billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - february 22, 2020

So look, the Justin Bieber album bomb is coming next week, and we’re going to have to deal with that as a community. In the mean time, though… kind of a normal week, for as much as this year has been normal? I feel like whatever flurry of activity we’ve gotten has come and gone, no real earthshaking moments.

Maybe that’s because we have the top ten that feels as static as it is, starting with ‘The Box’ by Roddy Ricch comfortably cementing its hold on the #1 with another week, where softer sales are still comfortably beat by enormous streaming and continuous radio growth. And at this point, I’m more surprised that ‘Life Is Good’ by Future ft. Drake is holding #2 - the streaming is somehow still huge, and it’s actually getting the radio push, even though I’d still argue the song is fundamentally flawed and split. And it’s only not falling off because I’m not seeing the competition coming from ‘Circles’ by Post Malone at #3, because it’s not really growing significantly in all categories - and funnily enough, ‘Memories’ by Maroon 5 is actually faring worse in streaming and outright freefall on the radio. I’d like to say this opens up an avenue for ‘Dance Monkey’ by Tones and I, given that its sales and streaming are better… but it comes with narrowing that radio margin, and that might just come with a little more time to close in, given that it has about half as much there. Honestly, what might be better off is ‘Don’t Start Now’ by Dua Lipa up to #6, which might have weaker sales and a slow growth on streaming, but it’s got momentum thanks to the album rollout and real radio momentum, I can see this surging in the next few weeks. Hell, it blew past ‘ROXANNE’ by Arizona Zervas at #7, which saw its radio hit a hard peak but has otherwise stubbornly held in all categories, and ‘Someone You Loved’ by Lewis Capaldi looks to finally be in freefall on the radio sliding to #8, taking ‘10,000 Hours’ by Dan + Shay and Justin Bieber to #9 on even worse radio losses. Now I’m looking at ‘everything i wanted’ by Billie Eilish to make a move beyond #10… but I dunno, despite a lot of radio the streaming has started to fall off, so its momentum might be shakier than we all thought.

But this takes us to our losers and dropouts… and we didn’t really have many in the last category that stood out… maybe ‘Good News’ by Mac Miller, but that’s about it beyond the Lil Wayne album bomb fallout, which also saw ‘I Do It’ with Big Sean and Lil Baby slide to 61 off the debut. But outside of ‘King Of My City’ with A Boogie skidding to 99 off the debut, all the rest of our losers are continuing from last week: ‘Start Wit Me’ from Roddy Ricch and Gunna to 94, ‘No Idea’ by Don Toliver sliding to 88, ‘Futsal Shuffle 2020’ by Lil Uzi Vert at 84 - very telling surrounding when that album might drop - and then sadly ‘B.I.T.C.H.’ by Megan Thee Stallion at 72… honestly hoped that might have a little staying power.

But on the flipside… okay, we’ve got returns like ‘Into The Unknown’ by Idina Menzel & AURORA at 93 thanks to the Academy Awards, ‘Loyal’ by PARTYNEXTDOOR and Drake making another run at 80 - that album needs to come, PARTY - and ‘Rodeo’ by Lil Nas X and Cardi B or in this case Nas at 74… although somehow I get the feeling this might not have much staying power at all. Ironic because in our gains, most of them are in or adjacent to country, because outside of a slight revival for Selena Gomez’s ‘Rare’ at 87 that’ll probably get killed on the Bieber album bomb, we saw ‘Dive Bar’ by Garth Brooks and Blake Shelton at 85, ‘Make Me Want To’ by Jimmie Allen at 53, and ‘Slow Dance In A Parking Lot’ by Jordan Davis at 76. So maybe that coming Bieber album bomb will have some good after all? We’ll have to see…

Anyway, here comes our new arrivals for this week, starting in…

97. ‘No Judgement’ by Niall Horan - so ‘Nice To Meet Ya’ was a pretty terrific song and a great lead-off single, but I’ll be honest: I’m not at all surprised that it didn’t really move, given that it was calling back to an era and sound of late 90s pop rock that hasn’t really received the nostalgia wave yet. But okay, next single on the way and… well, aside from the obviously clunky acoustic groove and lyrical cadence that’s pulling from territory Ed Sheeran already monopolizes, I do think there’s a bit more from Niall makes it feel distinct. For one, the blend of slick guitar timbres and rubbery blending has more polish and well-balanced groove than many of his existing peers don’t quite have, and for another… Niall Horan has a loose, player-but-kind-of-cool vibe that’s so ridiculously self-assured that it almost makes him feel like a relic of a different era of pop stars, his charisma has that sort of pop. And that infuses his lyrical attitude as well - he’s not really tortured by this hookup, just kind of accepting of the fact that he’ll be decent for however long it lasts. I dunno, it contributes a mature vibe I can really get behind, so even if I’m not sure I’d place this among his best cuts, this is solid stuff - I dig it.

