billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - july 24, 2021

So I’ve mentioned this before, this is one of those weeks that feels like a decent amount actually happened, but the ripple effects are kind of muted. We got a new #1, multiple new entries in the top 20, this feels like it should have caused more of a stir… and maybe it was just me being out of sorts or distracted the past few weeks for obvious reasons, but I’m not seeing the buzz in the same way and that feels peculiar to me.

But that does mean the majority of action is in our top ten, with our new #1, the act replacing themselves here: ‘Permission To Dance’ by BTS. Firstly, everyone could have predicted this courtesy of a strong YouTube week and the insane sales even as the radio couldn’t care less, but something gives me the feeling that the hold this has on #1 is nowhere close to as stable as ‘Butter’ was, especially with so much news of more big releases coming; it has the feel of Columbia overplaying their hand and I’m going to be very curious to analyze where things go from here. But comfortable at #2 we have ‘good 4 u’ by Olivia Rodrigo, because while the sales are dipping, it’s still so strong on streaming and the radio that any slip-up will give it a chance to really penetrate. But now it has competition too with a new arrival at #3: ‘Stay’ by Kid LAROI and Justin Bieber, surging through with enormous streaming, good sales, and radio on the rise - I’ll talk more about the song’s quality later on, but right now it’s got enough robust presence to make a run, I wouldn’t count it out. This pushes ‘Levitating’ by Dua Lipa ft. DaBaby to #4 as it wavers a little in every channel, but it at least can hold over ‘Kiss Me More’ by Doja Cat ft. SZA at #5, where the streaming is better but it’s lagging enough on the radio and sales to not break the margin. Then we have ‘Bad Habits’ by Ed Sheeran at #6, and I’ll admit I’m not sure how I feel about where this’ll go next: sales are solid, it surged on the radio… but streaming is already starting to dip a bit, so I’m not sure just how much of a boost this’ll have to break margins above. But it did hold above ‘Butter’ by BTS, which fell off the #1 to #7 because, as expected, the fanbase transferred their sales attention to ‘Permission To Dance’ and the song has little traction elsewhere, so to see this is gratifyingly transparent. But it also highlights the real issue I mentioned earlier: by splitting the attention of the fanbase and demanding that many more sales buys per week, even with the funneling operation of international fans reimbursing US buyers - because that’s now a thing - expecting them to strongarm two songs up the charts if Columbia continues to ignore any reinforcement effort seems like a short-term solution that I can’t see lasting, especially in the face of coming competition and the redoubled financial ask. This knocked back ‘Montero (Call Me By Your Name)’ by Lil Nas X to #8 - although I’d attribute more of that to momentum in all channels just slowing down - and then holding up their spots at the end we have ‘Save Your Tears’ by The Weeknd ft. Ariana Grande at #9, which is making a slow exit, and ‘deja vu’ by Olivia Rodrigo, which is narrowing the airplay margin and will probably pass it if the streaming remains even somewhat consistent.

And this takes us to our losers and dropouts - as expected, ‘Track Star’ by Mooski clinches its year-end list spot, along with ‘What’s Next’ by Drake falling out again, but it looks like ‘Made For You’ by Jake Owen is going to fall short - pity, I really like that song. But when I said the ripple effects are pretty muted, it refers more to our losers, in which we only have a few. For starters, ‘Red Light Green Light’ by DaBaby is imploding at 67 - can’t happen fast enough - and ‘Wasting Time’ by Brent Faiyaz and Drake lost all the momentum off its debut to 96. Sadly, ‘WUSYANAME’ by Tyler, The Creator ft. YoungBoy Never Broke Again and Ty Dolla $ign is still slipping to 69, but I’m more intrigued by ‘Build A Bitch’ by Bella Poarch skid to 84 - this song has had a surprisingly okay run in the Hot 100, I’m frankly shocked it’s lasted this long.

