I'm always asking is: does this song actually mean something? Is there a human being in here somewhere? Classic country kind of recalibrated my ear for that. Fancy production can hide a lot of emptiness. I've trained myself to hear past the surface."
His personal deep cut recommendation, unprompted: "If You're Not in It for Love" by Shania Twain, specifically the album version, not the single edit. "It's a completely different experience. Most people have only heard the radio cut."
DJ Marco: Noise, Chaos, and Why It Makes Him Better at Pop
Weekend nights on Star 94 belong to DJ Marco, who brings an infectious energy to his sets and a genuine love for whatever's climbing the charts. In his personal listening time, he goes in a completely different direction.
"Experimental electronic music. Noise music, honestly. Stuff that would clear a room if I played it here." He grins. "Like, artists that are just completely deconstructing what a song even is."
He's not being contrarian for the sake of it. Marco has a genuine theory about why the extremes inform each other. "When you spend time with music that throws out every rule — no structure, no hook, no verse-chorus anything — you start to understand what those rules are actually for. You hear a pop song differently. You appreciate why the chorus lands where it does. The contrast makes everything sharper."
His current private obsession is an artist he declines to name because, in his words, "the moment I say it out loud it becomes a bit." But he does offer one concrete recommendation for listeners who want to stretch their ears: early Aphex Twin. "Start with 'Selected Ambient Works Volume II.' It's not for everyone. It's barely for me. But it changed how I hear silence in music, which changed how I hear everything."
What the Private Playlist Actually Tells Us
If there's a thread connecting all of these confessions, it's this: the songs our DJs love in private aren't random guilty pleasures. They're the foundation.
Reena's J-pop obsession sharpened her ear for melodic construction. Caleb's classic country habit keeps him honest about whether a song has real substance. Marco's noise music experiments make him a better analyst of pop structure by forcing him to understand what pop structure is actually doing.
The gap between what a DJ plays on air and what they listen to alone isn't hypocrisy. It's the whole job. You can't curate for an audience if your entire musical world is that audience. The private playlist is where taste gets built, tested, and refined — and then it comes back out through the speakers in ways listeners feel without being able to name.
Next time you're tuned into Star 94 and a song hits you in a way you didn't expect, there's a decent chance it got there because someone, after their shift ended, went home and listened to something you'd never guess.
That's the part of radio nobody talks about. We figured it was time.