billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - december 25, 2021
So on the one hand, a week like this is precisely why I put in album bomb rules, where pretty much the only thing that dropped was a posthumous album under questionable circumstances and it’s the holiday season anyway and surely we all have much better things to do, right? Hell, I have year-end lists to work on, talking about Grade A and Interscope wringing more money out of Juice WRLD’s memory is about the last thing I want to do! But in essence that’s pretty much the only thing to talk about, so while I’m keeping my rules in place because I’m sure nobody wants to linger on this, I did my due diligence with this… even though none of it deserves it.
And to think this all takes away from the much bigger story: of how in the top ten, in the annual tradition Mariah Carey ascended to the #1 with ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’, pretty much all driven on streaming, holiday radio and a final sales boost. And hey look, she pulled ‘Rockin Around The Christmas Tree’ by Brenda Lee up with her to #2, handily pushing ‘Easy On Me’ by Adele down to #3. Now this is a little tough to gauge - I still think she’s got momentum once the holiday glut is over, but the radio peak is wavering and streaming is down; it may go back to #1 in a few weeks, but I don’t think it’s guaranteed if we get a surprise breakthrough. Then we’ve got two more holiday cuts with ‘Jingle Bell Rock’ by Bobby Helms at #4 and ‘A Holly Jolly Christmas’ by Burl Ives at #5, but at least they pulled above ‘Stay’ by Kid LAROI and Justin Bieber at #6, which has radio inertia but has been taking body blows all week. But pulling up behind it we have ‘It’s The Most Wonderful Time’ by Andy Williams at #7, and then there’s ‘Heat Waves’ by Glass Animals at #8 - again, why the radio run behind this now, it’s still picking up gains here! But to round things out, ‘Last Christmas’ by Wham! breaks into the top ten at #9, just pushing back ‘INDUSTRY BABY’ by Lil Nas X and Jack Harlow at #10… which is also getting rotated out by the radio, go figure.
On that note, our losers and dropouts, and man, it seems like the Hot 100 wants to get rid of 2021 hits with surprising speed, even if the album bombs tend to make that more ‘natural’. Notable exits include ‘Fair Trade’ by Drake and Travis Scott, ‘Sharing Locations’ by Meek Mill ft. Lil Baby and Lil Durk, ‘Gyalis’ by Capella Grey, ‘Pepas’ by Farruko, ‘If I Didn’t Love You’ by Jason Aldean and Carrie Underwood, ‘Beggin’ by Maneskin, and even ‘Save Your Tears’ by The Weeknd and Ariana Grande. But when it comes to your average album bomb, there really weren’t that many losers here: off the debut ‘I Hate U’ by SZA slipped to 31, off the gain ‘Bad Man (Smooth Criminal)’ by Polo G skidded to 97 and ‘Woman’ by Doja Cat fell to 78, and in the process of continued losses ‘All Too Well’ by Taylor Swift fell to 59 and ‘Same Boat’ by the Zac Brown Band hit 92 - guys, if you want to start on ‘The Comeback’ as a single, you should get that rolling any time now before certain politicians start thinking it’s a good theme song. Outside of that… ‘No Love’ by Summer Walker and SZA stumbled to 96, ‘Family Ties’ by Baby Keem and Kendrick Lamar slipped to 93, ‘My Universe’ by Coldplay and BTS fell to 74 as the sales boosting got redirected, ‘Cold As You’ by Luke Combs fell to 72, and ‘Bad Habits’ by Ed Sheeran looks to be finally rotating out at 26 - I bet this falls off really fast, just watch.
