billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - february 12, 2022
There is a part of me that wants to say that this is the week where it’s going back to normal, but I also think I’ve been saying that so much about this chart because I’ve been desperately seeking some vestige of ‘normalcy’ or ‘stability’ and the chart has had that in the past. Although this week I would say it got close - there’s a lot of new songs but they’re more filling in the gaps from the last album bomb, and for the rest…
Well, let’s start with our top ten, where the entire top five is very firmly in place… which is kind of a surprise that ‘We Don’t Talk About Bruno’ by the Encanto Cast is holding at #1. The streaming is still monstrous and the sales are great, so radio is effectively irrelevant here. And that did surprise me, that ‘Easy On Me’ by Adele couldn’t retake the top, but sales and streaming are stagnant and despite ruling radio, it’s now actively in freefall there. Does this open up a space for ‘Heat Waves’ by Glass Animals, which is not that far behind on radio and better streams… well, maybe, but I kind of doubt it - the streaming margin hasn’t eclipsed the radio margin and it’s weaker on sales, at least for now. It does hold over ‘Stay’ by Kid LAROI and Justin Bieber at #4, which is tumbling across the board… and that opens the door for ‘Super Gremlin’ by Kodak Black at #5, which is huge on streaming and is now picking up radio to match. But I’d argue the better competition is ‘abcdefu’ by GAYLE up to #6: streaming might be slowing, but sales are solid and she’s absolutely surging on the radio, this could at some point make the top 5. Not exactly surprising it blew past ‘Shivers’ by Ed Sheeran at #7 - despite better sales and streaming than you’d expect the radio is wavering here, and with the rise of ‘Surface Pressure’ by Jessica Darrow to #8 on streaming at sales, I’d say it’s vulnerable. All of this knocked back ‘pushin p’ by Gunna and Future ft. Young Thug to #9 - the streaming seems to be slipping and the radio isn’t quite moving fast enough to catch up - and that takes us to an unlikely return in the top 10: ‘Need To Know’ by Doja Cat, which is here because its radio run has been surprisingly good, even if it has little else.
And that takes us to our losers and dropouts - the majority of which is YoungBoy Never Broke Again, although ‘Have Mercy’ by Chloe looks to be out having never quite blown up the way you’d think, along with ‘Happier Than Ever’ by Billie Eilish which takes a natural exit. And honestly we don’t have much in the way of losers: off the gains, ‘Cold December’ by Rod Wave crashed back to 62, and for YoungBoy Never Broke Again ‘Fish Scale’ slid to 99 and ‘No Switch’ fell to 83 off the debut. From there… ‘too easy’ by Gunna and Future is leaving again at 76, and ‘Eazy’ by The Game and Kanye West is at 98 - expect this to be gone soon, and good riddance.
Now I do think our returns are interesting because while you get a few rebounds - my favourite Doja Cat song with ‘Get Into It (Yuh)’ back at 81, along with ‘Fair Trade’ by Drake ft. Travis Scott of which I bet becomes a single, we got a pretty major surge for country, with ‘Flower Shops’ by ERNEST ft. Morgan Wallen back at 95, and into our gains, ‘Come Back As A Country Boy’ by Blake Shelton at 85, ‘Never Say Never’ by Cole Swindell and Lainey Wilson at 69, ‘Doin This’ by Luke Combs at 66, and ‘23’ by Sam Hunt getting the big radio push at 53. Outside of that it’s kind of mixed: ‘Iffy’ by Chris Brown rebounded to 87, ‘Beautiful Lies’ by Yung Bleu and Kehlani caught off the debut to 80, ‘Me Or Sum’ by Nardo Wick, Lil Baby and Future rose off the return to 78 - as did ‘I Love You So’ by The Walters to 71 - but the nice surprise was ‘Pressure’ by Ari Lennox steadily rising to 67. Not sure what her ceiling is - she’s got a surprising amount of radio backing - but with maybe a flash of streaming this could go somewhere, and that’s nice to see.
