billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - april 17, 2021
This is one of those weeks that feels like a mixed blessing at best. It’s definitely transitory - I get the feeling Taylor Swift is going to get an album bomb with her rerelease of Fearless next week and that will be interesting to say the least, given that it’s not an album I would be covering otherwise - but in reality this feels more like an ordinary cooldown week, with a few nice surprises, a few unpleasant ones, and the open question how much any of it will last in the face of what’s coming.
But before we get ahead of ourselves, the top ten, and the one unquestionable win this week: ‘Leave The Door Open’ by Silk Sonic taking the #1. This was just a confluence of great factors all at once: a good sales recovery, an even better boost across streaming, and while radio slowed a little, it still had the presence to take the top spot… even if I think those margins might be a little shaky next week. Still, with Bruno Mars Anderson .Paak got a #1 hit - this is the springboard to making him the superstar he should have been with Malibu in 2016, do not fuck this up! Now that unseated ‘Montero (Call Me By Your Name)’ by Lil Nas X, pushing it to #2 because despite its wild streaming numbers and strong sales, the radio is not there… yet. This puts ‘Peaches’ by Justin Bieber, Daniel Caesar and Giveon in a funny place at #3 - I’d argue this a margin conversation because it’s actually beating Silk Sonic in streaming… but it isn’t in sales and it hasn’t nearly had the radio momentum as of yet, which means while I think this is real competition, its run back to the top might be stymied for a bit. This is not good for ‘Up’ by Cardi B - stuck at #4, with it slipping in all categories, it’s not showing the momentum that she needs going into that next album, and that could be a problem. Then we have ‘drivers license’ by Olivia Rodrigo at #5 - pretty much fading slowly on the top on the radio, which is just enough of a margin to keep it above ‘Save Your Tears’ by The Weeknd at #6, which might be having a good radio run itself but lags there and in sales just enough so its streaming margin doesn’t win. Then there’s ‘Levitating’ by Dua Lipa ft. DaBaby at #7 - which actually had a good sales and streaming week but is falling back on the radio to keep it back… which takes us to a new debut in the top 10 and proof that she might have legit pop staying power: ‘deja vu’ by Olivia Rodrigo at #8. This got here on good sales, better streaming, and even a bit of a radio push, so while I’ll talk about the song more later on, it’ll be interesting to watch just how much traction this picks up. This leaves us with ‘Blinding Lights’ by The Weeknd down to #9 - again, it’s on its way out naturally - and the song I was dreading would get this high but I called it months ago: ‘Astronaut In The Ocean’ by Masked Wolf at #10. The one saving grace with this is that radio is slightly lagging because this guy is not a household name… but the streaming and especially the sales are strong and on the upswing, so with a bunch of songs slowly fading above it, we’re going to be stuck with this song for a while… joy.
On the flipside, let’s look at our losers and dropouts and the biggest story in the latter category is ‘Dynamite’ by BTS is finally off the Hot 100… mostly because the stan army has thrown their weight behind another single coming, which we will get to later on. But this was not a week with a lot of expected losers: from fading album bombs we had Rod Wave see losses for ‘Tombstone’ at 32, ‘Street Runner’ to 39, and ‘Richer’ with Polo G at 46, and then for Justin Bieber ‘Anyone’ is down to 53 and ‘Hold On’ slipped to 57. The rest here are trap songs that are skidding off the debut - ‘Big Purr (Prrdd)’ by Coi Leray and Pooh Shiesty at 82 and ‘Hard For The Next’ by Moneybagg Yo and Future at 76 - or continuing to drop because the virality is fading, like ‘Buss It’ by Erica Banks at 99 and ‘Whoopty’ by CJ at 48, the last of which is going to wind up making the year end list for 2021 - whoopy.
Now again, given we might be between album bomb weeks, I don’t put a lot of stock in our gains and returns… mostly because they’re all over the damn place and don’t show a lot of consistency, or the case of our returns, they’re just mediocre at best, with country entries like ‘Gone’ by Dierks Bentley at 97, ‘Famous Friends’ by Chris Young and Kane Brown at 89, and ‘Lil Bit’ by Nelly and Florida Georgia Line at 93. And outside of that genre it somehow is just as bad with ‘Drankin N Smokin’ from Future and Lil Uzi Vert at 94, ‘Hello’ by Pop Smoke and A Boogie wit da Hoodie at 95, and ‘Follow You’ by Imagine Dragons back at 96 - yikes. Our gains might be better, but I don’t put a lot of stock in any consistency. Yes, I like that ‘Starting Over’ by Chris Stapleton saw a nice boost to 26 and ‘Settling Down’ by Miranda Lambert rose to 71, but is that worth ‘Almost Maybes’ by Jordan Davis rising to 78? Yeah, it’s nice seeing ‘Quicksand’ by Morray rise to 73 and I’ll even stick up for ‘You Got It’ by VEDO in a pinch, but I’m not exactly thrilled about ‘Track Star’ by Mooski continuing to rise up to 36, or even ‘Headshot’ by Lil Tjay, Polo G and Fivio Foreign rebounding to 55, even if it is riding Lil Tjay’s album. Finally we have ‘The Business’ by Tiesto picking up again to 74… I might still like the song, but the fact that it’s been this consistently unstable says a lot about any would-be traction it has, I can acknowledge that.
