billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - june 11, 2022

It should be no surprise that weeks like this kind of frustrate me - not because this is a reset to chart equilibrium after all the album bombs, but more that we could be between album bombs with Post Malone coming next week and any shifts here will get reset again and a lot of work winds up feeling inconsequential. That said, there was more going on this week than I initially realized, and some of it might have a deeper impact…

So let’s start with the top ten, where ‘As It Was’ by Harry Styles clung to another week at #1… and in this case it really was a margin’s game, holding a slim radio and streaming lead over ‘First Class’ by Jack Harlow at #2, which overtook him on sales and seems to have really narrowed the gap. And it’s really a dogfight between these two, because while ‘Wait For U’ by Future with Tems and Drake holds #3 with streaming dominance, it just cannot make up a considerable airplay gap at the rate it’s gaining there. What stands a better chance is ‘About Damn Time’ by Lizzo rising to #4 with its radio traction - the question here is whether it’ll make up enough streaming to close any gaps. Then we have the pickups of position for ‘Heat Waves’ by Glass Animals to #5 and ‘Big Energy’ by Latto, Mariah Carey and DJ Khaled to #6 - in the former case it’s just tanking where the latter it looks to have peaked in airplay - but then there’s ‘Me Porto Bonito’ by Bad Bunny and Chencho Corleone to #7, mostly thanks to some massive streaming pickups. But the real surprise came with the biggest return this chart has seen in some time: the classic 1985 Kate Bush song ‘Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)’ - yes, I get that it was featured in Stranger Things and for a lot of kids it’s their first introduction to Kate Bush, but not only did it top the sales charts, it surged back on streaming and may even be shipped back to radio! Now how long it’ll last beyond this moment remains to be seen - ‘Dreams’ by Fleetwood Mac went viral back in 2020 to rechart and it slowly tailed off - but this does feel a bit different, especially as it’s now charted higher than the first run of this song ever did back in the 80s; the real test will be how it weathers the next few weeks, even if it likely slips out of the top 10. Then we have a small slip for ‘Late Night Talking’ by Harry Styles to #9 - this is what allowed a few songs to pick up traction while losing - and on that note, ‘Stay’ by Kid LAROI and Justin Bieber is back in the top 10 mostly because it’s not quite losing as fast as everything else… joy.

This takes us to our losers and dropouts, and in the latter category we just have a few songs exiting naturally: ‘pushin p’ by Gunna, Future and Young Thug clinching its year-end list spot, and falling short we have ‘Me Or Sum’ by Nardo Wick, Future and Lil Baby, ‘No Love’ by Summer Walker and SZA, and ‘Never Wanted To Be That Girl’ by Carly Pearce and Ashley McBryde. As for the losers… outside of ‘Hotel Lobby’ by Quavo and Takeoff losing off the debut to 72, it’s basically just album bombs fading out in succession. From Future ‘I’m On One’ with Drake hit 93 and ‘Love You Better’ hit 96, from Jack Harlow ‘Dua Lipa’ fell to 90, and from Kendrick Lamar ‘N95’ hit 39, ‘Die Hard’ with Blxst and Amanda Reifer hit 52, and ‘Rich Spirit’ hit 83. But of course the larger story is Harry Styles, who actually kept his entire album on the Hot 100: ‘Music For A Sushi Restaurant’ at 41, ‘Matilda’ at 42, ‘Daylight’ at 46, ‘Little Freak’ at 58, ‘Grapefruit’ at 61, ‘Satellite’ at 65, ‘Cinema’ at 75, ‘Keep Driving’ at 76, ‘Daydreaming’ at 77, ‘Love Of My Life’ at 81, and ‘Boyfriends’ at 83.

