billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - august 12, 2023
Double album bomb week. Y’all know the drill with these by this point, we’ve had a few of them - and technically this week only one of them counts as a full album bomb which means I’m going to be covering every entry despite having already reviewed the album at length, and that means this is going to be long as hell and y’all just have to be ready for it - although let’s be real, this is probably been one of the bigger ‘event weeks’ in terms of releases in 2023, I’m not sure how you could escape it.
Although if you look at our top ten, you could make a case, because right back at #1 again is ‘Last Night’ by Morgan Wallen. Let’s be clear, it’s on the downswing, especially on radio, it no longer rules streaming, it’s probably more vulnerable than it’s ever been - and that finally opens the door for ‘Fast Car’ by Luke Combs to make its run at #2 - the sales are there, it’s building a radio margin, it just needs a little more to get over the hump - discount at the right time and Luke Combs will get that #1. You might be wondering where a certain Jason Aldean song is - I’m going to mention it briefly here because I have a different plan for covering nearly half of the Hot 100 losing this week, and that’s because its streaming evaporated and while it’s slowly getting radio, it’s by no means fast enough, so it saw the biggest drop from #1 that did not debut there in Hot 100 history, fun stuff. But circling around to big debuts, we’ve got our next at #3: ‘MELTDOWN’ by Travis Scott ft. Drake - pretty much just on streaming, that’s the story of this entire Travis Scott album bomb. Then we saw ‘Cruel Summer’ by Taylor Swift continuing to make its play at #4 - make no mistake, between the radio and streaming, this is probably the strongest competition coming up that Luke Combs will have, I wouldn’t be surprised if both eventually get the #1. But then we have another Travis Scott song: ‘FE!N’ ft. Playboi Carti at #5 - again, all streaming, no radio is going to touch this. They prefer cuts like ‘Calm Down’ by Rema and Selena Gomez holding at #6 thanks to a surprisingly solid radio week, which held over ‘fukumean’ by Gunna down to #7 basically because it’s predominantly running on streams and you can tell Travis just overran him here. Then we have ‘Barbie World’ by Ice Spice, Nicki Minaj and Aqua holding at #8 - I’m going to chalk this up to the Barbie soundtrack having staying power on streaming but this is also getting radio - ‘vampire’ by Olivia Rodrigo at #9 - which the radio just loves but also took another hit on streaming - and ‘Dance The Night’ by Dua Lipa at #10 - see Barbie soundtrack commentary as it also has radio, which I’ll admit is less surprising because otherwise this is a very obvious stock Dua Lipa song.
But now we get to the messy part: the losers and dropouts - because even in the latter category there’s a lot here, especially in bigger names. Let’s deal with the songs that have their year-end slots locked up first: ‘Sure Thing’ by Miguel, ‘Something In The Orange’ by Zach Bryan, ‘Die For You’ by The Weeknd, ‘I’m Good (Blue)’ by David Guetta and Bebe Rexha, and ‘Dancin In The Country’ by Tyler Hubbard - might as well add ‘Por Las Noches’ by Peso Pluma which probably got really close. But then we have a swathe of songs that fell well short, like ‘Bye’ by Peso Pluma - he also saw the departure of ‘El Azul’ with Junior H - ‘SEE YOU AGAIN’ by Tyler The Creator and Kali Uchis, ‘Fight The Feeling’ by Rod Wave, and ‘Ain’t That Some’ by Morgan Wallen. Now for the losers… come on, it’s nearly half the Hot 100, it doesn’t make sense to just list names, let’s go to the songs that actually didn’t drop ten slots or more, which is at least a somewhat more reasonable and interesting list. Most of these you could chalk up to radio support, even if it’s diminished like ‘Flowers’ by Miley Cyrus at 12, ‘All My Life’ by Lil Durk and J. Cole at 13, ‘Snooze’ by SZA at 15, ‘Karma’ and ‘Anti-Hero’ by Taylor Swift at 20 and 31 respectively, ‘Need A Favor’ by Jelly Roll at 24, and ‘Religiously’ by Bailey Zimmerman at 33. Then there was the increased stability thanks to Barbie, of which we can point at ‘What Was I Made For’ by Billie Eilish at 22 - I’d put money on this being a legit hit, especially after seeing her perform it live - ‘Speed Drive’ by Charli XCX at 78, and ‘I’m Just Ken’ by Ryan Gosling at 92. But then there are the weirder ones: ‘You, Me & Whiskey’ by Justin Moore and Priscilla Block at 47, picking up gains because it had a shockingly good radio week - might as well chalk something similar for ‘Baby Don’t Hurt Me’ by David Guetta, Anne-Marie and Coi Leray at 64, or even ‘What It Is (Block Boy)’ by Doechii at 66, which has more radio than streaming traction at this point! Finally, sticking to the very bottom we have ‘Johnny Dang’ by That Mexican OT, Paul Wall, and DRODi at 100 - I’m just happy it’s here, that makes me smile!
