billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - june 1, 2024
You know, sometimes album bomb weeks wind up “feeling” streamlined - I’ve mentioned this before, normally it comes when one replaces another, but normally there aren’t roughly three weeks of drama in between, and that’s to say nothing of any of the rumoured drama between our protagonists here. And yeah, while I know the internet has tried to make a big deal out of any potential feud between Taylor Swift and Billie Eilish, until it’s said on record, this looks more like glancing subs in interviews and the marketing divisions of Interscope and Republic playing games with your money. Point being, I would say this is one of the easier album bomb episodes in some time… except for the fact that all of it falls within my stipulated range and that means I’m covering every song from an album I’ve already reviewed, fun stuff!
Anyway, the top ten, where for another week ‘I Had Some Help’ by Post Malone ft. Morgan Wallen held the #1, and again, while the sales are really strong and streaming is good, the real growth for this track is coming on one of the hottest radio pushes I’ve seen in some time - it’s very clear where the industry has pushed its thumb on the scale for this song which as I said last week… really isn’t much to write home about. Granted, if you’re on Mercury/Republic, you’d probably want this to overshadow a song with scathing allegations against one of your associated premiere acts, which takes us to ‘Not Like Us’ by Kendrick Lamar, which is right back on top of streaming but has much weaker sales and is getting a radio push… just much slower, which again, feels very revealing to me. Anyway, it’s still handily above ‘Million Dollar Baby’ by Tommy Richman at #3 which has better sales and only a slight lag on streaming and radio… I’m a little shocked it finally got shipped there at all, but it is moving. What might have more stable traction is ‘A Bar Song (Tipsy)’ by Shaboozey holding at #4 - the radio traction is finally there, sales are strong, it’s close behind on streaming, this has all the makings of a strong summer hit. And now we get to the first new arrival and an interesting one: ‘LUNCH’ by Billie Eilish at #5 - as expected for any strong album bomb the streaming is really good, but what shocks me is how fast this has been shipped to radio and how it’s already beating ‘Not Like Us’; it’s pegged as the big pop hit from the album and the one to stick around, I’m a little shocked radio is so strong behind it given the subject matter, but I’m also not going to complain! Hell, it beat out ‘Espresso’ by Sabrina Carpenter at #6, where despite good streaming and a sales pickup, she’s probably wondering who the hell has to be paid to get more radio traction - it’s a hit, but it feels like a breakthrough stymied by exterior factors or her management just not having enough clout to throw around. This takes us to ‘Lose Control’ by Teddy Swims at #7, which despite stable sales is absolutely on its way out as it finally hit a peak on the radio, which is just ahead of the fate of ‘Beautiful Things’ by Benson Boone at #8 which despite a really good sales week is in outright freefall. Then we have ‘Too Sweet’ by Hozier actually picking up a slot to #9 - I’m frankly shocked by how strong its radio growth is, and I could argue that outside of Billie Eilish overtaking him on position the streaming is there too, but we can’t ignore how it just jumped past ‘Fortnight’ by Taylor Swift ft. Post Malone down to #10, where the radio growth was a little inconsistent and the streaming is down - I like this song, but it’s not about to compete with the big summer bangers, I would not be surprised if this gets rotated out a little more quickly than expected.
