billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - april 9, 2022
Normally this sort of week is easy to get through - you expect a small album bomb and turns out you don’t get much of anything, where what we did get is a bit bizarre. I’d usually call that a win… except for the nagging feeling that the Hot 100 is so goddamn stale at the moment that I’d actually be in favour of a solid shakeup, otherwise we could be heading into a 2018 scenario where all we wind up with are the overexposed dregs of radio or the few survivors of whatever album bombs manage to stick!
But that’s a conversation for about eight months away, let’s get to the top 10… and by the nine hells, we still have ‘Heat Waves’ by Glass Animals at #1, still? It’s basically squatting on the top of radio with strong enough streaming to withstand any attempt to unseat it, and it’s got a robust enough margin to hold over ‘Stay’ by Kid LAROI and Justin Bieber at #2; I’d like to say whatever Harry Styles is dropping will be a serious challenger here, but given the streaming and radio margins required to break that high, I don’t know if it’s possible just yet. But we do have a challenger here: ‘Big Energy’ by Latto, thanks to a Mariah Carey remix that also features DJ Khaled for some ungodly reason, pushed to #3, which drove massive sales, a streaming breakthrough, and a radio surge… I might not hate this song as much as some do, but I also know a bad ripoff made worse by the remix when I hear it, and that this has gotten this high is not good. Then you get ‘Super Gremlin’ by Kodak Black at #4 - this is what having a stranglehold on streaming will get you, if nothing else - and to round out a pretty atrocious top 5, ‘Enemy’ by Imagine Dragons and JID is now at #5 thanks to its radio surge, good god this is ugly. Hell, it overtook ‘Ghost’ by Justin Bieber at #6, where it looks like radio is getting yanked, but nowhere near as bad as ‘abcdefu’ by GAYLE down to #7 - looks like they missed their shot with this one, disappointing. Then despite ruling streaming ‘We Don’t Talk About Bruno’ by the Encanto Cast slid to #8, which I would say opens things up for ‘THATS WHAT I WANT’ by Lil Nas X at #9, but its radio wavered all week and that’s all it basically has. Finally there’s ‘Woman’ by Doja Cat at #10 - again, basically riding on radio, but at least it’s better than most of this, so even if I’m not really a fan and still a bit better that ‘Get Into It (Yuh)’ got snubbed, I guess I’ll take it?
Anyway, losers and dropouts… and yeah, ‘Waiting On a Miracle’ by Stephanie Beatriz fell out, but if you feel like the chart got measurably worse, it’s because both ‘Knife Talk’ by Drake ft. 21 Savage and Project Pat and ‘Smokin Out The Window’ by Silk Sonic both left; don’t worry, they both made the year-end list, thank god… even if the former song made the list last year and thus isn’t eligible for my rules, damn it! As for our losers… well, the leftovers of Lil Durk’s album bomb are the main culprits with ‘Ahhh Ha’ at 51, ‘Broadway Girls’ with Morgan Wallen at 57, ‘Petty Too’ with Future at 83, and ‘No Interviews’ at 95. But we’ve also got a few scattered songs that are either novelties - ‘Thinking With My Dick’ by Kevin Gates and Juicy J at 56 - or just never caught fire, like ‘High’ by the Chainsmokers at 85, ‘Blick Blick!’ by Coi Leray and Nicki Minaj and 87, and ‘Beautiful Lies’ by Yung Bleu and Kehlani at 100… can’t say I’m going to miss any of this either.
But what will fill in the gaps? Well, the returns give us a clue here, outside of ‘Trouble With A Heartbreak’ by Jason Aldean creeping back to 94 likely thanks to a bit of radio, which is also the big reason behind the single push for ‘Wasted On You’ by Morgan Wallen at 48… yeah, we’re not getting away from this, charming. And then there’s the big remix of ‘No Love’ by Summer Walker and SZA with Cardi B that smashed back at 29… although for some reason Cardi isn’t credited, which is not surprising, but a little bizarre. But the biggest returns come from Machine Gun Kelly, with ‘emo girl’ with WILLOW at 84 and ‘ay!’ with Lil Wayne at 88… and when we go to our gains, we also saw a jump for ‘maybe’ with Bring Me The Horizon at 68, which still isn’t not all that much all things considered. But it’s one of only three gains, with ‘To The Moon!’ by JNR CHOI and Sam Tompkins somehow still getting traction at 54, but also ‘Over’ by Lucky Daye at 77, which hopefully will keep growing on me as it picks up momentum; wouldn’t mind some decent R&B right now.