96. ‘WHATS POPPIN’ by Jack Harlow - another goddamn week, another trap kid getting the video boost from Lyrical Lemonade with one extended verse and passing glances at Drake and the still plentiful fuckboi rap scene - he kind of sounds like he’s splitting the difference between Logic and G-Eazy, it’s uncanny. Now credit where it’s due, Jack Harlow seems to have a better command of the flows he’s appropriating than many, and he’s not trying to flex with guns, instead more focusing on an overly detailed hookup, a bunch of sports references and exasperation at old friends and haters who don’t like it, all against a rinkydink piano and a leaden but fizzy trap beat. And while it’s more than a little rich for him to claim this flow - DaBaby might have something to say about that, especially over this beat - he can command exasperation pretty well and he sounds credible enough here. I’m not saying I’m going to get all the way onboard, because it’s not like his wordplay is exceptional and the production isn’t great… but no, this is better than I expected. Not bad at all.

90. ‘Believe’ by Meek Mill ft. Justin Timberlake - you know, it seemed like a lot of folks were really worried about this song, that potentially Meek Mill would compromise his rise in popularity given Justin Timberlake’s antics from 2018 that a lot of people still aren’t over, even though I’m on the ledge saying that project is nowhere near as bad as so many made it out to be. Which makes talking about this collaboration a little odd, because it feels like it’s simultaneously from two different eras of radio-friendly crossover hip-hop and it’s not quite clicking, with the guitar-touched hook from Justin playing in minor keys and having a little more bombast to be aspirational and highlight the hard struggle… but without an actual bridge or third verse to drive it home, it ends abruptly without having a full climax that songs like this normally deliver! But even then it feels like there’s a lot of elements that blunt the impact: the oddly muted layering of the mix off the softer beat, the fact Meek brought up social meda at all on the first verse, the fact that despite some of the strings swell on the last hook it never flips towards a properly triumphant note to highlight Meek’s ascendancy… I dunno, this is the sort of song that should soar, and instead it never quite takes off. It’s okay, I guess, but can it match with ‘Dead & Gone’ with T.I.? Yeah, not a chance.

83. ‘KEII’ by Anuel AA - okay, help me out here: why is anyone keeping Anuel AA around? Maybe it’s a cultural separation thing and my consistent ambivalence to trap, let alone Latin trap, but he doesn’t seem to have the vocal personality of most of the field and his greatest U.S. crossover success has been with 6ix9ine - you’d think that’d bar him from polite society anywhere! But apparently he’s showing a little more here off the same by-the-numbers warping reggaeton percussion and watery textures, shouting out so many of the hits that have blown up in the genre… but I feel like that might prove my broader point, as he doesn’t really have that distinctive flair by himself. But that being said, I do kind of appreciate how he’s trying to use these songs as a broader representation of specific brands of toxicity he’s trying to move past, which when you include ‘Te Bote’ in that conversation, I guess I can respect the self-awareness? Eh, I can hear more of the appeal here, but I’m still not quite there, that’s all.

68. ‘Run’ by Joji - so I’ve been hearing a lot of hype for this Joji cut - that it might just be his best to date following ‘Sanctuary’ which was pretty damn great in its own right, that more than even ‘SLOW DANCING IN THE DARK’ this is the song that’ll put him over the top… and let me make this clear, I’m not sure this song is better than ‘Sanctuary’ or ‘SLOW DANCING IN THE DARK’, but it is still really good, leaning on darker guitar timbres, letting Joji bring out his Weeknd-esque vocal cadence against a sharper groove with some real heft and swell behind it… even if I still feel that percussion is a shade too stiff, especially if you’re going to actually bring in that guitar solo! And I like the lyrical sentiment for the most part as well - post-breakup, wracked with pain and trying to escape however he can… only with the realization he can’t really run from the emotions buried within his mind, a much bleaker situation. So yeah, solid, well-constructed song that’s his highest charting song to date, let’s see how far it’ll take him.