But that takes us to a healthy dozen new arrivals, starting with…
100. ‘Colombia, Mi Encanto’ by Carlos Vives - I guess I shouldn’t be that surprised that it’s taking this long for the Spanish-language cuts from Encanto to cross over, but here’s another one, this time from Carlos Vives, who I’ve actually covered before… way back in 2016 on a Shakira collab that I didn’t think was that was that special. Now this has a lot of the same free-flowing bounce, with the bright acoustics playing off the accordion highlighting the Colombian folk influences, and given that all it’s trying to be is a lightweight party song, I guess it mostly works - Lin Manuel Miranda’s writing is less annoyingly obvious when he writes in Spanish, and that’s just as true here. I do think the textured percussion is a little over-emphasized in the mix, but that’s relatively minor - not quite a favourite from Encanto, but there’s also a lot worse - fine by me.
97. ‘Megan’s Piano’ by Megan Thee Stallion - So am I the only one a bit shocked it’s taken this long to push another song from Something For Thee Hotties? I know it seemed to be more of a throwaway project before Tina Snow II, but still, I was expecting to make more of a run, but we did get this single. And… yeah, it’s good, but it does feel like a throwaway - the beat is very minimal with Megan’s spare piano melody backing up the trap percussion, and Megan just goes off against all the bitches that hate her as she flexes; basically it feels like it retreads a lot of ‘Thot Shit’ for a fragment that could use a little more, but not in a bad way, as Megan still has a ton of personality and her flows are sharp as ever. It’s definitely not as quotable or explicit, which makes me think TikTok virality had more to do with getting this charting, but it’s not bad either. A good little track… not great, though.
95. ‘The Motto’ by Tiesto & Ava Max - not gonna lie, when I heard that Ava Max was working with Tiesto I just got this sinking feeling - even if the song becomes a minor hit, Ava Max is the sort of pop star who doesn’t have the clout to avoid being overshadowed by her producer, and that’s a quick way to get sidelined for just vocal duties on EDM songs - maybe it’s just me rooting for her, but I think she’s got more potential than that. And while it’s probably not a good idea to take the song title from one of Drake’s most notorious hits, I did like ‘The Business’ a decent bit… and good thing, because this is just a less recreation of that formula, from the bass-heavy house groove to the vocals smothered in autotune to make this sound darker and heavier than it is. And that’s a shame because Ava Max’s greatest strength is her tryhard personality, not this stiff, pulsating, desaturated house vibe - she’s too plastic to sell this darker edge, especially as the party lyrics seem to focus more on sobriety to push paper rather than going to the edge. At least ‘The Business’ had some coursing swell, this feels too dry and sterile to make use of the personality it had - so maybe not bad, but I can’t say I’m not disappointed.
94. ‘Infinity’ by Jaymes Young - okay… this was a single that was released in 2017, and Jaymes Young hasn’t released anything of note on his own since - he’s had a few guest collaborations, but not much… until this went viral on TikTok last year and ergo is charting now. And wow, this bassy gurgle with spare drums against the hollowed synths sounds dated as hell to that era - I can’t really blame him for Imagine Dragons and the rest of the commercialcore bands driving this into the ground, but this is a song swallowed in its own ponderous bombast and slow pace to drive a proper climax. And… maybe it’s just me with this complaint, I mentioned it back when Mariah Carey had a song with a similar name and idea, but using love at any context of infinity feels hollow to me - it’s like when a franchise goes to space, there’s no further you can go and you can lose the human scope or face recontextualization, which in this case makes infinity sounds as trudging and existentially horrifying as possible! So yeah, don’t care for this at all - TikTok, let’s make sure this hype for this one dies down fast.
91. ‘Numb Little Bug’ by Em Beihold - hey look, more TikTok virality, and for an artist I’ve never heard of before. So Em Beihold is a indie pop singer-songwriter signed to Republic, she’s been releasing standalone singles on YouTube with a few big names backing her production, and this one went viral. And I get why: it’s downbeat but there’s a surprising amount of melodic hooks infused across the piano and clattering percussion, all of which reminds me a lot of the indie pop that crossed over in the mid-to-late 2000s - sidenote, it’s weird watching that sound slip into the nostalgia cycle, even if the minor key intimacy reminds me more of modern bedroom pop. And I appreciate how tired the song feels - trying to ride the jagged flow of prescription medication and depression where you do want to feel better… but can’t really get there, so a lot of the day is just trying to get by. And while you could highlight an ironic edge to the brighter melody and pop structure, I think it’s more that it just feels small in its framing, and there are plenty of acts both then and now that explored this sort of dark territory using this structure. It’s not on the level of Charli Adams or Jetty Bones… but very few things are, and this wound up pretty good as a result - nice stuff.