But again, this week of new arrivals seems fairly reasonable, so let’s get things started with…
89. ‘Sigue’ by J Balvin & Ed Sheeran - …why does this exist? Okay, rhetoric question here, I know exactly why: both of these artists have a reputation for orchestrating collaborations that only serve to leech away their better elements as they seek larger audiences who aren’t asking for this, but I had low expectations going into this, even with Tainy on production… and turns out that was appropriate, because man, this is the sort of stale reggaeton that does neither of these two any favours. I’m starting to think Ed Sheeran should stay away from anything in Spanish, because he somehow sounds more awkward than I do with the language, and it’s not like the muted steel drums, oversold stock reggaeton percussion, and overly compressed vocal mixing is helping anything here. Then there’s the content - Sheeran, if you call yourself the ‘white redhead’ on the prechorus with the loosely translated line ‘be careful of me if I fuck you’, the awkwardness goes past cringe and into creepy, especially with how sexually charged the entire song is - J Balvin might be able to sell it better, but I can also recognize someone going for the paycheque more than anything. So yeah, this sucks - next!
80. ‘chaotic’ by Tate McRae - I’ve said this before, I’m trying to be accepting of Tate McRae, especially as I’m starting to feel like I’m on the outside looking in after her newest hit, and now that she’s got another song to chart, I wanted to give a fair and proper chance. And… it’s probably the most I’ve liked a song from her, but this is one of those tracks where for everything I appreciate, it’s not enough to compensate for the problems at its core. Because yes, Tate McRae’s writing is pretty good here, where she doesn’t want to admit her fears, grapple with her feelings, or throw away friends for whom she’s growing apart, because loneliness is worse and she’s also very much not over that ex and the entire song feels overwhelmed with teenage emotions. And sure, a spare piano ballad isn’t a bad way to sell that with muffled percussion and some strings, but it also centers all the attention on McRae, where with all the synthetic layers around her pretty weak delivery it doesn’t help foster much intimacy. And while that might work for a depressed breakdown of a song, it still relies on me caring more about McRae as a singer, and this isn’t helping her case. It’s fine, I guess, but I have no interest in going back to it.
74. ‘Envolver’ by Anitta - about time this debuted! So I’ve actually talked a bit about Anitta before - she had a collab with Cardi B and Myke Towers in 2020, but this solo track has been getting a lot of worldwide attention so it was just a matter of time before it crossed over… and I just wish it was more interesting. I put a lot of this on the production - yeah, the guitar bleeding across the back of the mix swamped in reverb can lead to some interesting atmosphere, especially with how the song utilizes distortion and compression, but with the stock reggaeton beat on the hook being so loud that it seems like they lowered Anitta’s vocals in the mix, it just doesn’t emphasize the sensuality that the song could really use when you look at the loveless hookup at its core. It’s frustrating because while this isn’t bad, I feel like I’ve heard a lot of songs in this exact same vein plenty of times before. Just doesn’t do much for me.
73. ‘X Ultima Vez’ by Daddy Yankee & Bad Bunny - so apparently Daddy Yankee is retiring, and calling himself the ‘King Of Reggaeton’ as he goes out. I’ll say ‘citation needed’ as someone who doesn’t have the deepest knowledge of the genre, but hey, he’s got a big collab with Bad Bunny that’s also produced by Tainy, that could be interesting… and yet once again we’re stuck with the stock, overly crisp reggaeton percussion with the extremely muted melody and Bad Bunny and Daddy Yankee caterwauling over the mix; yes, the breakdown at the end is decent, but more curious rather than elevating the song to a new level. Then there’s the content, where both of these guys want one last chance to fuck their exes, where for as much as Daddy Yankee is going to make basketball references and Bad Bunny gets uncomfortably pushy in emphasizing how their current boyfriend is going to feel, it feels like a song more targeted at comeuppance for any other guy in the picture, and it just feels skeevy. And when you realize just how many songs both of these men have made in this territory… yeah, not fond of this either.
