billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - february 8, 2020

I’m not sure how much I want to value this week. On the one hand, it’s the recovery post-album bomb and likely more representative of the normal… but on the other hand, while I think the impact of Lil Wayne’s next album will be muted, it could well be just as disruptive - yeah, it doesn’t have the hype or quality of Tha Carter V, but we all saw how big that blew up…

Regardless, the top ten isn’t moving that much regardless, especially with ‘The Box’ by Roddy Ricch solidifying its entrenched hold on the #1 thanks to its obscene streaming and YouTube margin - the radio getting on board is just gravy. And ‘Life Is Good’ by Future ft. Drake is just not moving in a way to catch up beyond #2 - yeah, similar huge streaming, but the radio is much slower and the sales will not get it there. Now we did see a slight revival for ‘Circles’ by Post Malone to #3, but it’s more because of Eminem falling out of the Hot 100 - it lost the top spot on the radio, and while streaming is actually up, sales are down. And this means ‘Memories’ by Maroon 5 actually made a bit of a move up to #4, taking the top radio position even as its own sales are down. Then we got the rebound for ‘Someone You Loved’ by Lewis Capaldi at #5 - he had a good sales week even as his radio drips away, it happens - and two songs holding relatively steady: ‘10,000 Hours’ by Dan + Shay and Justin Bieber at #6 despite consistent losses, and ‘Dance Monkey’ by Tones and I at #7 just not able to narrow that margin enough yet across the board, although it is holding consistent in all categories. Then we saw a slight pickup for ‘ROXANNE’ by Arizona Zervas at #8 - I blame a stubborn amount of radio - but the bigger story to me comes with our two new breakthroughs in the top 10: ‘Don’t Stop Now’ by Dua Lipa at #9 riding a ton of radio - although how she lags in streaming and sales is worrisome - and ‘everything i wanted’ by Billie Eilish at #10, riding both a Grammy boost and the sort of slow radio traction you’d expect for a low-key cut like this.

Of course, the one thing I think tends to be most telling post-album bomb is what continues to fall off besides the remnants, so let’s get to losers and dropouts… where the only notable one in the latter category is ‘Take What You Want’ by Post Malone ft. Travis Scott and Ozzy Osborne, which frankly had a way better run than you’d ever expect and it was a complete mistake not to make it a proper single. But for our losers… well, for Eminem we had ‘You Gon’ Learn’ with Royce at 99, ‘Unaccommodating’ with Young M.A. at 97, ‘Darkness’ falling to 91, ‘Those Kinda Nights’ with Ed Sheeran at 86, and to round things out from Mac Miller, ‘Blue World’ at 78 and ‘Good News’ at 54. Beyond that… well, ‘Graveyard’ by Halsey lost the expected album boost at 64, ‘What A Man Gotta Do’ by Jonas Brothers slid off the debut to 30 - I’m a little shocked how little buzz I’ve seen around this - and ‘Panini’ by Lil Nas X fell to 49… honestly, it just might be heading out naturally, it had a really consistent run.