But then we go over to our returns and gains, and while I already mentioned Kate Bush in the former category, we also saw slight rebounds for ‘Handsomer’ by Russ and ktlyn at 92 and ‘Ghost Story’ by Carrie Underwood at 82. The latter is more indicative of what filled in the gaps this week on our gains - basically a ton of country: from the return last week ‘She Likes It’ by Russell Dickerson and Jake Scott to 80, building on last week’s gain ‘Fall In Love’ by Bailey Zimmerman rose to 55, ‘Trouble With A Heartbreak’ by Jason Aldean hit 32, ‘AA’ by Walker Hayes hit 31, and most exasperatingly, ‘Take My Name’ by Parmalee hit 23 and ‘Wasted On You’ by Morgan Wallen hit 13. Now it’s not all bad news: ‘Numb Little Bug’ by Em Beihold rose to 19, Ed Sheeran saw decent pickups for ‘Shivers’ to 24 and ‘2step’ with Lil Baby to 54, and I’m not about to complain about Karol G getting ‘Provenza’ to 34 and ‘MAMIII’ with Becky G to 35. But the rest… ‘Boyfriend’ by Dove Cameron to 16, ‘Super Gremlin’ by Kodak Black at 20, ‘Sweetest Pie’ by Megan Thee Stallion and Dua Lipa at 25, ‘Bam Bam’ by Camila Cabello and Ed Sheeran at 27, and ‘Ojitos Lindos’ by Bad Bunny and Bomba Estereo at 36, with Bad Bunny also swinging ‘Efecto’ to 50? I at least understand why ‘she’s all i wanna be’ by Tate McRae picked up a boost to 44, as well as ‘Hold My Hand’ by Lady Gaga surging to 53 based on Top Gun: Maverick’s continued run, even if I’m still a little shocked the movie has continued to do that well.

But no wasting time here: we have a lot of new arrivals with absolutely no guarantee any of them will last, so let’s start with…

100. ‘Until I Found You’ by Stephen Sanchez - so I guess with the charts returning to ‘normal’ that means we get the next influx of relative no-names getting traction thanks to TikTok? Well, let me introduce to you Stephen Sanchez, who like most of the new crop blowing up off that site is actually signed to Republic and he’s seen a bit of traction with this. And what we have is… actually pretty pleasant, in a retro soft rock vein that gives me a pretty consistent Lord Huron vibe, especially off of their last album with the reverb swaddling this song’s gentle guitars and subtle pianos. But that’s kind of all it is: a pretty basic love song where he had pushed her away and now they’re back and he’s never going to let her go; generally pleasant and Sanchez has a good voice, but it feels like a throwback that doesn’t really do more with the sound, the sort of easy pop song to like but not one that really sticks. So yeah, fine, I guess, but I’m probably going to forget this in record time.

99. ‘7500 OBO’ by Tim McGraw - so initially when I saw the title of this Tim McGraw song, I assumed it was a license plate number or something, but it turns out it’s short for seventy-five hundred dollars or best offer, so we’re still dealing with cars but in a different way, where he’s selling the truck because it reminds him of his ex. Not a bad sentiment, even if the acronym structure is kind of clunky… but that clunkiness might as well be the situation with this entire song, because the production is a mess! That fizzy drum machine patter against guitars with a sharper scuzz, where the fiddle provides more melody but is stuck fighting against the warping synths and very obvious autotuned overdubs. It reminds me way too much of the moments when Tim McGraw was trying to go poppier in the mid-2010s to keep up with bro-country, but this might feel even worse - not only does he sound checked out, but this isn’t even a sound that fits with current trends, which are more neotraditional and you could play into! But what depressed me the most is where McGraw references ‘Where The Green Grass Grows’, one of his own songs from the late 90s that I grew up with and where this actually interpolates some of the fiddle melody - and look, McGraw’s country has always been softer than most of his peers, but at least that song was good. This is just a sign that Tim McGraw is not aging particularly well… and yeah, it sucks.

98. ‘Last Night Lonely’ by Jon Pardi - it feels like it’s been multiple years now where I’ve expected Jon Pardi to take a leap, especially within the wave of neotraditional country, and it hasn’t quite happened yet - a lot of pretty solid stuff, nothing that’s really gone over the top for me… and with this new single for an upcoming album, this isn’t getting there either. Yeah, it’s well-balanced with fiddle and pedal steel and feels pretty organic all things considered, as he talks about this could be the last time this girl in the bar will be lonely and he sketches out a lot of future lasts if they get together. But even if I would call the song presumptuous, it doesn’t really take any more steps or go further - I’ve heard Jon Pardi make this sort of barroom hookup song a number of times and when you have that first blaring melodic phrase, it doesn’t really set a mood. So in other words, he’s settled into a niche, and this is not all that interesting - next!

