billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - december 31, 2022

You know, I do feel bad for the folks who have come to the start of this season of Billboard BREAKDOWN to find nothing but slow weeks of holiday music or bloated album bombs, there hasn’t been much normalcy or continuity here. On the flip side, it is giving me the chance to enjoy a bit more holiday time and get ahead on all the stuff I need before the year end, so if this is another week where I can catch a breather, I’ll take it!

And thankfully the top ten is pretty damn easy to discuss: it’s holiday music for the first six entries, so in order: ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’ by Mariah Carey at the top, ‘Rockin Around The Christmas Tree’ by Brenda Lee at #2 - this actually nearly made a play for the #1 this week - ‘Jingle Bell Rock’ by Bobby Helms at #3, ‘A Holly Jolly Christmas’ by Burl Ives at #4, ‘Last Christmas’ by Wham! at #5, and ‘It’s The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year’ by Andy Williams at #6. Right below it with some surprising streaming strength is ‘Kill Bill’ by SZA at #7 - pretty much all it has, but it’s near enough to hold over ‘Feliz Navidad’ by Jose Feliciano at #8. Finally, we’ve got two songs holding the top on radio and sales as they’ve overtaken on streaming, ‘Anti-Hero’ by Taylor Swift at #9 and ‘Unholy’ by Sam Smith and Kim Petras at #10 - it’s really going to be interesting to see what the hell happens when all of the holiday music falls away and what wrestles for the top again.

But before we get there, losers and dropouts, where in the latter category outside of ‘Country On’ by Luke Bryan finally leaving, all we have are a few album bomb stragglers with longer runs from Drake and 21 Savage with’ On BS’ and ‘Major Distribution’. But speaking of album bombs, outside of ‘One Thing At A Time’ by Morgan Wallen at 97 and losses for Metro Boomin with ‘Niagara (Foot Or 2)’ with Travis Scott and 21 Savage at 89 and ‘Too Many Nights’ with Future and Don Toliver at 84, nearly all of the losers are from SZA. So, from the bottom up, ‘Far’ at 99, ‘Conceited’ at 95, ‘F2F’ at 91, ‘Smoking On My Ex Pack’ at 88, ‘Open Arms’ with Travis Scott at 86, ‘Notice Me’ at 85, ‘Gone Girl’ at 82, ‘SOS’ at 79, ‘Ghost In The Machine’ with Phoebe Bridgers at 75, ‘Special’ at 71, ‘Used’ with Don Toliver at 70, ‘Seek & Destroy’ at 63, ‘Snooze’ at 61, ‘Love Language’ at 58, ‘Low’ at 52, ‘Blind’ at 48, ‘Nobody Gets Me’ at 43, and ‘Shirt’ at 36.

But what will fill in that gap? Well, looking at our returns and gains, at least for this week it’s holiday music and a lot of it - in just returns, outside of ‘Down Home’ by Jimmie Allen back at 96, we have ‘Linus & Lucy’ by the Vince Guaraldi Trio at 49, ‘This Christmas’ by Donny Hathaway at 47, ‘Santa Baby’ by Eartha Kitt at 45, ‘Please Come Home For Christmas’ by the Eagles at 44, ‘Merry Christmas’ by Ed Sheeran and Elton John at 42, ‘Happy Holidays’ by Andy Williams at 40, ‘Happy XMas (War Is Over)’ by John & Yoko and the Plastic Ono Band at 38, ‘Wonderful Christmastime’ by Paul McCartney at 32, ‘You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch’ by Thurl Ravenscroft at 31, and ‘Little Saint Nick’ by the Beach Boys at 30! And it’s a similar case for the gains - outside of ‘Going, Going, Gone’ by Luke Combs at 73, it’s all holiday music again: ‘Last Christmas’ by Lauren Spencer-Smith at 81, ‘Santa, Can’t You Hear Me’ by Kelly Clarkson and Ariana Grande at 78, ‘Someday At Christmas’ by Lizzo at 59, ‘Run Rudolph Run’ by Chuck Berry at 34, ‘Santa Claus Is Comin To Town’ by the Jackson 5 at 33, ‘Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer’ and ‘Here Comes Santa Claus’ by Gene Autry at 28 and 25 respectively, ‘Blue Christmas’ by Elvis at 27, ‘Jingle Bells’ by Frank Sinatra at 22, ‘It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas’ by Michael Buble at 21, ‘Deck The Halls’ by Nat King Cole at 16, and ‘Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)’ by Darlene Love at 15. Man, when all of this fades in the next week or two the charts are going to be a bloodbath, let me tell you…

But in the meantime, we have only two new arrivals… not gonna lie, I’m not really looking forward to either, so starting with…

93. ‘Kid On Christmas’ by Pentatonix ft. Meghan Trainor - I think there’s a larger conversation that needs to happen with Pentatonix having the commercial longevity that they have, especially in holiday releases. Not always for the better, I should stress, but at least in the holiday music I hear in passing there’s a lot more Pentatonix than I would expect, so much so that I’m not even surprised they’ve got an original song with Meghan Trainor as a guest, all about trying to maintain that childish wonder on Christmas. And I’ll freely admit that’s not really what I love about the holidays - the music I like in this season tends to be more low-key and chill, emphasizing smaller, more mature moments, instead of something with huge horn arrangements where the pickups are really inconsistent between the trumpet and the other horns and sleigh bells and fake claps… but wait a minute, Pentatonix was predominantly an a capella group, why the need for the same plastic, oversolid holiday flair, they didn’t even use to do this! But putting that aside - Meghan Trainor is kind of a moot point on the song, she doesn’t really add anything that annoys me that much - outside of the central sentiment there’s just not much to this. It’s okay, I guess, but I won’t seek it out.

92. ‘Face 2 Face’ by Juice WRLD - …can we stop, please? It’s been over three years, it’s tired and beyond gross at this point, and to keep stripmining Juice WRLD’s memory like this so the producer can cash a paycheque for a fragment of a song that didn’t get made in 2019 just feels wrong. And here, it almost feels painfully prophetic - put aside the drippy, overweight percussion against the brighter acoustics, Juice WRLD is crooning about having the Midas touch to turn even his worst moments to gold, that he sold his soul for all of this and there are devils prowling around to take him down, but where he likely was speaking metaphorically, I choose to highlight the very real devils that now choose to exploit that Midas touch to wring every last dollar from a fanbase that somehow keeps buying. The sad thing is that the song isn’t even bad by Juice WRLD standards, but the context it’s in is so gross I can’t remotely endorse it.

So yeah, I guess it’s the worst of this week and ‘Kid On Christmas’ by Pentatonix and Meghan Trainor is the best, but let’s be real, they’re far closer in any ranking than many will admit. Next week… I also don’t expect much of anything given it’s going to be a tracking week over the gap between Christmas and New Year’s, so likely not much to see but stay tuned!