Now the bigger story comes with all the returns and gains… and let’s start with the former because in none of these I see much in the way of consistent traction going forward. It also doesn’t help that most of these really suck: ‘Jerry Sprunger’ by Tory Lanez and T-Pain back at 81, ‘Slow Dance In A Parking Lot’ by Jordan Davis at 84, ‘Camelot’ by NLE Choppa at 92, ‘July’ by Noah Cyrus and Leon Bridges back at 98? The only dubious quality I see here are ‘Come Thru’ by Summer Walker and Usher at 90 and maybe ‘Vete’ by Bad Bunny at 87, but that’s not saying much. And I wish I could say our gains were better… but let’s focus on the good news and that’s Billie Eilish, who along with ‘everything you wanted’ also saw ‘bad guy’ surge up to 17 off the Grammy wins - good for her, even if it’s also probably the same reason ‘Truth Hurts’ by Lizzo went up to 32. The much larger story, however, seems to be the huge swell of country and country-adjacent music exploding through: ‘Nobody But You’ by Blake Shelton and Gwen Stefani to 43 is the big boost, but we also saw ‘Homesick’ by Kane Brown up to 52, ‘I Hope’ by Gabby Barrett at 56, ‘What She Wants Tonight’ by Luke Bryan at 65, ‘More Hearts Than Mine’ by Ingrid Andress at 68, ‘I Wish Grandpas Never Die’ by Riley Green at 70, ‘Make Me Want To’ by Jimmie Allen at 72, ‘We Back’ by Jason Aldean at 74, ‘I Hope You’re Happy Now’ by Carly Pearce and Lee Brice at 75, and even ‘homecoming queen?’ by Kelsea Ballerini at 76. And I point this out because the rest of the gains feel kind of all over the place: ‘Sucker’ by the Jonas Brothers got its newest wind at 39, ‘Slide’ by H.E.R.' ft. YG continues its steady rise to 57 - did not see that coming - ‘Heart On Ice’ by Rod Wave rebounded nicely to 59, ‘BEST ON EARTH’ by Russ and BIA rose to 62 - this can stop any time now - ‘OUT WEST’ by JACKBOYS ft. Young Thug returned to 63 as did ‘No Idea’ by Don Toliver at 66, and rounding things out we saw ‘Make No Sense’ by Youngboy Never Broke Again at 79 and ‘Easy’ by DaniLeigh and Chris Brown at 89. What I’m going to keep more of an eye on is ‘Say So’ by Doja Cat at 73, though… right now she’s getting the push from the label that Kesha probably deserves, so we’ll see exactly how much that pays off.

But as expected, we’ve got a pretty reasonable crop of new arrivals, starting with a surprise with…

100. ‘Dive Bar’ by Garth Brooks & Blake Shelton - you know, it always perturbs me a bit that Garth Brooks has less Hot 100 hits than you might think - originally country singles were blocked from the chart proper until they were specifically issued outside of the country market, which is why all those #1s from diamond-selling albums in the 90s never hit the Hot 100, he actually notched charting hits after the rules change from the goddamn Chris Gaines album of all things, and it becomes a big deal that he’s working with Blake Shelton of all people to get here. Shame that Garth’s timbre isn’t quite what it once was and his delivery sounds a bit weedy against an otherwise solid honky tonk drinking song, especially compared to Blake Shelton’s lower timbre, but this is certainly likable with the pedal steel and saloon piano. That said, this is pretty lightweight from the both of them, likely only here on the strength of the collaboration and not one I can really see lasting, even with country radio becoming more comfortable with neotradtional stuff. But yeah, not great, but not bad either.

96. ‘Catch’ by Brett Young - am I the only one kind of surprised that we haven’t seen more of Brett Young the past year or so? He had some real success breaking some of that ‘boyfriend country’ through while keeping the tones a little more breezy and organic a few years back, but it seems like he’s already been lapped by the mainstream, and now? Well, we’ve got another single from late 2018 and I’m not really impressed? Part of this is his reedy voice that isn’t all that well-blended with his backing vocals, the slapdash integration of drum machines and strings, and smoothing synth effects that don’t feel organic, but I’m more annoyed that on the final lines of hook he’s trying to rhyme ‘self’ with ‘breath’ - pro tip, if you’re going to fudge rhymes, don’t do it there! Combine it with a song that’s leaning really heavily on everything he could ‘catch’ in the song to try and elevate a pretty generic hookup tune… yeah, I’m starting to figure out why we aren’t hearing much of Brett Young anymore.

95. ‘What If I Told You I Love You’ by Ali Gatie - and speaking of names I didn’t expect to see again… look, Ali Gatie found more traction in the Toronto market specifically thanks to ‘It’s You’, a song I found clunky and thoroughly mediocre, but now he’s got a second single circulating working off a slightly smoother but considerably more basic guitar pickup and slightly better blended percussion click, but more because it got picked up by TikTok. But it’s also the sort of clingy and not particularly likable song that I didn’t like the last time from this guy, this time written post-breakup where she’s clearly moved on and he’s whinging about all the unanswered questions he wanted to ask her… unaware that by putting them in this song, he’s kind of doing all of it. Don’t get me wrong, I hear the appeal of stuff like this, but there’s something cloying about his delivery that just kind of rubs me the wrong way - not a fan, next!