And you know, we have even fewer gains here - as expected ‘Drunk (And I Don’t Wanna Go Home)’ by Elle King and Miranda Lambert has some sales and radio support so it’s up to 53, and ‘Essence’ by Wizkid ft. Tems got a nice boost off the debut to 72. But the real issue is ‘One Too Many’ by Keith Urban and P!nk up to 52. This song has been on the charts for well over twenty weeks and still has not cracked the top 50, which normally means getting punted over a month ago into the recurrent lists… but since Nashville radio has come around, and by that I mean just goddamn barely, it’s allowed to stick on the Hot 100. The larger truth here is that Billboard plays fast and loose with their recurrent rules especially if the artists are long-running chart stalwarts that are well-liked in the industry - ‘Pu$$y Fairy’ had a similar exception carved out for it last year - so my real frustration comes less with hypocrisy and more that ‘One Too Many’ is embarrassing crap that should have been left to die on the vine months ago, only persisting on industry support and disappointing all the long-time fans that expect better.

But to move into slightly less soul-crushing territory given that we have no returns this week, our new arrivals starting with…

100. ‘Next Girl’ by Carly Pearce - you know, I get asked why I don’t cover Carly Pearce in more detail, presumably given that she’s one of the women that Music Row is throwing some real promotion… and I’ll admit I’m a bit at a loss as to why I’m not more interested. I don’t think she makes bad music - it’s often well-produced and pretty well-written and performed - but I’ve struggled to find a song from her that’s great or would put her over the top for me. But I’ve gone into her music with reasonable expectations and thus with this new song… and yeah, this one is close to getting there for me! I like the faster tempo driving the sharper strumming - even if the handclaps can feel a bit cliche - but what I like from Pearce is putting more of a focus on a narrative, where she’s trying to give advice to the next girl coming up to her ex, where he’s a bit of a casanova type who’s going to lie about her, but on the second verse she recognizes that she had some baggage she was taking to the relationship, and I like that balance in the framing. So yeah, this is a really damn good song, and considering how sharp the hook is… yeah, I can see this growing on me if it sticks around, solid stuff!

94. ‘De Museo’ by Bad Bunny - am I the only one who forgot completely about that next Fast & The Furious movie? I guess I shouldn’t have, given how much surprisingly longevity songs associated with that franchise have had on the Hot 100, but now Bad Bunny is cutting one and… am I the only one who finds the tone here a little out of place? The melancholic keys and desaturated atmosphere for a slow build going into a sharper, Latin trap hook where Bad Bunny caterwauls at the very front of the mix and continues to sound really compressed, it doesn’t even feel like great driving music and the attempts at a cinematic scope feel really undercooked. I guess if we’re going to go for anything the content definitely goes for the ‘family’ angle that’s been worked to death by the memes, but by the second verse it goes for more of a braggadocious vibe with lots of car-related bragging and I’m just not gripped by it. Not denying that Bad Bunny has presence on the microphone and I can see this hook being okay…. but I dunno, I wouldn’t go back to this.

89. ‘Volando’ by Mora, Bad Bunny & Sech - I swear, every other week I get two or three reggaeton acts teaming up and I feel like I’m stretching to find anything to say about their undercooked hookup jams. At least here the production doesn’t go to the lockstep reggaeton beat of which I’ve heard hundreds of times and there’s a little more shuddering texture to play off the electric guitars and bass beat, but even with that the song has a weird, structureless feel without a melodic hook strong enough to anchor the flow of the track, where each guy takes turns trying to entice this girl. So the entire experience might be generally fine, but meandering the way it does it just feels a bit awkward. Not precisely bad - although you can tell Bad Bunny just takes over the song from Mora by the end, which makes it clear this remix was designed to put him on and it might have backfired - but like with most of these teamups, I’m left without much to add.

78. ‘The Jackie’ by Bas ft. J. Cole & Lil Tjay - and speaking of collabs that are designed to drive way more interest to the lead act and where that might backfire in spades, it looks like J. Cole is finally putting some weight behind launching other Dreamville acts properly, so we get this new track from Bas with Lil Tjay and Cole himself on support. And… I get the feeling I should hate this, and I don’t, and it’s weird. It’s entirely driven off the production: the warbling, contorted, offbeat chipmunk melody smashed into J. Cole’s hook where it absolutely shouldn’t work but there’s some sort of pocket he’s able to find even if he’s flagrantly ripping off Young Thug to do so. And it’s not like the content has much going for it - driving around, casual brand name flexing where you can definitely tell outside of Bas everyone’s phoning it in a bit… but there’s something so effortlessly casual to how that hook rolls through and how relaxed everyone feels that there’s something here that works. I get the feeling a song like this might wind up in similar territory to ‘Lemonade’ or ‘Ran$om’ or even ‘Blueberry Faygo’ where I was extremely underwhelmed at first but there’s just enough to grow on me a bit… but just on tones alone this feels weirder. Maybe it’s just me liking J. Cole’s singing voice - and even that feels weird to admit.