89. ‘Vice City’ by XXXTENTACION - …can we stop this? This song was released on Soundcloud in 2014, XXXTENTACION himself has been gone since 2018, I don’t why in the Nine Hells anyone is making a push for it now beyond it getting added to streaming services. Like, this feels gross, going down to the very bottom of the barrel when it’s come to wringing everything out of X’s legacy, especially for this song which was the only track he didn’t delete from that ‘lost mixtape’ that he had! So of course the mixing is bad - the clanking percussion clips the front of the mix, X’s vocals sound rough against that flipped sample, and even if his flows show more refinement than many of the records that would follow, it’s still obviously a draft that needs polishing. And when you get to the content… wow, this feels a lot edgier than it actually is, a wallow in ‘life is meaningless’ nihilism that he thought would sound so transgressive that it would shake his audience… which when you’re sixteen, it’s not surprising, but it dampens how much the bars could have hit. But even that doesn’t overpower how releasing this now feels like leaking a diary or an intimate groupchat - it’s not good, but in a different way compared to other X songs, and I’m not cool with it.
86. ‘Shotta Flow 6’ by NLE Choppa - you know, when I first saw this I was thinking, ‘oh great, NLE Choppa would be the one guy to punch back at YoungBoy Never Broke Again for all the disses on that mixtape’… but that would be more continuity than you should expect from this, as NLE Choppa goes off in his usual rigamarole with gunplay, fucking, brand names, and a surprising number of brand name references off the leaden piano and bassy trap percussion. At least the mixing sounds a little more competent this time, and you can’t deny that NLE Choppa’s faster flows are at least sharper for the single extended verse, but then you get the lines saying YNW Melly should be free, and that his shooter is off his meds and ergo more dangerous - I don’t trust NLE Choppa to have good opinions on mental health here - and then you get him calling his girl his ‘dawg like Vick’. For those of you who don’t know, Michael Vick was a former quarterback in the NFL most notorious for running an illegal dogfighting ring. I don’t think there’s a way that this implication becomes passable, and the rest of this isn’t good enough for me to care - next!
82. ‘If I Was A Cowboy’ by Miranda Lambert - I’m honestly not sure where Miranda Lambert is going to take her career next - I wasn’t really gripped by The Marfa Tapes, and Wildcard had ‘label interference’ scribbled all over it, so going into this single I was concerned, especially as it looked like Jay Joyce wasn’t working on it but neither were any of her old production crew. And… it’s good, but I’m not all that impressed with it and I feel like I should be given the pedigree. There’s more of a twang to the rickety rollick of the acoustics off the steel guitar welling around her, maybe with a hint of the dream country of The Weight Of These Wings especially given how wistful Lambert sounds, the drums are crisp but not overpowering… honestly, the closer comparison might be early Kacey Musgraves on a textural level, and that’s normally pretty good, especially as Lambert plays with gender signifiers to highlight how her outlaw tendencies might be seen if she was a cowboy. And the lyrical detail is there and the song has some smolder… but I dunno, it doesn’t quite feel as impassioned, it’s missing that slightly deeper cutting moment, it sets a vibe but it never crystallizes into something more. Don’t get me wrong, this is good and I like that she got away from Jay Joyce - but again, not quite great, and I hope whatever comes next is a little better.
