billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - april 3, 2021
…yeah, it’s a Justin Bieber episode. Not a long or even unmanageable one, which was a pleasant surprise, but if that’s not your thing or you’ve heard the album or seen my review and just don’t care, I can understand if you want to go anywhere else. I will say I’m surprised that Lana Del Rey didn’t show up anywhere with even a single - I could have sworn I saw something saying she had big streaming traction going into this week - but her buzz seemed to evaporate pretty quickly off that album, like clouds dispersing into the atmosphere…
Anyway, our top ten, and our new #1. Yes, in the review of the album I called it, but I’m not about to complain that it’s here: ‘Peaches’ by Justin Bieber ft. Daniel Caesar and Giveon. Now I’ll talk more about the song later on - mostly I’m happy Giveon got such a boost this year, it’s been overdue - but this is here thanks to good sales, really strong streaming and YouTube, some solid radio pickups, and the fact the top 10 is really weak and disruptible right now - with the maelstrom that is the next Lil Nas X single coming, I reckon this won’t last at the very top. Which places ‘Up’ by Cardi B in an odd space back at #2 - streaming is up, sales are up, but radio started slipping this week, and if she wants to maintain momentum into her album, that’s not a great sign. In comparison we have ‘Leave The Door Open’ by Silk Sonic at #3, which is consistent in all channels but surging on the radio, where it could well make up any margins and make a credible run, Lil Nas X or not! Then we have ‘drivers license’ by Olivia Rodrigo - man, it feels like this song just vanished from popular conversation even despite still being at #4, but despite being on top on the radio, it is slowly declining. But then we have - once again - ‘Save Your Tears’ and ‘Blinding Lights’ by The Weeknd at #5 and #6, where the former leads in sales and streaming and the latter leads on the radio… but ‘Save Your Tears’ is now getting a push, and it could well pass ‘Blinding Lights’ decline. That takes us to ‘Levitating’ by Dua Lipa and DaBaby at #7, where looking at the data it seems static… mostly because ‘What’s Next’ by Drake fell past it to #8, where its streaming is ebbing a bit and while it’s making a radio run, it’s not really making up the difference. Then reentering the top 10 again we have ‘What You Know About Love’ by Pop Smoke at #9, and this has been holding out for a while making a slow and steady radio run… even if you can tell it’s starting to trail off given that’s all it has. And on that note, ‘Mood’ by 24kGoldn and iann dior hit #10 - it’s on a steady decline, mostly on radio, it’s going to be gone soon, even if it gets a short spike of momentum thanks to the album release impacting the charts next week.
But in this territory, we have our losers and dropouts… and in the latter category for an album bomb week, there’s not much of significance here beyond ‘Still Trappin’ with Lil Durk and the late King Von and ‘Throat Baby (Go Baby)’ by BRS Kash, which even with the remixes may just barely miss the year-end list, it’ll come down to margins here. But truth be told, I’m not even sure I’d call our losers all that surprising, especially with the expected continued dropoffs for ‘Beer And Sunshine’ by Darius Rucker to 100, ‘Real As It Gets’ by Lil Baby and EST Gee to 69, and ‘Lemon Pepper Freestyle’ by Drake and Rick Ross to 56. Most of the rest seem like they just took album bomb hits and didn’t have a ton of momentum otherwise: ‘Sand In My Boots’ and ‘Wasted On You’ by Morgan Wallen slid to 96 and 77, ‘Girl Like Me’ by the Black Eyed Peas and Shakira hit 89 - thank god - ‘You Got It’ by VEDO slid to 88, ‘Almost Maybes’ by Jordan Davis tanking at 86, ‘Buss It’ by Erica Banks fell to 72 as the challenge seems to have evaporated, and ‘Monsters’ by All TIme Low featuring blackbear and Demi Lovato fell to 70 - to me, especially in 2021 I felt like this overachieved. The only two songs that surprised me here were ‘Damage’ by H.E.R. at 58 - looks like radio is rotating it out - and ‘Streets’ by Doja Cat at 27, which has a ton of streaming… but pretty much nothing else.