62. ‘Blueberry Faygo’ by Lil Mosey - seriously, people, we don’t need to keep Lil Mosey around. There’s enough acts doing what he’s doing that the title of this record might be the most unique thing he’s put his name to! For me he falls closer to the category of artists like Lil Tecca who might catch a good melody occasionally - and let me make this clear, this is a good hook off the watery vocal sample from Johnny Gill and relatively gentle trap hook, and I do like Lil Mosey describing himself as a ‘trapstar’ - but beyond that have nothing all that interesting to say beyond drugs, brand names, shooting people and fucking your girl - hell, here he’s passing her to the whole team as he rides a goddamn counting gimmick on the hook! Beyond that… look, credit to being insufferably catchy and it’ll probably wind up like ‘Ran$om’ in that I can’t hate it… but I don’t get much out of this either, considering it has no real edge or interesting punch. In other words, it’s trap junk food - let’s move on.

57. ‘Know Your Worth’ by Khalid & Disclosure - okay, considering the last time Khalid and Disclosure worked together for a hit we got ‘Talk’, a song that has only gotten stiffer and worse with every listen, I had less than zero expectations surrounding this dreck… and oh fantastic, he’s making his version of ‘Treat You Better’, fucking Christ. Now to be fair, it’s measurably better across the board than that song, mostly because he keeps his own desire as more implied than outright in the text, as he implies this girl deserves better and that she needs to keep her head up beyond this guy who keeps leaving her out in the cold, find the person who loves her at her worst - it could be played for more of the optimistic support from a friend in a ‘Lean On Me’ mold, and that fits the fizzy jauntiness of the beat’s rubbery bounce and vaguely tropical flavour. And as such, it’s generally a pretty approachable and likable song… even if I’d argue it hits that one note and doesn’t really modulate much beyond it, which might be more on Disclosure who at least found a decent groove and didn’t dare switch it up to compromise it. But otherwise… yeah, this is an improvement and is a fine enough song - not either artist’s best, but I’ll take it.

23. ‘Yikes’ by Nicki Minaj - so I’ll be blunt: I didn’t believe whatsoever Nicki Minaj was ever going to retire, to the point where even if this is just a standalone loose single so she can throw potshots at her haters, I completely forgot that, ‘oh, she’s retired now, this should mean something’. And yet somehow this wound up meaning even less, with Nicki hopping on a reverb-swamped trap beat with an offkey keyboard melody with a rote trap flow where even she sounds bored, and then the charming line, ‘all you bitches Rosa Parks, uh-oh, get yo ass up’ - maybe it’s a really stupid idea to conflate yourself with the people telling Rosa Parks to move to the back of the bus, Nicki? And the alarming thing is how much that bad line overshadows the rest of the damn song, because the choppy flows don’t really lead to sharp punchlines beyond the occasional brand name and the Fendi references to pieces she’s associated with… which puts me in mind of Nicki’s song ‘MEGATRON’ that might as well double as a commercial, and then we realize what this really is. Which might explain why the song is so disposable, but probably doesn’t explain why we got that horrible Rosa Parks line! So yeah, this isn’t worth much of anything, but somehow it gets worse with…

11. ‘Intentions’ by Justin Bieber ft. Quavo - look, I’ll be speaking on Bieber’s album Changes on the main channel tomorrow a little more, but what is there even to say about a song that was so obviously built by committee that any sexiness seems desgined by machine - and not in the fun way! Seriously, when you have the line ‘heart full of equity, you’re an asset’, that doesn’t make the panties drop so much as remind me to get my RRSP contributions in, and when you pair it with how Bieber’s girl is staying in the kitchen, the weird shoutout to her parents for making her, and how she doesn’t need a sponsor because she’s the brand now, it feels like we’re talking about a gender dynamic that’s modern but regressive in a bafflingly clumsy way - we didn’t need you to remake ‘Trophies’ by Drake but worse, Bieber! And when you tack on the ‘insert here’ Quavo guest verse full of nothing opposite Bieber’s empty crooning, a faded synthline that doesn’t match all the squiddering percussion fizzes and leaden beat - and then realize that he’s intending this as a single… yeah, fuck this nonsense, this might actually be worse than ‘Yummy’.

So to the surprise of nobody, of course it’s the worst of this week, with ‘Yikes’ by Nicki Minaj nabbing the Dishonourable Mention, but for the best… it’s actually tough, but I think ‘No Judgement’ by Niall Horan just edges out ‘Run’ by Joji here for the best of the week, they’re both really damn solid songs on an otherwise above-average week. But next up… Bieber album bomb folks, so stay tuned for that!