79. ‘Peru’ by Fireboy DML & Ed Sheeran - so I knew this was coming, mostly because this song has made a lot of inroads on the UK charts, but you might only know one name on the track, so here’s Fireboy DML. He’s a Nigerian Afrobeat artist who has picked up a bit of buzz over the past couple of years, and this is a non-album single that Ed Sheeran hopped on - a little odd, but at least he’s using his fame for good? But I think my point of frustration with this is how there just doesn’t seem to be a lot to this - Fireboy DML has a good crooning presence opposite Ed Sheeran and they have decent chemistry for this sort of light party song, but that snare is probably the most dominant element of the percussion with very limited, hazy melody to support anything else, and when Sheeran starts stacking his own vocals… well, it has the feel of hopping on someone’s song to make it his own, and that doesn’t feel right with this. Again, it’s pleasant enough, but in terms of Afrobeat it doesn’t do a lot for me. Not bad, but I’m not enthralled.
72. ‘Johnny P’s Caddy’ by Benny The Butcher & J. Cole - well about damn time! I’ve been waiting for and predicting the Griselda crossover with the Hot 100 for years now - it’s not like the crew haven’t gotten the cosigns and the critical acclaim - so I was wondering if and when one of them would get the guest star boost to notch a proper hit. Props to J. Cole and The Alchemist getting Benny to the mark here - I honestly thought Conway would be first - and even moreso for what sort of song this is, with a flipped sample and spare drums and two extended verses from both rappers with no hook, who I’d argue deliver their a-game for what this is! Specifically I want to highlight just how well they both connected their bars in terms of rhyme structure - you can tell they were competing, and even if the content boils down to bragging about their ascendency and putting in the work as MCs, they’re both really damn good at it! Now I will say I do wish this had a little more pop structure, if only because I know the longevity of a song like this at radio is by no means guaranteed - but in the meantime, this is pretty great stuff, check it out!
57. ‘High’ by The Chainsmokers - okay, let me repeat myself: can we stop this? I have no idea why people still insist on trying to make The Chainsmokers a thing a solid four years after we all seemed to stop caring about them, but having sat out the pandemic it looks like they think they can reclaim their position… and wow, you can tell they’ve been listening to a lot of Post Malone at his poppiest, down to the flattened guitar textures, cheap-sounding trap snares, the stale back-and-forth bad relationship with passing drug references, and every vocal inflection. So it’s probably not a good sign that Andrew Taggart sounds like a low-rent Kid LAROI instead of Post - I don’t know why he thought he had the personality to pull this off, his singing was crap even when The Chainsmokers were in their heyday - and when you tack on drops that feel weirdly static before they opt for the chipmunk vocals, it has the feel of a duo struggling to mash together influences with their sound and find anything that works! The most I’ll give this is an okay bassline that drives into the hook that can’t remotely pay it off - otherwise, this sounds painfully derivative and a helpful reminder we don’t need The Chainsmokers anymore - good.
51. ‘Rumors’ by Gucci Mane ft. Lil Durk - and speaking of folks I’m not sure we need anymore… look, I’ve never fully grasped the Gucci Mane appeal, especially on trap cuts where he struggles to keep up, but a Lil Durk feature will get on the Hot 100… and credit to them both, this isn’t bad. I still think Gucci is the weak link here - you can tell he’s struggling a bit to keep the pace - but in his potshots against Jeezy he does land some punches, and that thick well of synths behind the trap percussion is good support. But I think Lil Durk runs away with this - he has the hook, his callouts feel more detailed and targeted, between the trolls, the rappers who can’t back up the violence, and the women who will lure rappers into a setup, where Durk is trying to dispel rumors and stick with a less remarkable reality, especially as he doesn’t have time for the petty drama. I’m not going to say this does more than that - the hook lacks that added punch to go over the top, and you can tell this was more a favour to Gucci than anything - but when it comes to this brand of trap… I guess overall it’s fine.
And that was the week… long week, but the best and worst fall out fast, with the latter going to ‘Vice City’ by the late XXXTENTACION - production killed it for me, with Dishonourable Mention to ‘High’ by The Chainsmokers. Now the best… ‘Johnny P’s Caddy’ by Benny The Butcher and J. Cole is the obvious standout, but Honourable Mention is tougher… I’m going with a tie for ‘If I Was A Cowboy’ by Miranda Lambert with ‘Numb Little Bug’ by Em Beihold. And with that, I don’t see the next major disruption for a while, outside of that Nicki Minaj Lil Baby collab, so maybe we might get some breathing room? We’ll have to see…