But now we’re into the Justin Bieber show proper - no returns, and the only two gains came from him with ‘Anyone’ at 16 and ‘Hold On’ rebounding to 20 - funnily enough, neither ‘lonely’ nor ‘Holy’ made comebacks, which I’m just fine with! And because he absolutely fell under album bomb rules, the songs that fell below the top 40 and were neither the best nor the worst are as follows: ‘Somebody’ at 91, ‘Love You Different’ with BEAM at 84, ‘Die For You’ with Dominic Fike at 81, ‘Deserve You’ at 76, ‘2 Much’ at 68, ‘Off My Face’ at 64, and ‘As I Am’ with Khalid at 43.
Got all that? Good, because when we get to our new arrivals, we actually aren’t starting with Bieber…
94. ‘Famous Friends’ by Chris Young & Kane Brown - this is going to sound weird, but I’m not sure I ‘get’ this song. Specifically I’m not sure what emotion they’re going for with this - basically this is a song where they reference people famous in their smaller towns growing up that wouldn’t be known in the big city, because when you go back to those small towns, it’s all about the people. But that is just as true in a larger city - maybe even more so, just the scope is greater - and wait, Davidson County is contains Nashville, I don’t see your point here! Maybe if the actual song was better I’d have more to work with, but the drums are really filmy, the guitar rollick doesn’t have much punch, and I’d argue Chris Young and Kane Brown have shockingly little chemistry. Overall it just feels like album filler, a collab that doesn’t add up to much of anything, and it’s forgettable to boot - next!
87. ‘Loved By You’ by Justin Bieber ft. Burna Boy - my God, this feels cynical. And I hate that it felt so automatic when I heard the weirdly inconsistent vocal positioning and the inclusion of Afrobeat and Burna Boy - hat’s off to him, this is his first charting song on the Hot 100, not at all complaining about him making a breakthrough - but man, the song he’s supporting isn’t good at all. What bugs me is the presumptuousness of the song, showing Bieber doing more to attract his significant other’s attention, because all he would do otherwise is wait around and hate himself until her love makes him feel better. I will give him a point to acknowledging this isn’t ideal, but the single-minded neediness of this song, especially when paired along with this production doesn’t fit whatsoever, especially when Burna Boy’s verse is nothing special to add more to it. In other words this isn’t good either, let’s move on.
82. ‘Tombstone’ by Rod Wave - for those of you who are curious, yes, I’m looking forward to covering SoulFly, but it is nineteen songs and it’ll take a while to get through my schedule for the next On The Pulse episode on my main channel. In the meantime, this is another Rod Wave track that is playing into his formula, but doing it better. I like the gentle guitar, and even if the percussion still feels a bit clumsily blended, I appreciate that it lets Rod Wave’s voice breathe for some really pretty multi-tracking and a soulful gospel chorus slipping behind him. I’m not wild about the content - I still think Rod Wave’s next step should be in adding a little more detail or complexity to his songs, or maybe just even a second verse - but I do appreciate the struggle he describes in how the pandemic cut into his money and if that means going back to the streets, at least if he comes to an end there he might have peace. So yeah, it’s bleak, but it has the solemnity to fit the mood, and Rod Wave has the vocal gravitas to sell it. I still like ‘Street Runner’ a little more, but this is very good too, check it out.
66. ‘Ghost’ by Justin Bieber - this may be a controversial opinion, but outside of ‘Anyone’, this might be one of the best pop songs Bieber has put out in a while and arguably one of the best songs on Justice. Now of course there are qualifiers to that - the ‘Youngblood’ reference reminds me a little too much of that 5 Seconds To Summer song which is better, the lyrics as a whole still reflect some of that clinginess, this time for an ex that can’t help but make me wonder if there’s a Selena Gomez question left unanswered, and the feeling that if Jon Bellion had just kept this song, it would have turned out more interesting along the way. But even if I get the feeling this is a pretty by-the-numbers pop song, it’s still well-executed - I like the keyboard line and the acoustics on the hook, the stuttering, bassy patter of the groove is a nice modern facet to traces of the 80s vibe, and even Bieber isn’t a stellar presence on the record, he’s more convincing in pop than R&B, at least to me. It might be formula, but it’s above average in that regard, I’ll take that.
