billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - july 15, 2023

This is the sort of album bomb week that I usually like - a big album that nevertheless causes relatively minor damage in the scope of things, one that I’ve already reviewed in full and also isn’t the only story this week so there’s a chance that those who leave when they see album bomb episodes might actually stick around! Granted, said album bomb is from Lil Uzi Vert, and that comes with its own frustrations, but hey, I’ll take what I can get here.

But again, they’re not the only story here, and possibly not even the biggest story… because we have to go to our top ten, and a brand new song debuting at #1: ‘vampire’ by Olivia Rodrigo. We’ll be talking about the song itself much later on, but it’s here on frankly ridiculous streaming, strong sales, and a radio push that hit the ground running, it’s legit impressive - but it probably will not hold the top spot into next week. No, it’s probably going back to ‘Last Night’ by Morgan Wallen at #2, and in this case it’s probably due to inertia: streaming might lag slightly, but with such a radio margin, unless Olivia Rodrigo makes an unprecedented radio run, I don’t think she’ll have enough to hold the spot. Sadly that doesn’t open up a door for ‘Fast Car’ by Luke Combs here either: it might also be on one hell of a radio run, but it lags just enough on streaming that it can’t quite hurdle the distance. It’s not like this opens any door for ‘Calm Down’ by Rema and Selena Gomez at #4 - it lags on streaming way too much and while it dominates radio, that momentum seems to be running out, although not quite as fast as ‘Flower’ by Miley Cyrus at #5, which has finally started tipping into outright freefall. Then we have ‘All My Life’ by Lil Durk and J. Cole at #6 - looks like it reached the limits of its radio this week, and streaming is starting to tip over as well… and that opens the door for two more new songs in the top ten! Well okay, not precisely new: the first one is ‘Cruel Summer’ by Taylor Swift at #7 because radio and streaming are now fully onboard in force, and the second is ‘fukumean’ by Gunna at #8 thanks to running up the streaming margin, even if the radio’s not touching it. This bowls past ‘Karma’ by Taylor Swift and Ice Spice at #9 - the radio is still stable but that’s about it, and then there’s ‘Favorite Song’ by Toosii at #10 which is also now in freefall across the board - this is the time for new music to sweep in, folks!

And it gets more interesting when we look at our losers and dropouts, of which in the latter category there are a few big ones here! Having clinched their year-end list spots for 2023 we have ‘Thank God’ by Kane and Katelyn Brown, ‘One Thing At A Time’ by Morgan Wallen, and ‘Players’ by Coi Leray - hey, I didn’t say it was all good news - and what may fall just short is ‘PRC’ by Peso Pluma and Natanael Cano, although ‘ICU’ by Coco Jones was also knocked out having never gotten the traction it needed. The losers are easier to categorize, mostly because a bunch came off the debut like ‘Barbie World’ by Ice Spice, Nicki Minaj, and Aqua to 35, or a slew of losses for Peso Pluma’s album bomb with ‘Lady Gaga’ with Gabito Ballesteros and Junior H at 48, ‘Luna’ with Junior H at 59, and ‘Rubicon’ at 77 - while we’re here, might as well include ‘Bye’ at 61. But he held up better than Young Thug did, with the only debut of his that survived was ‘Oh U Went’ with Drake, and even that fell to 56. Then we have our continued losers: ‘Dial Drunk’ by Noah Kahan fell to 98 - apparently there’s a Post Malone remix coming for this one, it’ll be fascinating if that works, but he might want to worry about ‘Chemical’ sliding to 40 - ‘Calling’ by Metro Boomin, Swae Lee, NAV, and A Boogie wit da Hoodie fell to 88, and ‘Attention’ by Doja Cat slid to 80 - I hate to say I called this one. Now for the rest… ‘Daylight’ by David Kushner fell to 69 - good - ‘Fight The Feeling’ by Rod Wave slid to 95, ‘See You Again’ by Tyler, The Creator and Kali Uchis slid to 90, and ‘Waffle House’ by the Jonas Brothers fell to 85… kind of a shame, that song’s grown on me more than it probably should have.

Now for the returns and gains… in which there were no gains, and the returns wound up as ‘Everything I Love’ by Morgan Wallen clawing back to 83 thanks to a newfound radio push, and ‘Party In The USA’ by Miley Cyrus at 50, because apparently we’re now going to allow 4th of July songs to get a resurgence on the Hot 100 like the other holidays! But alright, the main story is the Lil Uzi Vert album bomb, where they got 18 new songs to chart - that means under my rules for 12 songs or over, we’re only focusing on the top 20 or the best/worst of the week to make this a much more reasonable week; hell, I already reviewed the album, if you’d like more thoughts, check that out on my main channel. But outside of that group… ‘That Fiya’ at 93, ‘Zoom’ at 92, ‘Werewolf’ with Bring Me The Horizon at 81, ‘Died And Came Back’ at 78, ‘All Alone’ at 76, ‘Amped’ at 67, ‘Mama I’m Sorry’ at 65, ‘Pluto To Mars’ at 60, ‘x2’ at 53, ‘Crush Em’ at 52, ‘Spin Again’ at 51, ‘I Gotta’ at 49, ‘Aye’ with Travis Scott at 31, and ‘Suicide Doors’ at 25 (very nearly an Honourable Mention if they were able to get away from some of the defensiveness again).