94. ‘First Man’ by Camila Cabello - so if we’ve got one thing that characterizes a bunch of our new arrivals this week, it’s that they’re cuts that got some airtime thanks to the Grammys, with this one being the closing track from Camila’s newest project. And I’ll repeat what I said when I reviewed Romance: I don’t doubt the song’s sincerity, and I’d argue this is probably one of the better produced songs on the album thanks to FINNEAS actually knowing how to mic her voice opposite the spare pianos. But there’s something kind of weird about Camila singing to her father that he’s the ‘first man that ever loved her’ - it’s backwards looking and paternal when guys make songs like this, and the note gets weirder when Camila herself sings it, the writing just feels a little off to fully stick the landing. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t bad… but the execution is better than the ideas at its core, that’s all I’m saying.

93. ‘Underdog’ by Alicia Keys - can someone explain what the hell Alicia Keys is doing with this next album rollout, now pushing this thanks to a bit of Grammys attention? Don’t get me wrong, she’s always felt a half-step or two outside of trends in R&B, but I’ve never cared because she’s got the raw talent and presence to transcend that… which makes it odd that she’s got Ed Sheeran on acoustic guitar and a ‘Shape Of You’ cadence that made me swear he had a writing credit and yet he doesn’t… all against a blocky drumline that feels like it never develops the glorious swell to really knock the hook out of the park, instead going to a steel drum post-chorus that doesn’t pay off. And the lyrics have the same odd distance, as she talks to a homeless man and her cab driver before making a big hook dedicated to the underdog… but the focal point of the emotion on the prechorus thanks to using first person pronouns is on her, which neuters any bigger impact! And that’s a damn shame because there’s more groove and character to this than on a lot of modern Alicia Keys songs and she sounds great, so it’s utterly exasperating that it feels misspent. So while I think just enough pieces work… man, this should be a lot better.

88. ‘Homemade’ by Jake Owen - ugh, Jake, my man, I know you’ve gotten screwed by this album cycle because you have a lot of breezy low-key boyfriend country ballads on this project that went overlooked and would have killed with the right push - ‘Mexico In Our Minds’, ‘In It’, ‘Made For You’ - and yet you went with this? Now that’s not saying this is bad - he’s still got more breezy charisma than he knows what to do with and the inorganic hi-hat trap progressions are blended deep enough in Joey Moi’s overcompressed production to not get distracting - but this is an utterly basic bro-country list song that I’ll forget in record time that leans a little too heavy on the down-home platitudes, almost to the point of pandering. Passable, sure, but with better songs on the album and this style of country feeling increasingly dated with time… yeah, not promising here.

85. ‘Before You Go’ by Lewis Capaldi - look, the only surprise is that we didn’t get more Lewis Capaldi songs sooner, especially when he went to #1. It took the aftermath of an album bomb for us to get this single swapping the piano for a shuddering acoustic line trying to split the difference between Shawn Mendes and George Ezra - which might as well describe Capaldi’s delivery here too, which is better than his howling on ‘Someone You Loved’ but isn’t precisely good. And am I the only one who feels like the groove of this song was being improvised and only really stabilizes by the second hook? But if I’m highlighting my larger frustration with this song, it’s how it takes what could have been a pretty decently textured breakup song… and then has said it’s about suicide and reflecting what you could have done. Now I’ve gone on the record saying that I hate this framing method of making someone’s death all about yourself, but that’s not saying that it can’t be done well - stay tuned for the next episode of On The Pulse on my main channel for an excellent example of that - but here I don’t get that impression because ‘before you go’ is addressing someone in the present tense, so did you not rewrite the hook when you chose to emphasize the suicidal subtext, or are you just resigning to someone going off to kill themselves? Either way, it feels incompetent - somehow I’m not at all surprised. Watch this become a hit.