62. ‘Unstable’ by Justin Bieber ft. Kid LAROI - let me start by saying that I get what this is trying to do. It’s Bieber trying to highlight how even at his worst moments where he was self-destructing and pushing everyone away, his wife stuck by him, and given the very spare, reverb-swallowed guitars, I get the approach. But I don’t like this song and it’s for three main reasons, the first being that Bieber can’t sell this. It feels weirdly inert coming out of him, not helped by the relative lack of detail in his lyrics and the abbreviated length, but the line that jumped out at me is on the hook is that his mark of instability is ‘not being able to love or trust himself’. It’s a weird detail to include on a project where you can tell just how much of it is about image rehab for him, and it undercuts the intimacy. Granted, the other factor that undercuts the intimacy is Kid LAROI, who is doing his best braying Juice WRLD impression and I’ve got no patience for it. He also can’t sell the atmosphere beyond the raw basics, and that’s really the root issue: this feels like a very basic take on complicated issues of mental health, and everyone sounds out of their depth. Ergo, it’s not good.
42. ‘Headshot’ by Lil Tjay, Polo G & Fivio Foreign - I’ll be real: there’s a part of me that was trying to be excited about this… but that part of me was suffocated by the feeling that I will have heard pretty much exactly what these guys would do together, especially if they’re over drill production and don’t need to worry about a hook. And… yeah, that was exactly true with the content - and how Fivio Foreign is basically carried on his ad-libs because otherwise he’s not much of a rapper - but I think this could have worked? The strings backdrop is a good melodic foundation… shame the bass swamps out more than it should, which becomes obvious by Lil Tjay’s verse, but that’s just adjusting the mix. As for verses overall, I like how Lil Tjay threw a melody behind his flow, make him seem a bit more distinctive, but the person I’m disappointed with is Polo G, mostly because without the maturity and added dimension to his gunplay he’s not nearly as interesting as he could be. As a whole… it's fine, but it feels like less than the sum of its parts, that’s all.
1. ‘Peaches’ by Justin Bieber ft. Daniel Caesar & Giveon - this is one of those songs that I want to like more than I do. Because on the surface there’s a decent amount to like - the blissed out, soulful vibe with the supple bass and guitars and some nice drumwork, and both Daniel Caesar and Giveon are so comfortable with this sort of production, with Daniel Caesar coming off a breakup and finding new love and Giveon trying to lock down someone who’s been there the entire time. Yeah, I prefer the sound a bit more organic overall, and you can tell especially Giveon’s vocals are a bit too touched up, but that’s a minor quibble - the major issue is that it’s all surrounded by Justin Bieber who is too chirpy and processed to fit with any of this. He can’t relax into the groove, every time his hook comes back it feels out of place, and he winds up as the worst part of his own song - he just doesn’t sound as cool as he thinks he does! Remix this, swap out Bieber for Anderson .Paak or Frank Ocean or Miguel… or hell, let’s not just stick with guys, get Jhene or H.E.R. on this and it would work so well! As it is, parts of this connect and I’m happy Bieber was the mechanism to get Giveon a #1 hit… I just wish Bieber wasn’t on it.
And on that note, Bieber does wind up with both of the worst songs this week, with ‘Unstable’ with Kid LAROI nabbing the worst and ‘Loved By You’ with Burna Boy getting the Dishonourable Mention. But he does get the Honourable Mention as well for ‘Ghost’… because the best of the week is going to ‘Tombstone’ by Rod Wave because right now, he’s not missing! Not sure he’s got an album bomb on lock any time soon - we might be seeing a small competition between him and 24kGoldn and hopefully that keeps AJR out of the picture, but we’ll have to see.