Okay, now for a more reasonable if still wildly uneven list, starting with…

94. ‘We Didn’t Start The Fire’ by Fall Out Boy - alright, time to admit something monumentally embarrassing: I used to really like ‘We Didn’t Start The Fire’ by Billy Joel. It’s cooled significantly in recent years - it’s a novelty at best, insufferably catchy, and the central argument of the song that the average person doesn’t have power to impact world events because that’s a fire that’s burned forever and they tried to fight it but nothing really worked is such a product of its era in 1989 - to say nothing of the bizarrely wonky production - that it feels a little gross. But what I think makes it all so much worse are all of the garbage fan parodies of it that proliferated on YouTube for over a decade where it’s less about making a point and more about a lot of hackneyed rhyming because most people can’t even match Billy Joel at his worst! So in the grand example of the Hot 100 being infuriating in 2023, we didn’t get any songs from Fall Out Boy’s comeback release this year, but another painfully cheap rewrite of this damn song that doesn’t even get the central gimmick that the events have to be in chronological order! What’s galling is that there are parts of this that don’t suck - the production might actually be a little better courtesy of Neal Avron, there are some explicit callback to the original that are kind of clever, I like the change on the hook where Fall Out Boy want to say they’re still fighting, and you can tell Patrick Stump and Pete Wenz care about this way more than they should - it doesn’t feel like Weezer covering ‘Africa’ for the memes, nobody was asking for this. But that’s the point, nobody was asking for another fucking ‘We Didn’t Start The Fire’, and a badly written version at that where even the fans don’t seem onboard! So yeah, this is terrible - it’s going to wind up on a lot of ‘worst songs of 2023’ lists by publications that don’t try that hard… but at least in this case, it’s hard to disagree.

71. ‘Nakamura’ by Lil Uzi Vert - see, a cut like this is entirely where I understand Lil Uzi Vert’s appeal - with a very liberal sample of wrestler Shinsuke Nakamura’s theme music to ramp up the bombast off that filthy guitar to open up the strings with the crowd noise and the trap percussion, with Uzi just in pure flexing mode with the hedonism and aggression, it’s built for stadiums and festivals… or hell, the WWE again when they inevitably get called back! Now I won’t say I love this - Uzi’s bars are still flimsy as hell, and I think this production could get a lot more textured and aggro to really stick the landing, it feels a bit too mushy for my tastes - but in my opinion it’s the best song on the album, I’ll stick up for this one.

70. ‘Patience’ by Lil Uzi Vert ft. Don Toliver - I have mixed opinions on Lil Uzi Vert’s more melancholic mid-tempo songs, mostly because they often can’t maintain a consistent tone in the writing, so colour me surprised that this is one of the cases where it kind of works, where Lil Uzi Vert doesn’t know if this person is really in love with them given how faded they are from the drugs, of which they also seem to be confessing some form of love, which only highlights how messy this all is. And that runny, autotuned smear somehow comes together here for me between the shuddering glimmer in the grimy synths, whirring trap hi-hats, and Don Toliver just belting all over the song - the angst feels remarkably real from Uzi, and considering how plastic and shallow they can be, I appreciated a moment that felt a bit more honest. So yeah, I think this is pretty good, give it a shot!

57. ‘Mojabi Ghost’ by Tainy & Bad Bunny - so reggaeton / Latin pop fans, help me out: where is Tainy’s stock hovering these days? He’s been very active as a producer in the scene for a while, but while he’s credited first with this song from his new album, if it wasn’t for the Bad Bunny cosign I don’t imagine it charting. And I think that’s kind of a shame, because this isn’t really a stock reggaeton cut but something close to 80s synthpop with the watery, borderline vaporwave synths and padded groove. Hell, when you factor in Bad Bunny playing to a darker smolder going out and partying to get away from his feelings around this and all of those trying to chase his fame… it honestly reminds me a lot of The Weeknd’s formula in his pop crossovers, and that’s actually a compliment, there’s a decent hook here! I’m not sure it fully sticks - it feels a little weedy, missing that added bit of swell to put it over the top - but it is more interesting than I expected, pretty good.