Now the gains and returns are pretty much just Post Malone here - ‘Overdrive’ came back at 68, and we saw pickups for ‘Chemical’ at 35 and ‘Mourning’ at 40. But again, he didn’t get quite enough to get into album bomb territory, whereas Travis Scott absolutely did. And since I already reviewed the album and he’s well past my threshold for an upper tier album bomb with eighteen new songs, I’m going to be sticking to the best or worst and those in the top 20, which still gives me plenty here. Outside of those… ‘PARASAIL’ with Dave Chappelle and Yung Lean at 53 - very nearly made the bottom group, Yung Lean just saved it - ‘LOOOVE’ with Kid Cudi at 49, ‘LOST FOREVER’ with Westside Gunn at 46, ‘TIL FURTHER NOTICE’ with James Blake and 21 Savage at 38, ‘CIRCUS MAXIMUS’ with The Weeknd and Swae Lee at 36, ‘SKITZO’ with Young Thug at 34, ‘GOD’S COUNTRY’ at 28, ‘SIRENS’ at 27, ‘TELEKINESIS’ with SZA and Future at 26, ‘DELRESTO (ECHOES)’ with Beyonce at 25, and ‘MODERN JAM’ with Teezo Touchdown at 23.
That still gives us a stacked list of new arrivals, so let’s start off with…
90. ‘Novacandy’ by Post Malone - alright, let’s put aside the really good transition between this song and ‘Mourning’ on the album, I’ve had mixed feelings on this song since the jump. On the one hand, the hook scans well, and while the vocals feel more compressed than they should, the pulsating percussion and heavier swells of guitars and melody build really well into the piano that backs the chorus. But the mood of the song is weird, where you think that there’s some self-awareness about his various bursts of luck and success, or by the second verse the problems seem like they would throw him up, or how a dopamine overdose would only leave him burned out and numb… but this song never quite hits that point, and it’s a high that implies a comedown that never happens. Not bad, but… have to be honest, not a favourite of mine.
89. ‘Aqui Te Espero’ by Ivan Cornejo - the last time I talked about Ivan Cornejo back in 2021, I tried to go easier on him - it had the feel of a song not intended for a wider audience with amateurish production that all felt very mismanaged, and I frankly wasn’t expecting to hear anything from him ever again. Turns out he’s backed by Interscope now and we have a new single that is riding virality again… and yep, we’re doing this again, where the acoustic pickups all feel way too clean and tinny but are now matched by misty cycling guitars further back that don’t quite have the atmosphere to overcome Cornejo’s drippy, slapdash delivery; the production isn’t quite as distractingly bad, but the composition feels just as sloppy and the vocal mixing especially on the post-chorus sounds awful. Unfortunately the lyrics have taken a turn for the worse here - it’s post-breakup where the relationship seems like it guttered out and we get a lot of whiplash between the sincere grief and lashing out and potentially framing this partner as emotionally abusive, which would be fine if there was any intensity to the delivery, but it all feels so sullen, it’s hard to get a clear picture here. Again, I kind of feel bad for this kid because this sort of messy emotionality would work better with intimacy or more homespun production, but this once again does not come together at all, I can’t recommend it.
88. ‘Don’t Understand’ by Post Malone - I think I would like this song better if it were somewhere else on the album and not the opening track. It’s pleasant as a slowburn opener, where he’s so stuck in self-loathing that he doesn’t get why his partner loves him, and… yeah, there’s tangible sentiment there, and the barebones arrangement can make that work. But this is one of a few examples where you wish there was a little more detail in the writing around the spare, haunted verses to build into that hook, just flesh out the scene a little more to match with that violin that comes in on the second verse and chorus. I dunno, it’s fine, but again, between poor album placement and the underweight writing, it doesn’t do a lot for me.