Which naturally takes us to our losers and dropouts, and honestly, if you’re looking for someone who had a rough week, it was Taylor Swift. Yeah, ‘23’ by Chayce Beckham and ‘Wildflowers & Wild Horses’ by Lainey Wilson are both going to fall short of the year-end list, but the big track finally getting rotated out is ‘Cruel Summer’ by Taylor Swift - handily a lock for the year end, but it got shoved into recurrence. So let’s go to our losers and get through all of the Taylor Swift here as well: ‘I Can Do It With A Broken Heart’ at 26, ‘Down Bad’ at 30, ‘Who’s Afraid Of Little Old Me’ at 45, ‘But Daddy I Love Him’ at 54, ‘Guilty As Sin?’ at 55, ‘So Long, London’ at 57, ‘My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys’ at 58, ‘Florida!!!’ with Florence + The Machine at 64, ‘The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived’ at 65, ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ at 66, ‘loml’ at 81, ‘The Alchemy’ at 82, ‘So High School’ at 83, ‘Fresh Out The Slammer’ at 84, ‘imgonnagetyouback’ at 94, and ‘I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can)’ at 100. And speaking of bad weeks, the aftermath on Drake - pardon the pun, if you know you know - has been pretty harsh, with ‘Family Matters’ plummeting to 48, ‘Push Ups’ at 74, and even his support of 4batz with ‘act ii: date @ 8’ hitting 63 - yes, ‘meet the grahams’ by Kendrick Lamar fell to 67, but this song shouldn’t have lasted three weeks at all, I’m still chalking it up as a win! Then we had the expected post-album bomb falloff for Gunna, with ‘one of wun’ at 37, ‘on one tonight’ at 71, and ‘prada dem’ with Offset at 85, and the rest are kind of scattered here: ‘I Like The Way You Kiss Me’ by Artemas slid to 39 as it looks like the virality is about done - might wind up short of the year-end list too, yikes - and ‘Boa’ by Megan Thee Stallion crashed off the debut to 91; I know her management is supposedly better now, but the inability to get consistent traction is worrying, someone is screwing something up there when the songs are indeed good.
Now as expected, we don’t have much in the way of gains or returns: in the latter group they’re both country songs with ‘Wondering Why’ by The Red Clay Strays clawing back to 99 and ‘Take Her Home’ by Kenny Chesney rebounding to 92. And that’s much the same for the former group, with the biggest jump going to ‘I Think I’m In Love With You’ by Chris Stapleton ft. Dua Lipa to 69 - this is a sleeper hit waiting to happen - alongside ‘Dirt Cheap’ by Cody Johnson at 70 and a big jump for ‘Bulletproof’ by Nate Smith at 44, thank Nashville radio for really pulling there. The only other big gain is ‘Si No Quieres No’ by Luis R Conriquez and Neton Vega at 72 - when you have that much consistent YouTube, you can’t be that surprised. Now this would be where I’d list off the Billie Eilish songs that would fall under my album bomb rules, outside of the top 40 and neither the best nor worst… but they’re all in the top 40, just my luck this week.
Anyway, at least there’s not many other new arrivals this week outside of her, so let’s get this started with…
98. ‘Heat Stick’ by Shoreline Mafia Presents: OhGeesy & Fenix Flexin - so there’s a bit of a story about this one: if you recognize the name Shoreline Mafia, they’re a west coast rap group that started to see breakout success in the late 2010s, with a debut album in summer 2020. Or at least they were a rap group, because founding members were leaving before the debut album even dropped, and the group broke up that year. But in 2023 two members reformed the group, they’re now seeing their biggest charting success to date… and honestly, I’m not wowed by this. I don’t mind the rhythmic west coast groove even if it feels like the percussion is blown out against the hazy melody and piano, but OhGeesy and Fenix Flexin stick to a very flat monotone, with the former just being a little more nasal, and while their flows are largely competent, the content is not remotely interesting, a lot of dull flexing, fucking, gunplay with very little that stands out as witty or notable. I guess with the west coast being up right now that folks would gravitate towards something like this on a playlist, plus if it’s flagged as a notable comeback… but yeah, this isn’t memorable, next!