But when it comes to our gains and returns… yeah, there’s very little here worth noting, and that includes the solitary pickup for Camila Cabello’s godawful version of ‘I’ll Be Home For Christmas’ exclusive to Amazon to 83. Hell, there were a lot more returns, the majority being holiday songs with ‘Wonderful Christmastime’ by Paul McCartney at 41, ‘Mistletoe’ by Justin Bieber at 49, and ‘You’re A Mean One, Mr. Grinch’ by the amazingly named Thurl Ravenscroft at 44. Outside of that… well, Parker McCollum saw a bounce back to 85, but the story here is - sadly - the posthumous Juice WRLD album bomb, where ‘Already Dead’ came back at 54. But given that we’re very much in album bomb territory, here are all the songs that fell below the top 40 and are neither the best nor worst of this week… ‘Feel Alone’ at 98, ‘Relocate’ at 87, ‘From My Window’ at 86, ‘Not Enough’ at 80, ‘Doom’ at 75, ‘You Wouldn’t Understand’ at 64 and ‘Rockstar In His Prime’ at 63.
And now onto a slim but reasonable list of new arrivals, starting with…
82. ‘Man In The Mirror’ by A Boogie wit da Hoodie - honest question: did anyone actually miss A Boogie while he was quiet for the past year and a bit? He actually had two charting songs this year before now, one with the late Pop Smoke and one with Lil Durk, the latter of which made this EP he put out and for which I saw precisely zero traction outside of this. Now initially I was skeptical - it takes balls to use the title of one of Michael Jackson’s biggest hits, sparking a comparison he does not want - and it turns out that was justified, because this is forgettable as hell. The weedy acoustics against the leaden, clunky trap beat, A Boogie crooning his way around brand name flexing and saying your girl eats him up until she hurls, but the larger sentiment seems to be him trying to plead with his on-and-off again partner to come back with all the things he could buy her; I dunno, maybe the complicating factor is you nailing other guys’ girlfriends, that seems likely! But truth be told, this sounds like A Boogie just hopping on the most popular sound and even it is starting to get played out - and for as much as A Boogie doesn’t need help deciding what to wear, I don’t need help forgetting this in record time.
76. ‘Go Hard’ by Juice WRLD - Okay, so this one got the fans in a bit of an uproar, because against the clunky vocals, badly mixed trap bass and gutless percussion, painfully dreary hook, and a flute line this song has no idea what to do with, there was supposed to be a verse from Lil Uzi Vert on it. It’s kind of murky where the hell that verse went - whether it got pulled by Uzi’s or Juice WRLD’s managers, it’s not particularly clear - but it leaves me openly wondering if all you have is a single verse and a bad hook where Juice WRLD openly regrets the sentiment behind ‘All Girls Are The Same’, one of his biggest hits, maybe it’s a bad idea to include it on the record. And it confuses me why this is even here: apparently Juice WRLD recorded hundreds and hundreds of songs before he died, given how they leak profusely, so if you can’t get the verse cleared, why not just cut the song and replace it so you don’t have something that’s obviously unfinished here? Again, it’s not just that this sucks, it’s the fact that the labels know they can sell this to his audience, and that’s goddamn gross. But while we’re in the territory of unfinished crap…
56. ‘Feline’ by Juice WRLD, Polo G & Trippie Redd - …you know, it’s probably a really bad sign that when I went to Genius to look up the lyrics of this song, the first comments at the bottom, which presumably would be from fans, are asking why this is mixed like absolute shit. Now the answer to that is unfortunately very simple - this project is a hack job designed to wring out as much money as possible and the labels have such contempt for the audience that they’re convinced they’ll buy anything with big enough names attached, and sure enough outside of the opening song this is the biggest debut. It’s also crap all the way down and it legit pisses me off that Polo G and Trippie Redd are anywhere near this with some pretty stock gunplay and threats; even if Polo G can show some regret that he was never able to save a friend thanks to his phone being off, we get Trippie Redd saying he doesn’t want some girl’s body, just her head - guillotine girl; in the same verse flexing brand names, that’s tempting fate. But unfortunately the largest problems come in the production and Juice WRLD himself - the metallic percussion against the pileup of guitars sounds squeaky and tinny, Juice WLRD’s vocal sounds like a badly mixed scratch take, and not only does he compare himself to both Harambe and a zombie, the key line of the hook is calling some someone a pussyboy, feline. The original version of this song was apparently recorded in the sessions for his debut in 2018, and now you probably understand why it took so long to get released - garbage.