59. ‘make up sex’ by Machine Gun Kelly & blackbear - …this is just ‘my ex’s best friend’ but consistently worse across the board. Anchoring the verse in light guitar before bringing in the chunkier riff with the slight trap skitter on the hook, the lightly toxic relationship melodrama… and yet the song is just worse even despite all the little elements they cram into it to make it feel as memetic, especially minus the darker swagger of the prechorus and any sense of deeper tension, from the whoops to the pitch-shifting to the flow switchups to the blown out drums that open the song. It’s also a song where everyone comes across a lot less likable - there was some moral ambiguity to the hookup on ‘my ex’s best friend’ that is just not here - a more stock ‘relationship is bad but the sex is good’ is not nearly as interesting, especially as nobody sounds like they’re having any fun. So while I’d put money on the label pushing this as a single because, again, they had the formula that worked… let’s not have that happen, please?
58. ‘We Go Up’ by Nicki Minaj & Fivio Foreign - you know, at some point one of Nicki Minaj’s collab singles is going to get some chart traction - or at least you’d think so, given how she keeps pushing them, when in reality all she needed was ‘Do We Have A Problem’ which is still really damn good, but fine, she’s showing some investment in drill so Fivio Foreign is a natural partner for a teamup… and man, I wish this could have been better! Let me start by saying that the hazy drill production with the vocal snippets is not bad with the hammering percussion - definitely more polished even if it doesn’t quite hit in the same way, but it’s a natural fit for Nicki’s swaggering charisma… shame she can’t really find a pocket with it! It’s frustrating because she alternates through a bunch of flows on the song but ends her verses dragging out syllables and it just sounds awkward, especially when it sounds like she’s sleepwalking through the hook - and she’s still better than Fivio Foreign who sounds even clunkier! I would say that Nicki gets a few lines off I like, mostly in her second verse, my favourite being ‘Some of the best shooters out of New York, they don’t play with the Knicks’, which I choose to see a sneak diss for a trash team, but then there’s a line like ‘we back on that Ewok’ or ‘I don’t do coke, little bitch, I don’t even do Pepsi’, and the corniness would be excusable if this again wasn’t a song dissing women who are following in her wake; this was stale four years ago, it’s not a good sign that you’re still going back to that well! I’m not saying this is bad, again - Nicki is at least trying to make something work in a new sound for her, not that she’ll admit that - but she runs a serious risk oversaturating the market rather than working the strongest single she’s had thus far. Just disappointing.
20. ‘Soy El Unico’ by Yahritza Su Esencia - so remember those Mexican songs that went viral on TikTok for a few weeks last year and then fell off dramatically, and most of them weren’t very good? Well, the labels were paying attention, and when another one caught a spark, they threw serious streaming attention behind it. From what I can tell, the singer Yahritza is fifteen years old and sounds like it, she’s also the main songwriter and her adolescent heartbreak is framed as more adult than she can sell, thus far this is their only song on any streaming platform and they shout out their label on the brief interlude off the clumsily mixed bass and guitar where it doesn’t look like there was any competent blending… and I’m sorry, this feels wrong. This feels like a kid working with friends or family who wrote a pretty amateurish song that sounds like a rough demo, that got attention on Tiktok and a label swooped in and is going to make off with whatever profit comes their way; it happens with so many bargain barrel trap acts who catch a moment, and I’d put money on it happening here too. Yes, the bass interplay with the acoustic guitar is pretty decent, and I don’t doubt their hearts are in the right place, and maybe for those who like this neotraditional Mexican sound, it’ll work for you, but I listen to this and I hear a sketchy label screwing over some kids, and I call it like I hear it. I don’t really think this would have worked for me without the industry bullshit, but when it feels this obvious… yeah, no.
It’s not getting the worst of the week - that’s going to ‘Sigue’ by Ed Sheeran and J Balvin for just being obvious and derivative crap. Best of the week… there’s no obvious candidates here, but Nicki Minaj had that Knicks line and that pushes ‘We Go Up’ by Fivio Foreign into this slot, although there’s very little else I can say about it. Next week… I’m expecting a slowdown, but where Harry Styles lands is going to at least make this a little interesting, so stay tuned!