87. ‘Too Cool To Die’ by Post Malone - hey look, it’s the most obvious attempt to recreate ‘Circles’ that we’ve gotten from Post Malone in some time, from the soft-focus driving groove, reverbed guitars, and staggering, hazy vibes. And that’s fine, but this is also a song where Post Malone is blearily trying to flex a bit alongside the girl who seems to be taking him for a ride that’s probably a little too fast and too much for him… but he’s not gonna push back that hard because he’s just so damn cool. There are flickers of deeper anxiety - Post Malone’s fear of flying, which given his issues with planes I absolutely get, and the passing references to climate change on the hook - but it’s all so lightweight that none of the darkness or weight of the moment really clicks, and that’s a misstep given current times. Again, it’s certainly listenable, but from the album, absolutely not one of my favourites.
80. ‘On The Radar Freestyle’ by Drake & Central Cee - so I’m not surprised that Drake is collaborating with Central Cee, a UK rapper who I don’t think I’ve ever liked but based off of catching glimpses of him live just last weekend has a bigger audience than you might expect. Now this is a freestyle from a New York radio station that has been packaged as a song, basically two extended verses over a watery UK drill beat with a goopy sample flip melody that I honestly really don’t like that runs for nearly five minutes… and while the flows are pretty good, even with Drake occasionally affecting a bit of an accent, I don’t think this builds to much, even with the excuse that this is just a freestyle. Now I prefer Drake’s verse because there’s a little more flair and the wordplay is a bit sharper, but then he compares himself to Jesus and says that he wants to be under a girl’s breasts like peas and rice, and if he comes inside a girl it’s ‘breeding time’; I swear for the past few years Drake’s lines about women have taken a fucking nosedive. Central Cee also has a cum line on his verse - specifically wanting to see her take the pill before he leaves - but my issue with him is pretty consistent in that his flexing and stacking money is just not that interesting, Drake is at least a bit more unique with it. But still, a freestyle like this is a chart throwaway that’s only here because of the names and we all know it - I don’t think it’s special, but you can take it or leave it.
67. ‘Something Real’ by Post Malone - now here’s a Post Malone song I actually really like, mostly because he plays on his bombastic side with the full choral background, huge swampy mix, and the acoustics echoing out the bassy synth and smoldering guitars. And for as much as Post Malone tries to revel in his hedonism and brand names and ‘playing the pussy like it’s ‘Fur Elise’,’ he seems to get how empty and almost pathetic it can all feel, as none of it lasts, all of it is a desperate attempt to cover existential emptiness, and the fact that it’s not working creates that existential nightmare, where he’ll have to stand in line at the gates of Hell like everyone else. It’s a bleak as hell song, but it has that Biblical force and swell that sounds really impressive, it can sell the drama of the moment. So yeah, I think it’s great… but let’s compare it to a different mood…
56. ‘Enough Is Enough’ by Post Malone - my colleague Jon from ARTV compared this to a One Direction song when he and I reviewed the album together - and yeah, melodically I absolutely hear it with that Max Martin cowrite, especially in how that main guitar melody explodes into the hook, but if that’s the case it would be one of their best and Post Malone once again ramps it up to eleven on that hook with the heavier percussion and his multi-tracked belting and even a falsetto that’s arguably as full and tolerable as it’s ever been. I do think the percussion sounds more blown out than I’d prefer, but for a song that’s all about Post Malone’s staggering love-hate relationship with alcohol, this kind of hits the sweet spot of ‘this is a serious goddamn problem that’s ruining my life and relationships… but hey, it can still be euphoria’. Hell, if Sam Levinson is looking for a montage moment for the next season of Euphoria - sidenote, do not make Season 3 of Euphoria, that ship has sailed in so many ways - this would kind of nail it. Another great song, one of my favourites on the album… kind of want to see if it gets traction, I think it could get there!