50. ‘Santa Baby’ by Eartha Kitt ft. Henri Rene & His Orchestra - I had honestly thought all the old Christmas songs had made their return… but it turns out we have one of the oldest and most notorious songs to finally make its charting debut. And I’m not kidding about calling this notorious either - originally recorded in 1953, from a pair of songwriters who were vocally anxious about giving the record to Eartha Kitt to cut, it was a song that was considered so scandalous and sexually provocative that several states in the American South banned the song; I wonder if the fact that it was a Black woman who sung it had anything to do with that. Nevertheless, it’s a song that’s been cut by artists from Madonna to Ariana Grande to an excruciating cover from Michael Buble, all of which has sparked a lot of controversy, with plenty of critics calling this one of the worst Christmas songs of all time… and I don’t agree? Yeah, the song is flagrantly materialistic and horny in a way where plenty of monocles would have popped in the 50s, but are we honestly going to get huffy about Eartha Kitt’s cooing for gifts in the era of luxury porn across mainstream rap; capitalism has never really been the critique of modern holiday standards! No, this got flack because against the very spare orchestration, Eartha Kitt sounds luxuriant and sensual and anything that made a man’s ball tingle in the 50s would wind up getting called marxist or something - the more things change, right? Anyway, put alongside the more obviously sexual Christmas jams of today and this honestly just feels a little quaint - I wouldn’t call it a personal favourite, but it’s slinky and nails the vibe and has easily passed the test of time - over a lot of cloying, plastic holiday music, I’ll take this any day.
34. ‘Burn’ by Juice WRLD - the opening track to Juice WRLD’s second posthumous album… and honestly, I don’t have a lot to say about this one, where Metro Boomin integrates strings against the weedling keys but it feels like a groove that can never get balanced properly, not helped by that flat knock echoing behind Juice WRLD’s hook and that really wonky percussion line on the second verse that kills any sense of momentum. I will say it definitely sounds like a more refined, later recording from Juice WRLD, as he stumbles through his drug abuse where he knows all the damage it’s doing to him, but it’s the only thing that gives him relief - praying for water to wash down more drugs is bleak, and it’s a juxtaposition that works for how shambling and broken the verses feel. Shame he had to throw some of the flexing in which doesn’t fit at all, but the seeds of a solid idea were here - I get the feeling, though, that this was just an early draft, and we wouldn’t see anything properly realized.
29. ‘Girl Of My Dreams’ by Juice WRLD ft. SUGA - you know, I didn’t even tweet about this song directly. I replied to a tweet from Anthony Fantano about this song in particular asking if anyone really wanted this and I replied with, ‘no, nobody wanted this’. I mean, even if Juice WRLD did work with BTS back in 2019, do you really want to be blindly supporting the rapacious acts of his record labels that in order to maximize profits and stan buy-in they just so happen to include a song in the final third of the album that has a BTS member on it, so much so that you leap down the throat of anyone that dares question its inclusion? If this is where the dumbass chart-chasing clout game is taking you, that goes to a pretty gross place… and it’s kind of a shame, because otherwise the song is okay. I’m dead serious, it’s fine: the smoky guitar rollick, strings and twinkling touches behind the trap knock builds into one of the best hooks on the album, especially with all the vocal overdubs on the hook, and even for just a pretty blissed out love song, there’s just enough colour from Juice WRLD and SUGA that it works. The vocal mixing is rougher than it should be - and the situation behind getting the song on the album feels sketchy all the way down - but otherwise… it’s fine. Not great, not bad either.
And that ends the week… yeah, Juice WRLD is getting the worst here with ‘Feline’ with Polo G and Trippie Redd, also taking the Dishonourable Mention for ‘Go Hard’. But I’m also going to give him an Honourable Mention for ‘Girl Of My Dreams’ with SUGA - the hook worked for me, I’ll say it, with the best obviously going to ‘Santa Baby’ by Eartha Kitt which to me is a really damn good holiday staple. Next week, though… it’ll be the open question just how much of Roddy Ricch’s new album will break through against the holiday tidal wave, so stay tuned…