But alright, now our list of new arrivals… which is manageable but also pretty scattered, starting with…
100. ‘Arcade’ by Duncan Laurence - …well, took it long enough. For those of you who don’t know, this is a song that’s been squatting just below the Hot 100 for a while now while seeing a lot of success worldwide for this particular song… which is because he won Eurovision with it for the Netherlands… in 2019. Yeah, this is another late arrival to the Hot 100, and after listening to it, I absolutely get why, because this is not much of a song. I could remark on the barebones composition that sounds like it was from the indie car commercial backwash of around 2016 with the dour pianos, the handclap, and the darker millennial whoops on the hook, or how I find Laurence’s delivery completely unremarkable in texture and tone, but let’s focus on the lyrics. He frames the titular arcade as the love gone wrong that he’s addicted to playing, and while this is a fine enough metaphor, I have two issues: one, what arcade takes pennies in the modern era, and two, I kept thinking back to Father John Misty’s ‘Holy Shit’ where he has the line ‘maybe love is just an economy of mutual scarcity’, which takes a similar sentiment and even the millennial whoops on the hook, but plays it with so much more complexity and poetry. This feels painfully basic, designed to win song contests and then wind up on stodgy easy listening, but it might be even too slow for that sort of recurrent attention. In otherwise… yeah, this ain’t good.
90. ‘Mr. Perfectly Fine (Taylor’s Version) (From The Vault)’ by Taylor Swift - I’ve already expressed a lot of reticence about Taylor Swift’s rerelease of Fearless, not because what she’s released has been bad but because a lot of this is repurposing old material that might have been cut for a reason, an years later not align with where she is now. And this probably the most glaring example: originally this was reportedly written about Joe Jonas, who she was dating at the time… who is now happily married a decade away from this scene, so why excavate this so you can get Jack Antonoff on production this time? And if there’s a song that feels the most awkward thus far from this cycle, it’s this one: the writing feels clunky and Swift could have easily revised the flow to make it fit closer to where she is currently, she doesn’t convey a lot of subtlety or sharper emotional resonance, the synth integration feels messy, and there’s just a cloying adolescence to the song that makes it feel shallower than where she is now. So yeah, this was cut for a reason over a decade ago - we didn’t need the rerelease.
81. ‘Film Out’ by BTS - yeah, the reason why the BTS army let ‘Dynamite’ fall off the Hot 100 was to throw support behind this song, which is currently topping the sales charts with little else. And I wouldn't expect much to materialize, because this is a song for a film soundtrack in Japan… and you can really tell, as BTS really tuned down their vibrant or unique personality so they can play the wistful lovelorn ballad with strings and twinkling piano, burying the guitar but bringing slight touches of modern trap percussion so it at least sounds contemporary. Now to be fair, in comparison with a lot of BTS songs the production at least feels consistent, but that’s because they were working with Japanese rock band back number which seems to have given them a bit more polish… and even with that, it’s not interesting. I’m not sure they were allowed to do more, but I know BTS can do better - because this is underwhelming.
67. ‘4 Da Gang’ by 42 Dugg & Roddy Ricch - on the one hand, you have 42 Dugg, a rapper who has not yet managed to impress me on multiple features last year… but on the other hand you have Roddy Ricch, who I’d argue is one of the most promising talents in the past few years in his genre, so this had the potential to be something special. And let me say this… even if I don’t really love 42 Dugg’s verse in that it rambles and doesn’t feel particularly tight and his nasal flexing isn’t all that distinct, I still like this a lot! For one, it rooted in a sample of a Scorpions song and is going for more of a rap rock vibe. And even if I wish the sample popped out a bit more and let those guitars crunch, I’d still argue for a trap song this has a budget and feels well-mixed and balanced, which is the perfect way of saying Roddy Ricch just runs away with the song by the time it gets to his verse. It’s not as immediately memetic or distinctive as his best - and I don’t love how both artists reference their old hits, but there’s an ease and swagger to this that I really dig! Maybe it’s because I like the era of metal of which they sampled, or maybe there’s a possibility they’ll push this sound further… but yeah, this was legit as hell, I really like this!