55. ‘Jealousy’ by Offset & Cardi B - there is a part of me that respects the hustle in Offset and Cardi B playing the more contentious rumours around their relationship for charting success - that part is lessened by the fact that we still don’t have a Cardi B album and the rollout is looking stranger all the time! Now I expect this might wind up on whatever Offset is pushing - he has the first and longer verse against the Three 6 Mafia sample and thicker trap knock with the staccato piano embellishments, and honestly it’s a strong verse with some good switch-ups; nothing super innovative but you can tell he’s angry at folks who are pocket-watching and that lets him unload the threats. But again, Cardi kind of steals the show for me - she’s funnier, she’s always been good at selling anger, and her contempt to those who are trying to spread rumours and crap online is palpable, especially when Cardi has proven capable of punching back and gets the final word. More importantly it flips the reality that Cardi B seems to have a working understanding of whatever relationship she has with Offset, and if it’s non-traditional, I don’t see how that’s anyone’s business. As for the song… it’s not great, but as a couple single, there’s a decent amount I like, I’ll take it!
43. ‘In Your Love’ by Tyler Childers - To think that this song would have debuted even higher if we didn’t have a Travis Scott album bomb this week, that’s absolutely wild to me! Now for those of you who don’t know, Tyler Childers is an indie country act that has been absolutely blowing up in the past year or two - I reviewed him back in 2019, even then I thought I was late to the party because I should have covered his excellent 2017 album Purgatory, but now he’s smashed onto the Hot 100 thanks to a huge streaming debut and his music video deliberately focusing on a male gay relationship, which unfortunately earned the outrage circuit from all the folks who got behind ‘Try That In A Small Town’ because of course it did; I have an extension on my browser that lets me see YouTube dislike bars, I’m not getting fooled here. And I’m making that parallel intentionally but not implying cynicism, because Childers actually comes from small town Kentucky, where this sort of ragged romance can play out and deserves to have a voice selling it, and Childers adds a lot of quivering presence and weight to an otherwise straightforward love song. If there is something that threw me a bit, it’s the production - the piano line and subtle touches remind me a lot of mid-90s neotraditional ballads, but then we get those glossy synths playing around the heavier guitars and it’s not a bad tonal choice, just an odd one. I guess I’m not as blown out of the water by this because I’ve been listening to queer country for a while now, but it’s a really damn good song and if this is what Childers needs to cross over… yeah, I’m looking forward to more.
19. ‘MY EYES’ by Travis Scott - so we have seven Travis Scott songs to get through to end this off, and quite frankly with Travis Scott’s recent behaviour in bringing out Kanye West on his first UTOPIA stop on the tour - and I feel obliged to remind folks Kanye spent the second half of last year spewing fascist nonsense, and platforming that bullshit for a soft reintroduction to the mainstream deserves an appropriate response - and given I already reviewed the album, I’m going to keep these entries very brief and not pull any punches. This has a lot of goopy synths and Justin Vernon doing a bad James Blake impression, Travis Scott doing a lot of pitch-shifted flexing that gets grating shockingly quick especially to that reference of ‘sweeping up cases’, before a beat switch into something a little sharper where he references the crowd crush situation in 2021 directly saying that he wishes he could saved them… which given that it’s been revealed he and his team kept the show deliberately going, this feels disingenuous as hell amidst a bunch of bars where he talks about trying to stay inspired and making a cast of his dick so his girl will never need to cheat. The song needed more than a few lines of Sampha to be salvageable, next!
17. ‘TOPIA TWINS’ by Travis Scott ft. Rob49 & 21 Savage - god, was the bass mixing and compression always mastered this rough? Anyways, this is one of Travis Scott’s few good hooks on this album against the organ and haunted guitars, for a song that’s all about fucking twins and brand name porn. And once again Travis is the least interesting part of the song where Rob49 is both funnier and brings more intensity, and 21 Savage’s verse is probably the sharpest in its gunplay if he wasn’t calling all the girls in the studio props. I put this as one of the higher quality songs on the album… I’m not sure I’m sticking with that…
16. ‘THANK GOD’ by Travis Scott - part of the running narrative around UTOPIA that’s only gotten louder is that it’s been assembled from a bunch of leftovers from older sessions, specifically old Kanye sessions, and so we have one Kanye co-produced that apparently was a leftover from the DONDA sessions with KayCyy that was originally on the tracklist in 2020 and then dropped… and Travis didn’t credit KayCyy and got cussed out for it. And while the hollow clinking around the bassy synth actually sounded pretty cool especially with the changeup into the final verse, this is ultimately a song about Travis’ direct line to God and how he’ll never be dissuaded and he’s angry with the Grammys that Astroworld lost to Cardi B’s Invasion of Privacy; hey, what do you know, the Grammys got it right for once.