47. ‘Sweet Dreams’ by Koe Wetzel - …so you know how I’ve said that it’s been weird that for as long as I’ve covered indie country, very few of the acts I’ve reviewed or have underground buzz have wound up hitting the charts? Here’s an exception, and a pretty polarizing one if you know: Koe Wetzel. He’s out of Texas, reportedly leaning on a lot of country rock and even grunge or punk - so it makes sense that he’d have some crossover nowadays - and he ran up a few albums in the independent circuit before signing to Columbia and releasing the album Sellout in 2020 and Hell Paso in 2022. The reason I’ve described him as contentious is most to do with his content, namely that he has a cursing, somewhat juvenile approach to lyricism and performance that tends to create friction in the scene… but he has moved units and has built a steady groundswell, and it looks like Columbia wants to at least challenge Zach Bryan for the indie country crossover market. This is a single from his newest album set to drop in July… and it’s weird because listening to this song, it doesn’t really fit how I’ve described this guy, a midtempo, melancholy track where Wetzel is in a late night drunken spiral and writing to his ex, who he’s fairly certain was right to dump him for his self-destructive drinking and drug abuse, but he can’t quite get her out of his head. And while there’s always been an undercurrent of darkness to Wetzel’s party material, this is more straightforward and self-aware and it winds up pretty solid as a result with its sharper percussion, liquid guitars, and his husky multitracking… gives me the thought he’s looking to take a chunk out of Morgan Wallen’s marketshare than Zach Bryan, and on production and supple groove alone, I’d say he has a shot. The one verse and bridge feel a bit underwritten for my taste… but honestly, as a mainstream introduction to this guy, this is really solid, check it out!
36. ‘BITTERSUITE’ by Billie Eilish - …so look, I already reviewed the Billie Eilish album at length just over a week ago on my main channel; if you’re curious about a larger thematic conversation, I recommend going there. And since we have all ten songs to get through - and most of them fall into a well-established sonic template - I’m going to try and keep this relatively brief, so let’s start with the penultimate song, where we are now post-breakup and Billie is on the road again, stuck in overseas hotels as she tries to arrange the discreet hookups she described on Happier Than Ever to get past the swirling mire of angst. But what’s more interesting is the sound, where a broad splash of analog synth opens up the track… and then fades into a bassy rumble of stuttering fragments, which then slips into the bleeping, hotel lobby bossa nova that leaves Billie midway back in listless isolation; she’s described this song as intentionally offputting and confusing, intended to capture that disoriented post-breakup feel as the synths wash back in. I think my larger frustration is that much as I liked that nice keyboard motif that ends off the song, it feels like a fragment of a melodic idea and echo of ‘THE GREATEST’, so there’s not much in the way of payoff anywhere. Which is fine in the context of the album, but for an individual song… still good, just not a favourite.
31. ‘THE DINER’ by Billie Eilish - probably the oddest song on the album, notably because it’s most like her earliest projects and is more in thematic continuity that directly fitting even a loose narrative. The heavier rattle of percussion around the warbling synths and pummeling bass that almost feels smothering, it captures some of that old horror vibe, albeit nowhere near as tightly or with such fine control of the mix compared to her debut - it’s thicker, it’s lumbering, creating the feeling that the stalker at the core of the song might know their prey but not really grasp the subtleties, which isn’t surprising given their mental instability is implied all across the song. Now Billie has had to deal with a lot of stalkers before, it’s very possible it’s just referring to them, but if she wanted to imply her own obsessive love tilted into such a dark place… well, it would fit the context of the album. Again, it’s potent, I appreciate the throwback… but I did want to like it more.
25. ‘BLUE’ by Billie Eilish - the album closer, and given the title probably what prompted so many unwarranted Joni Mitchell comparisons. And I like a lot of the writing here: first reworking a very old demo called ‘True Blue’ with several callback references to other songs on this album to describe the feelings at the end of the relationship, but where the track gets more interesting is in its second part, where she’s mature enough to muse upon everything that didn’t work, from the ex’s unresolved family issues to her own insomnia holding her captive - she doesn’t blame or hate this person, just sadly acknowledging that it won’t work and is still processing the pain, and with that final line, noting an audience that’s already moved on from her heartbreak, a subtle metatextual sting. And yet, I’m not sure I’d call this one of my favourites either - the drums and bass feel a little too clunky for the ethereal textures of the first verse, the second a more delicate piano piece originally written around the Happier Than Ever sessions until it creeps into a weirdly squeaky bassy passage that pitches her voice down as very brittle, forward trap percussion slips in to be replaced by a really pretty strings arrangement. I dunno, it’s effective, but the emotional payoff never quite sticks for me - call it good, if not great, unlike…
24. ‘THE GREATEST’ by Billie Eilish - yeah, full disclosure, I think this is my favourite on the album: a mother of a breakup ballad that makes full use of the space as Billie Eilish try so damn hard to make it work and overcommit… and then just give up, where her sarcasm would have an edge if it wasn’t so heartbreakingly sad and wracked by the fact that she didn’t want to have to do this - this person could have been the greatest, and Billie sings it like she believes it with all her heart. And unlike a fair few songs on this album, the track feels self-contained in its swing for the fences, from the delicate acoustic slow build to the soft percussion and guitars picking up more cyclical layers as the string ramp… and then the electric guitars and gleaming synths crash in as Billie starts belting, and it hits like a ton of bricks! It definitely feels like the most conventional composition Billie has released in some time… but hey, when it works, it really works - excellent song!