43. ‘Tulum’ by Peso Pluma & Grupo Frontera - why did I expect this to debut higher on the Hot 100, even going against Lil Uzi Vert’s album bomb? Well, truth be told this probably should have broken through last week - it’s on Genesis, it’s arguably one of the biggest ‘name’ collaborations here… but then I heard the song and I understood why, because that filmy acoustic guitar sounds like garbage! Kind of a shame because there are parts about this song that could have worked - I like Grupo Frontera bringing more accordion to flesh out the melody, they’ve got good chemistry and balance with Peso Pluma, the percussion and bassline feel more textured and intricate - but then I translated the lyrics and it’s a song where they try to convince a girl to dump their guy because she’s the best thing on the menu, and food gets cold if neglected… I’m assuming the translation isn’t really that bad, but my god, this is nowhere near as romantic as they think it is. So uh… yeah, not a fan of this one, I’ll pass.

20. ‘Endless Fashion’ by Lil Uzi Vert ft. Nicki Minaj - so here’s the thing: it’s not the Eiffel 65 sample that pissed me off the most with this - we certainly didn’t need someone going over that territory again after David Guetta and Bebe Rexha had their hit, but that song was a leftover from 2017, I get why someone thought it could work - hell, by slowing it down and blurring into a trap flip with the melody integrated with the keys and primarily carried in the vocal line, it at least feels different even if the bass mixing is rough and the instrumental still feels clunky. Shame this is a song heavily relying on perhaps Nicki Minaj’s worst performance all goddamn year, and that’s saying something - the most notable line sung all over the hook is ‘I got a Republican doctor / made my ass great again, MAGA’, which is so cringeworthy that Tom McDonald would reject it, but Nicki’s verse is shockingly bad - her flow is jerky, the brand name flexing is painfully basic, she misgenders Uzi on their own song, and to top it off, the line that her people will ‘blow like Virgil’; I’m assuming it means blow up because otherwise wow way to disrespect a dead icon in fashion alongside mentioning Karl Lagerfeld a few lines earlier! Nicki bragged about writing this verse in a day and really struggling with it, and I can tell - Uzi is not trying that hard and thankfully comes off better… and by that I mean a splatter painting of brand names and accusing other rappers of trying to jack their swag. Outside of the ‘Chop Suey’ cover that thankfully didn’t chart this week, this is the worst song on Pink Tape - this is what actually blows, next!

11. ‘Flooded The Face’ by Lil Uzi Vert - alright, the opening track on Pink Tape… and not one I really liked, mostly because Lil Uzi Vert was really trying to get in front of gay rumours that I don’t think they really needed to address; idiots equating sexuality and gender are not worth their time, but Uzi really wants to make a point of overcompensating by fucking all of your bitches and then piling on the brand names, guns, and debauchery. In that lane, it’s not bad - outside of that dumb ‘water like sink’ line on the hook where they weirdly sound a lot of like the Travis Scott vocal tone I like, this is a song that’s trying to sound imperious and bombastic with the hollowed out sample and crisp trap percussion that’s actually well-balanced for once, that works probably more the less you think about it. So… not among my favourites on the album, but it’s not the worst thing either.

1. ‘vampire’ by Olivia Rodrigo - after how successful SOUR was in 2021, I knew that Olivia Rodrigo would have momentum going into this song. Hell, after as much as I liked ‘drivers licence’ and ‘good 4 u’, I was excited to hear ‘vampire’, the sophomore project is make-or-break for a lot of young pop stars and has been for decades. And thus with this… I have to be honest, I’m less impressed with this than I want to be. Part of Olivia Rodrigo’s charm is a balancing act between more grounded and detailed teenage framing and pop theatricality; that balance was always unstable, but ‘vampire’ definitely tilts into full-on melodrama ripping into the ex that broke her heart, playing him as a fame-hungry vampire using her to advance her own career. This has sparked comparisons to Billie Eilish on her last album, but I don’t think that fits - it’s closer to Christina Perri’s ‘Jar Of Hearts’, where if this song had stuck as a pure piano ballad I’d say falls into the same traps… but then we get a Creeper-esque piano rock build that feels very off-Broadway… sadly creeping into the production as well that once can’t deliver the impact you’d want to go for broke with those buzzy synths and shuffling percussion that really needs a thicker low-end. I don’t think this is bad, per se - I like how she highlights this dude preys on younger girls because those his age know better, and Rodrigo certainly commits to high melodrama in her delivery and lyricism which still has a few clunky edges - but as a sucker for this sort of play, the fact it doesn’t fully work while still feeling like she’s sitting in Taylor Swift’s shadow is concerning to me. I’m warmer to more of this than I probably should be, but it’s not among her best.

And that ends our week… where it might be a little contentious to say this, but I think Lil Uzi Vert is getting the top two spots with ‘Nakamura’ as the best of the week and 'Patience’ with Don Toliver as the Honourable Mention. Not to worry, they’re still getting the worst of the week with ‘Endless Fashion’ with Nicki Minaj, with Dishonourable Mention going to that stupid remake of ‘We Didn’t Start The Fire’ where despite so many things that go wrong, I can’t hate it as much as I want. Next week, I was going to say the fallout from all of this, but then I remembered we have a Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) album bomb to look forward to, so stay tuned for that!