61. ‘Met Him Last Night’ by Demi Lovato ft. Ariana Grande - I will have more things to say about Demi Lovato’s new album in my next episode of On The Pulse, when I get the time to pull everything together for it, but the fact that they’re now throwing weight behind this as an obvious single feels a little desperate from her management… mostly because they’ve had no luck actually moving a single beforehand because this album’s rollout has been a complete mess. But alright, here’s a collaboration where Ariana actually sounds like she cares, and… well, it’s one of the better songs on the album? Let’s start with what works - I like the cool synths playing off the strings, it’s a neat intersection of where both artists are at sonically, and for the most part, I think both of them have good interplay and chemistry. And I like the content as well - it plays into the seductive side with the devilish figure who could well be a stand-in for addiction or other vices… but this leads to a few issues. Firstly, it doesn’t really go deeper than that and you’d think in getting a big name for your feature you’d incorporate the interplay lyrically as well, add more to the story. But if anything this is a song that highlights just how much Ariana Grande has grown in her musical output as a performer than Demi Lovato has, because despite being one of the better tracks for vocal production, the song is caught between a slow burn and an explosion, with the production and melody sticking with the former and the second Demi starts belting on the final bars, it’s the latter. In this case it just doesn’t play into her strengths, which leaves me more lukewarm on a song I should like more… and while we’re here…
56. ‘Dancing With The Devil’ by Demi Lovato - …you know, I might as well say it now: this is one of the most frustrating moments of the new album and it’s pretty emblematic of my problems with it. Because yes, Demi Lovato has a huge voice and playing into the same addiction metaphor is fine and she includes enough detail to highlight just how bleak it was to fall off the wagon, and the mix helps ramp up that bombast, and maybe you could argue that the rougher edges in the vocal mixing especially on the hook emphasizes the rawness of it all. But there’s a fine line between intentionally raw and ragged, and mixing that does not flatter Demi Lovato’s strengths, given that she’s going to oversing on everything and the mix balance and placement of her voice is never going to emphasize that power with consistent dynamics. It’s not like this sort of bluesy timbre is unfamiliar - this is playing in very similar territory as Adele or especially Amy Winehouse, but there was a darker smolder and implication to Winehouse’s material that could feel way more sinister and dangerous than this does, which picks up a bit too much pop polish in the arrangement, but not enough to accentuate Lovato effectively. Because if we’re going down to the ‘raw’ or ‘edgy’ side of things… well, Lovato is trained well enough to hit those notes with volume, but she doesn’t sell the intensity in the same way Kesha or later years Beyonce could, and she doesn’t bring that rock edge that I know she has and I’ve been begging her to utilize for years now, especially in the production which is still not as layered or textured as it should be! The song is called ‘Dancing With The Devil’ and you don’t bring all the heaviness to bear - again, I want to like this more than I do, but this is potential that’s being misdirected; I’m not asking her to make a Lingua Ignota song, but this should be better than what it is.
50. ‘Run It Up’ by Lil Tjay ft. Offset & Moneybagg Yo - okay, full disclosure, I don’t know how to gauge Lil Tjay anymore. There wasn’t an album bomb with his new project, but his singles have traction, which leaves me with the feeling that maybe he should be a bigger charting presence than he is. And honestly, once again he’s easily the best part of this song, not just because he’s more melodic against the darker pianos and clunky trap beat, but also because he’s competently mixed and is at least trying to add a fragment of a dimension to his flexing, neither of which I can really give to his guests. Offset sounds like he recorded his verse on his phone and couldn’t care less, and Moneybagg Yo… look, whenever this guy hops off the beat for no reason, he sounds really clumsy, and he’s not an interesting enough rapper to pull it off well. Beyond that… the triplet hook is catchy, but it’s not all that interesting beyond that, especially when you get to any wordplay here. Just kind of forgettable overall - which is not a good sign.
8. ‘deja vu’ by Olivia Rodrigo - so we actually got an announcement today about Olivia Rodrigo’s upcoming debut album, and I’ll probably wind up covering it, especially given how much traction her singles have seen. But this is round two, the follow-up to ‘drivers license’ and what many would argue is make or break for sustainability, and establishing more unique personality… and I feel like we got half of that here. For one, the Taylor Swift influence is just flagrant at this point - especially down to the bridge with its stark parallels to ‘Cruel Summer’ but feeling way more jagged - and there’s a part of me that wants to highlight that going to the breakup narrative for the second single feels a bit dicey, even if this time it’s a little less introspective and more focused on everything this guy is repeating with his new girl. I would say that means it doesn’t quite have the personal touch, but then we get these distinctly odd reference points, to Billy Joel and Glee and the other ‘actress’ this guy is now dating, and Rodrigo’s personality does shine through a bit more. That being said, if I were to highlight where this song is weaker, it might be in the production - the chime-like production over the verses and first hook was pretty, but then we get these squonky, processed guitars off the blocky drums that don’t really blend that well and while she wants to make this more anthemic with the backing vocals, it reminds me of a specific timbre of indie pop rock that has done this sound more effectively for years now. So yeah, a step back from ‘drivers license’, but it’s not bad - just doesn’t have the same swell or punch.
But that was our week… honestly, it’s another one that doesn’t give me Honourable Mention material either way, most stuff fell towards the middle, but the best and worst were pretty obvious, with the latter going to ‘Arcade’ by Duncan Laurence and the former to ‘4 Da Gang’ by 42 Dugg and Roddy Ricch - yes, I’m surprised about that one too. Next week, we’re probably facing a lot of Taylor Swift coming, so stay tuned!