23. ‘Ain’t No Love In Oklahoma’ by Luke Combs - So let’s take a short break from Billie Eilish and get to the one other song, that being from Luke Combs and a single from the soundtrack of Twisters - yes, the sequel to the 90s movie Twister which for some reason the soundtrack has brought in a ridiculous amount of country talent, mainstream and independent. Now I checked the original 90s Twister soundtrack to see if this was a thing, and it’s wildly all over the place - from Van Halen getting a top hit on the mainstream rock charts to Tori Amos to the Red Hot Chili Peppers to Shania Twain throwing on ‘No One Needs To Know’ which dropped a year earlier - but Luke Combs chose to make a country rock stomper that’s honestly outside of his usual neotraditional comfort zone, even compared to some of the rougher sounds of his first album. Hell, he’s trying to deliver a holler like Chris Stapleton or Jelly Roll and you can tell he doesn’t quite have the depth or body in this range or volume to really sell it. Kind of a shame he can’t really deliver here because the rest of the song is pretty solid - the primary minor chord riff has some muscle, I like the guitar solo, and much to my pleasant surprise, Combs indulged in a very 90s tradition of making his song literally about the plot of the movie in chasing tornados! It’s more poetic in the framing - he never actually mentions tornados, refers to them primarily through metaphor and the tough dangerous road getting to them, and the toll it might take on a man - but you can tell he cared more about this than I think anyone expected him to, and I can respect that! I don’t think it’s very good - give this to someone with a little more soul and firepower, it goes off - but I can at least respect it!
22. ‘L’AMOUR DE MA VIE’ by Billie Eilish - Now getting back to grand ballads that I really like, this is also in that camp… although I can’t shake the feeling that if she put the proper extended version of the song on the album, it’d be much higher in my books. Because I like the soft lounge approach to the orchestration with the watery guitar and gentle percussion - Billie nails the sensuous smooth jazz reflection where she ruefully tries to take the high road… but the person moved on way too fast and she has to shrug and admit… yeah, calling them the ‘love of her life’ was a lie in retrospect. And while it feels a bit broadly played for the second hook - I would have liked if this stayed slinky and low-key - it did get back to that territory… and then the song changes completely. It fades into this muted, pitch-shifted bedroom pop segment… and then ramps into what I can only describe as a synth house break that feels imported from the mid-80s or the nearest CHVRCHES album, with Billie submerged in autotune as all the veneers collapse and she’s trying to sweat her angst out on the dancefloor. And let me be clear, I’m hear for this - the breakdown and melody sounds great, the percussion gallop at the end is great, but it’s only around for less than two minutes, the extended version of the track at least allows this to be a fuller song! As it is it feels like a missed opportunity - still great, but it could have been spectacular.
18. ‘SKINNY’ by Billie Eilish - I’ve seen a decent amount of backlash for this opening - that it’s too conventional for Billie, a very expected slow-burn… and I’m not sure that’s fair, it feels like the natural continuation of themes from Happier Than Ever. I like that after losing weight, Billie is torn on whether the newfound positive attention is genuine or just because of the change, her exasperation with the industry and not able to have her growth feel contained at a level she could control, especially with the internet, and I like her reflecting on the line on whether she’s ‘acting her age’… and whether or not she’s on her way out as a result, a very notable comment on how the industry exploits young girls by saying they’re ‘wiser’ than their years. And when you pair it with the gentle guitars and the subtle sampled touches of crowd noise over the second verse and the strings ebbing over the outro… it’s an expected sound for Billie, but when the formula is this great, I cannot complain; great stuff.