50. ‘Memory’ by Kane Brown & blackbear - I get the depressing feeling that Kane Brown is going to wind up making pure pop music, and… I mean, I get it, Music Row is a right pain in the ass for everyone, but it stings here because Kane Brown has always had more vocal character and talent than the crap he’s often saddled with - and given he’s now working with blackbear, we have a prime example! Now to be fair, blackbear is less noxious here than usual, but that’s more because this feels like a collab built out of necessity rather than any distinctive idea: Kane Brown has about the dullest delivery possible as he stays in his lower register to play off the noisier drums and guitar line which actually build to an okay hook… and then blackbear shows up with the vocal fidelity obviously different - if you’re doing this sort of collab, don’t make it so obvious you were in different studios - and any attempt at vibe just dies. And while some of that is intentional - this is a song where they seem resigned to live hard and crash out to fight back the emptiness, but I miss when these songs would lean less on melancholy and more on riotous impact. So… fine, I guess, which is probably better than blackbear could hope for, but from Kane Brown I was hoping for more - he’s better than this.

39. ‘NDA’ by Billie Eilish - let’s deal with this now: the flop discourse around Billie Eilish is goddamn stupid. It’s one of those cases where I get how with so much industry attention and groundswell thrown behind her, folks have had high expectations and some of the recent singles haven’t had the same spark or edge, but she’s still routinely charting in the top 40 and it’s not like Darkroom or Interscope are relying on radio just yet to push these - they’re still feeling out what’s working and they’ve clearly given her a lot of space to work with! That said, it’s been a minute since I’ve been properly wowed by a Billie Eilish song, and thus with this… okay, I think this is what the fans are looking for here! It’s probably the closest thing to capturing the sort of ominous dread that Billie’s released since ‘bury a friend’, and if anything this feels more bleak and lonely - she might try to croon through the autotune which is used to further highlight how detached she feels, but when she finds herself so desperately seeking anything beyond fame, especially when it walls up even attempts at relationships, it feels just as dark but in a more existential way. Also with the distant shrieks of swelling noise behind the wiry patter of the percussion and wonky plucks fleshing out the tune around the verses before ramping up the synth bass and hammering percussion, it plays in familiar territory but shows her palette still expanding. In other words, even if this song is circling issues of fame, this is the first song that feels like it can match the best of her debut - in other words it’s great, can’t wait for more!

16. ‘Whole Lotta Money’ by BIA ft. Nicki Minaj - okay, this surprised me. For those of you who don’t watch reality TV, you might recognize BIA from that godawful collaboration with Russ ‘Best On Earth’, but she showed up on Nicki’s radar who decided to hop on the remix of this song with a big announcement that seemed to imply way more than just this. And I have to be honest, if I’m a diehard Nicki fan, I’m not sure there’s enough here to really satisfy - yes, BIA might be the first woman Nicki has ever had good chemistry with outside of Ariana Grande, but outside of a callback to one of Nicki’s old 2009 drops and the utterly audacious line that opens up her verse, I don’t think there’s that much here. The overweight bass and spare percussion gives us little tune to work with, BIA otherwise sounds disengaged in her flexing, and the entire song feels haughty and coasting on attitude. And yeah, that’s not surprising from either of these two, and I know this’ll play to their audiences, but I’m not sure this is the mentorship experience that’s going to be enjoyable for anyone around it. Not bad, per se, but I’m certainly not a fan.