97. ‘Wild Hearts’ by Keith Urban - You know, I think I’m close to done with giving Keith Urban chances - he’s made pop country I like but with so much mismanagement in production and bad albums for years now, I’m not sure I was up for another disappointment. And… you know, this isn’t quite that, but it’s a bit of an odd case all the same. It’s definitely overpolished with its weirdly spongy and gated percussion groove and synths and how compressed the vocal leads feel, but the guitar has a little crunch and even lets Urban cut loose on a brief solo, and the lyrics are playing more for running wild with big dreams. If anything it feels like the stabs at Americana the less sophisticated but slightly more dignified mainstream rock acts would churn out in the late 90s and early 2000s, and while the production feels a little chintzy, it’s honestly better than a lot of what Keith Urban has done in years, with a little more anthemic swell behind it. Not really great, but not bad either - this was a nice surprise.

91. ‘F.N.F. (Let’s Go)’ by Hitkidd & Glorilla - okay, so you’re going to have to follow me on this: Hitkidd and Glorilla are a producer and rapper out of Memphis, this is being pitched as a summer banger with the sort of obvious major label cosign - yet - and… it looks like we may have found 2022’s ‘Beat Box’, because wow, this is the sort of amateurish, painfully basic song built to go live on TikTok with a dance and not last beyond this summer. For one, the production is pretty rough: the percussion feels really tinny and lacking low-end punch, the basic piano loop has this wonky gloss that sounds cheap, and Glorilla’s vocal mixing somehow sounds even worse. It’s not helped by the content really doing nothing special - it’s a twerk anthem referencing running wild and her comeup that relies on more spelling than it should, it sounds like the sort of one-off single that gets dropped under tweets that go viral on hip-hop twitter, and that’s not a compliment. Maybe if Glorilla got some production with more presence this could work as a Megan Thee Stallion wannabe, but this isn’t it - not good.

87. ‘Sunroof’ by Nicky Youre & dazy - oh look, Columbia has another relative no-name that got some radio traction for this 2021 song and I can’t find much else - Nicky Youre has literally has only three songs on streaming as of this moment, and my main channel has more subscribers on YouTube than him. And it’s the sort of chirpy pop cut with a pretty bouncy groove and choppy strumming where the first thing I was reminded of was AJR, but Nicky Youre isn’t as immediately obnoxious in his vocals - honestly it’s just a pretty basic love song where he’s over-the-moon with even less complexity than that Stephen Sanchez track! But again, it’s borderline bubblegum pop, especially with dazy’s rather synthetic burbling that barely passes as a solo - even if it’s catchy, it’s so insubstantial that I can’t see myself going back to it much. At least it’s sincere enough to be passable, I’ll take that.

86. ‘She Had Me At Heads Carolina’ by Cole Swindell - apparently this is just going to be the episode where I have to reference a bunch of 90s country staples of my childhood, so context: ‘Heads Carolina, Tails California’ is a pretty terrific 1996 song by Jo Dee Messina, and it looks like Cole Swindell is interpolating that vibrant flair for his newest hookup song where he literally opens up with a distorted radio echo of the original! Now there’s a part of me that wants to knock points off here because it’s just liberally borrowing from a great 90s country song, but I’ll give Cole Swindell a bit of credit for actually setting a scene with the girl getting up to sing it at karaoke, they have a meet-cute, but despite the dare in the song, he doesn’t wind up with her - the bridge implies she’s somewhere else and he’s thinking of her whenever he hears the song… and I dunno, as someone who does a lot of karaoke, there’s something to the notion of the random person who shows up one night, blows the roof off the place, and you never see them again, there’s a breezy charm to it that works with this song. And even if the production is a bit slicker than I’d prefer, especially on the hook, Swindell seems to get that he has to have enough neotraditional flair with the pedal steel, mandolin, and banjo, and keeping the tempo up lets him capture a lot of the same wonder. So yeah, even if Cole Swindell is copying his homework, he did it well and there’s enough new here to make this pretty great, I’ll take it.