82. ‘Chasin’ You’ by Morgan Wallen - so ‘Whiskey Glasses’ felt like the sort of song that shouldn’t have lasted as long as it did as a sodden, generally mediocre tune that had a decent idea driven into the ground by really bad production - oh hi Joey Moi again, really wish I didn’t hear you! And as such we’ve got another ballad from 2018 charting now… and it’s better than ‘Whiskey Glasses’, but not especially memorable. The brushed drums off the warmer acoustics and organ is a nice touch - it’s actually surprising how organic this feels and Wallen sells wistful regret pretty effectively… until you realize this is an extended list of everywhere he’s trying to chase this girl even though he’s currently in bed with someone else! I mean, come on dude, I was trying to give you the benefit of the doubt even with the borderline obsessive chasing, but you highlighted you were with someone else in the hook and she’s long gone, and the quasi-romantic framing does not help! So no, Morgan Wallen, 0-for-2 in my books, next!

80. ‘Letter To Nipsey’ by Meek Mill ft. Roddy Ricch - back to songs getting a boost from the Grammys, we have another tribute to Nipsey Hussle, pairing two artists who worked with him in the past and a pretty natural fit, especially for Meek Mill’s more conscious direction in the last year or so. And in a list of a lot of Nipsey tributes, this is probably one of the best ones I’ve heard, even with some of the expected shortcomings - the squonking melody trying for more soul and hi-hats sound a little thin except for some cymbal hits, and Meek Mill drops a few more rhymes than he should. But outside of that, Meek Mill brings the introspective intensity that’s been a good lane for him in confronting mortality and real vulnerability he’s not used to, and Roddy Ricch now seeing his success in the face of all of it with the shoutouts to Nipsey’s family and crew in a way that feels really organic, alongside a good hook. In other words, while I still think YG’s tribute hits the hardest for me, this is a really damn close second - excellent work, and a great song.

34. ‘Anyone’ by Demi Lovato - and now we’ve got the big one - Demi Lovato returning to the spotlight with a piano ballad debuting at the Grammys, which when coming off of ‘Sober’ in mid-2018… yeah, I was curious where this placed her now. And… okay, for a song that does feel like an extended cry for help branching from feeling unheard, wishes ungranted, a lapse in sobriety, and a plea for any sort of attention, of the stark piano line it works, and Demi’s vocal delivery is as raw and powerful as ever. But it does not hit as strongly as ‘Sober’ while repeating similar ideas, and for as much as Demi is throwing into it, when you have a song otherwise so barren it can feel oversold and lacking in subtlety. And yes, sometimes you don’t need subtlety, but when Demi’s last song took a very similar approach in subject matter and production and stuck the landing more effectively, I’m going to praise it more. This… it’s fine, but she’s done better.

21. ‘B.I.T.C.H.’ by Megan Thee Stallion - and now we’re at a fascinating crossroads for Megan - she’s gotten the boost riding strong collabs and good memes, but can she knock one out of the park on her own? Well, here she’s hopping on a smoky g-funk groove with some great drum production and a strong hook - a liberal reinterpretation of an old 2Pac song - and calling out a guy who wants her to be more of a committed girlfriend than as much of a player as he is, especially as he’s going to call her a bitch anyway when she’s going wild and he can’t control her. And I kind of dig how Megan gets his underlying insecurity in this song, especially when she knows he’s going to be petty and clingy when she’s trying to keep it real - just as applicable and the right sort of inversion that she can commandingly deliver. Plus with a hook as catchy as this is and writing that feels pretty consistently tight… yeah, I dig this, nice work.

So that was our week… feels longer than it actually is, but also not really a bad week either, with ‘Letter To Nipsey’ by Meek Mill and Roddy Ricch comfortably getting the best of the week with ‘B.I.T.C.H.’ by Megan Thee Stallion as our Honourable Mention. Now for the worst… really kind of a tossup, but ‘Before You Go’ by Lewis Capaldi is getting the Dishonourable Mention because ‘Chasin’ You’ by Morgan Wallen is such a disingenuous waste and is nabbing the worst - kind of impressive how the screwups just compound each other here. Next week… Lil Wayne, maybe? We’ll have to see.