13. ‘Motley Crew’ by Post Malone - you know, I was wondering what Post Malone would be coming back with after ‘Circles’ became omnipresent throughout last year. It’s not like he was touring so literally this could go in any direction, and even if the buzz was suggesting this song was terrible I was legit curious, something several years ago I would not admit about Post Malone. So let me say this: I don’t think this is as bad as some people have said, mostly courtesy of Louis Bell swamping out d.a. got that dope’s clanking percussion and giving Post Malone the sort of huge, reverb-swollen atmosphere that was the saving grace on the best songs of Hollywood’s Bleeding. The problem is Post Malone himself - some are saying that this is a Playboi Carti impression and while he’s pitching his voice higher there’s less of that chewy baby-voice that can be so annoying - if anything it’s closer to Young Thug but with more control and stable groove, but it’s just not a vocal register that flatters him at all, not helped by the content being pretty basic brand name flexing that feels really undercooked. And this isn’t me coming down on ‘trap’ Post Malone, even if I think he’s got a shakier record there than anyone - again, I like the production a lot here - but if you’re going to make an obvious rock reference in your song’s title and not sound rougher or heavier, I feel like it’s a blown opportunity, especially when he has production that can back it up. My bet is that Post Malone will pitch this down when he does it live and it’ll probably sound way better - the only question is why he didn’t do it with the original, because this should be better than it is.

3. ‘Stay’ by Kid LAROI & Justin Bieber - I’m really disappointed that it looks like Kid LAROI is just something we’re going to have to deal with longer-term - when he’s as well-connected in the industry as he is, it doesn’t surprise me, but it doesn’t mean I’m happy with it, especially if it involves a Bieber collaboration given the unpleasantness that was ‘Unstable’. Now I can see more people defending this - the synth line contributed from Charlie Puth is really bouncy, there’s more of a hook here, Kid LAROI is showing some growth as an expressive singer and not just a Juice WRLD ripoff… but there’s a few big problems here. Firstly, the content: like ‘Unstable’ this is a guilt-trip song where both men admit they’re screwing up and lying to their girls about changing, and then after acknowledging they’ll never meet anyone better, they beg their partners to stay - so how is it the girls’ problem that you’re constantly betraying their trust, and the assertion you won’t find anyone better seems like a ‘you’ problem! I think a major factor here is that neither of these guys can remotely sell any sort of apology - the passive-aggressiveness of ‘Sorry’ really springs to mind, and this doesn’t have anything close to as good of a groove or tune - but the overall tone of the song is so damn jaunty and upbeat that there’s no sense of weight to any of it, which doesn’t match the intended sincerity of the content or their delivery, which features way more yelping and falsetto than it should. In other words… I might be out on a limb here, but this is pretty bad, and the fact that it’s got enough traction to stick around is not a good sign.

1. ‘Permission To Dance’ by BTS - no joke, when I was writing my script for this entry, by accident my original entry was ‘Permission To Dance’ by Ed Sheeran… but is that much of a leap, especially given that he’s playing the role of a ringer to probably make a killing on the songwriting credit? Factor in how the song features no rapping or radical changes in tempo or tone and is all in English, you can make the argument that this song could be given to anyone and it would still work - with BTS it sounds like a compressed, ultra-sanitized boy band cut from any made-for-TV Disney movie, but there is enough of an audience who’ll like that. In fact, maybe it’s just old nostalgia for the few pieces of that era that worked for me, but I might like this more than both ‘Dynamite’ and ‘Butter’ - the groove is looser, the arrangement is still plastic but it builds to a flashier melody, it’s not trying to force cool that they can’t sell in this lane like ‘Butter’ or factor in a pointless key change like ‘Dynamite’. I’m not sure it would have the highs of either song but it also doesn’t have the lows so it winds up tolerable. Not great by any means, and the lyrical cadence does feel like a Ed Sheeran castoff especially with how disposable the rest of the song is, but again, BTS at their best can be more interesting than this, and the more singles pushed to the top that feel this generic is only shortening their viability longer-term… or they become k-pop’s Maroon 5, and I’d like to think they deserve a bit better than that.

But they aren’t the worst of this week: that’s going to ‘Stay’ by Kid LAROI and Justin Bieber, with Dishonourable Mention… I hate to say it, but ‘Whole Lotta Money’ by BIA and Nicki Minaj - just so lacking in tune and groove than there’s no sense of fun pulling me back. On the flip side, ‘NDA’ by Billie EIlish is comfortably taking the best of the week, with ‘Next Girl’ by Carly Pearce as the Honourable Mention - hope they both catch traction and stick around, that’d be cool. Next week… Cardi B and Normani collaboration going toe-to-toe against another posthumous Pop Smoke album bomb? We’ll have to see..