17. ‘WILDFLOWER’ by Billie Eilish - So the next couple of songs here… I’ll be honest, I’ve never fully clicked with them, and let’s start with one of which I think I was closest. Billie is writing about trying to console a girl after a breakup… only for Billie to wind up with the ex in question, and there’s a messy feeling of guilt that she can’t quite escape, especially as it starts hitting her personal insecurities as well around the relationship. It’s complicated and Billie really sells the messy emotionality as the mix lets creeping background noise flesh out the acoustics and faint twinkles and the backing vocals cascade in, intensifying the feeling of second-guessing inner voices before we get the final inversion on the last hook… and then the outro comes in and it feels superfluous, a fragment that takes a way from a stronger ending. In other words, I still think this is very good… but it should have been great.
13. ‘BIRDS OF A FEATHER’ by Billie Eilish - Now in this case I’ve seen a number of folks highlight that this is an obvious second single - if this project gets another single beyond ‘LUNCH’, which might be asking a lot - but I get it. The cycling soft melody around the jingling but weirdly chalky percussion as the bassline ramps up, it has a very mid-2000s vibe as the acoustic line opens up, it’s a very accessible pop love song where Billie’s overcommitment is just charming enough, although that synth at the end kind of reminds me of MGMT of all things. But when you recognize how much Billie’s voice is nestled into the mix, even when she starts belting it just feels like this is very pleasant but never reaches another gear, the sort of pop song that adult-alternative radio would have loved in 2006 but everyone would have forgotten after that summer, I’ve heard a lot of this before. Again, it’s fine, if it became a hit I wouldn’t complain… but I’m not sure it’s that special… and on that note…
12. ‘CHIHIRO’ by Billie Eilish - a lot of folks were really surprised and annoyed that I considered this the weakest song on HIT ME HARD AND SOFT - maybe it’s because I’m way less into anime than some, and given how this song is drawing upon Spirited Away, there’s a resonance that I’m missing. But the track feels off on the album - yeah, the bassline is cool, but the odd vocal filtering around the rattling knock and warbling synth cascades feels metallic, grainy and overarranged, and that’s before we get the louder arpeggios midway through the song and Billie’s falsetto vocal runs that just don’t work for me. Yes, the sandy house groove on the back half is nice before we get those gurgling guitar touches and the pitched-down vocals and even louder synths and even if I like that whistling tone at the core, I just don’t think it comes together. And yeah, I get when you look into the lyrics it’s supposed to feel confusing and frustrating - Billie’s lover is taking space and she feels like her feelings are being yanked away from her, and she feels gaslit and anxious and that makes sense with this sound… but between the sequencing and too many textural elements I don’t like… yeah, it’s not bad, but it is a swing and a miss, at least for me.
5. ‘LUNCH’ by Billie Eilish - whereas if Billie Eilish was going to provide a hit that would work, ‘LUNCH’ really feels like it stuck the landing, a straightforward queer horny song about cunnilingus where she for one nearly feels overwhelmed by the whole experience - it nails the slightly awkward tension of modern flirting especially given that thanks to her fame she can buy this girl things before diving straight in, and more importantly it’s about the only song on the album with an actual sense of humour, down to every sampled sound effect to add colour! And when you pair it with that bouncy, reverbed, very Californicated guitarline and sinuous groove that starts to break down ever so slightly as the pulsating bass crushes the outro and Billie starts panting… yeah, it’s super effective, someone probably fainted! It’s honestly so direct that there’s not a lot to say… but hey, when it’s this much fun, I can’t remotely complain, great song!
Actually… yeah, Honourable Mention as the Best of the Week goes to ‘THE GREATEST’. Worst of the week is ‘Heat Stick’ by Shoreline Mafia, with ‘CHIHIRO’ by Billie Eilish as the Dishonourable Mention… and hell, neither song is bad, just not really to my tastes. Next week, I think we actually will have a proper breather, unless there’s some disruption I missed in the wings, we’ll have to see…