14. ‘HYAENA’ by Travis Scott - No, I have no clue why Travis Scott chose to spell the song title like that. But hey, this was at least trying to do something kind of interesting with the blown out percussion grinding around the warped, jangling acoustics and bookending the song with samples from Gentle Giant and Funkadelic. The problem is that Travis does nothing that compelling with it, instead it’s the same wild but stock hedonism that’s only made odd by out of nowhere references to Esperanza Spalding and the old Kelsey Grammar produced-show Girlfriends from the early 2000s, which doesn’t work when you imply so much more with samples that seem to demand a world-changing experience that UTOPIA doesn’t remotely deliver. This one isn’t bad so much as it is awkward, next!
11. ‘I KNOW?’ by Travis Scott - Of the Travis Scott songs that charted highly, this is one that I don’t really understand why it charted so high, outside of its autotuned crooning reminding me way too much of Kanye and probably one of the few radio-friendly hooks on the album with the delicate piano behind the sharper trap percussion and every vocal sample elongating and stuttering. And this is a song where Travis Scott drunkenly calls a girl at an obscene hour in the morning and tries to fuck, with more than a little exasperation at being called out for his hedonism given that he’s done this shit before. He then tries to guilt-trip this girl by saying he has ‘twenty bitches suckin like bisons’ and he just picked her out of a roster, but he’s totally convinced this is going to blow her mind - yeah, when The Weeknd made ‘The Hills’, his frustrated messiness was way more credible - and likable. And somehow better produced.
5. ‘FE!N’ by Travis Scott ft. Playboi Carti - Let’s deal with the elephant in the room right now: Playboi Carti sounds like shit on this song, where if it’s intentional someone should have told him to stop and if it’s not it’s an object lesson in not recording when your throat is on fire. Apparently Sheck Wes was supposed to be on this too, but he got pulled at the last minute and is only on the physicals - I have no idea if he could have made this better where Travis attempts to use an offkey dying synthesizer with a bunch of fluttering cascades from 2007 with shoddy mastering. And what’s truly infuriating is that isn’t new or boundary-pushing or doing anything all that special - it’s Travis Scott trying to play to the rage audience in the most stock way possible with a lot of half-formed flexing and nothing remotely coalescing. In other words this is terrible, even for rage music - the only time I’ve seen this work is on bass-boosted festival speakers, and even by that metric this fucking sucks, let’s move on.
3. ‘MELTDOWN’ by Travis Scott ft. Drake - okay, this one is Drake’s fault; he wanted to replicate the impact of ‘SICKO MODE’ and take potshots at Pusha T and hit Pharrell as well - that’s smart, take shots at one of the most well-liked and respected producers in the game and a rapper to whom you lost last time - and thus he sent this verse in to Mike Dean four hours before the album went live, which apparently fucked with a lot of the physical releases again. And for what, for Drake to go into a whispery delivery to convey menace and open with a reference to ‘teatime’ - because he’s spilling tea but also not… there’s nothing leaked here that feels special outside of arguing that nobody is wearing Louis Vutton since Pharrell took over and that he would have been with gang members at Paris Fashion Week if Vogue wasn’t suing; this is what Drake thinks is impressive in this beef, come on! Now to be fair, I like this ominous production and the first beat switch is good - although I could swear the laser sounds on Travis’ verse sound like they’re from TIE fighters - until we get the final segment which feels like a stock trap beat, and it’s not like anything Travis says is interesting, once again! Yeah, there’s threats and debauchery but they all feel so damn basic, it’s not special! At least ‘SICKO MODE’ - a song that I still don’t really like to this day but at least get the appeal - felt like an event; this feels like it’s trying to manufacture the hype, and all it has left me wanting is Pusha T to release the song he played walking the Louis Vuitton runway back in June.
Anyway, best and worst… let’s do the latter first, it’s ‘FE!N’ by Travis Scott and Playboi Carti, with Dishonourable Mention regrettably going to ‘Aqui Te Espero’ by Ivan Cornejo - again, I think he’s being mismanaged, it’s hard for me to blame him directly. Now the best is trickier… I think I’m going with ‘Enough Is Enough’ by Post Malone for the best, but it’s a narrow win over a tie for Honourable Mention, ‘Something Real’ by Post Malone and ‘In Your Love’ by Tyler Childers. Next week… oh god, the fallout from this is going to be a mess, stay tuned for that!