71. ‘Potion’ by Calvin Harris, Dua Lipa & Young Thug - so apparently we’re finally going to be getting Funk Wav Bounces Vol. 2, a solid five years after the first one where I remember liking it a solid bit, but leaving with the thought it should have stuck a little better. So naturally we get the most obvious collaboration for this sort of song by bringing in Dua Lipa and Young Thug, the latter of whom has been hopping on electronic music since 2015 with Jamie xx so it makes sense. And yet, maybe it was too obvious - it’s a disco jam with a solid bassline and some nice textured percussion, but neither Dua Lipa nor Young Thug sound that engaged and neither can distract from that hideously processed oily guitar sting that pops up across the entire song - it sounds weedy and at the precise frequency to cut through everything, why go for that, especially when you open the song with all that shredding? I’m not sure I would have been impressed with this without it - it reminds more of ‘Feels’ than ‘Slide’, not a good sign - but that chirping annoyance keeps me from liking it much, what a shame.

60. ‘Die Young’ by Sleepy Hallow ft. 347aidan - I have to admit, I’m kind of stunned that Sleepy Hallow keeps getting decently charting hits; maybe it’s just the circles I follow, but I never see much buzz or conversation about him, so I wasn’t sure what to expect here. Well, let’s get the problems out of the way first - I don’t care if 347aidan is Canadian on the come-up, he sounds like a preteen who can’t put any power behind his interpolated hook and it yanks me out off the song every time. A bit of a shame because the production isn’t bad with its guitar rollick and reasonably well balanced drill percussion, and Sleepy Hallow has a good enough flow to carry this - hell, he probably could have done his own hook too, especially as the song seems to emphasize the numbness of street level violence. Of course, Sleepy Hallow wanders off-topic to talk about stealing your girl and his come-up that feels kind of lacking in detail, but he’s easily the most interesting part of the song. Still… a bad hook and not much distinctive detail is going to hold this back from quality, at least for me.

59. ‘See Wat I’m Sayin’ by Moneybagg Yo - and speaking of scenes where I don’t have much insight, apparently we’re getting another Moneybagg Yo album sometime soon - I can’t say I knew about it, nor am I looking forward to it that much, but hey, he can still break a single onto the charts and his flow is incrementally getting better. And that’s mostly true with this song as well, which wound up decent enough - Tay Keith gives the trap production a little more gloss and the eerie synths behind Moneybagg Yo’s deadpan is not a bad fit, and even if he’s defaulting to brand names and flexing and generally being a dick to all the women around him, his flow is a fair bit better, or at least comes across less sloppy than before in how he structures his adlibs, which seems like a plus. My larger problem is that after all the bombast Tay Keith sets up, the song doesn’t really ramp up beyond it, which gives me the impression that Moneybagg Yo might be meeting his low ceiling. Still… I guess this is fine, I’ll take it?

47. ‘Sleazy Flow’ by SleazyWorld Go ft. Lil Baby - the odd thing about YouTube these days is that you’ll see a rapper whose name you don’t recognize… and then you realize not only are they signed but are getting millions of hits, and he’s already got four projects out in the past few years. But then you notice how despite the lyrics being up on Genius, there’s little to no traffic there, and while a few individual songs have gone viral, it was probably this Lil Baby feature that broke this Kansas City rapper through properly. And now having heard the song… yeah, I’m not sure there’s much to this - the spare, bassy mix off the piano loop, how the vocal mastering is very different between SleazyWorld Go and Lil Baby, to the point where you can tell the latter just mailed his verse in, and none of the content is that good either - Sleazyworld Go has some menace in how he tries to keep his business off social media, but it’s the same gunplay and stealing girls that I’ve heard so often, and nothing in the flow or lack of hooks is all that interesting. I’m not sure what’s here that 21 Savage doesn’t do better… just kind of forgettable.

22. ‘True Love’ by Kanye West & XXXTENTACION - it’s coming up on four years since XXXTENTACION died, and they’re still farming out fragments of music to anyone who’ll listen to get the last clicks possible… so of course Kanye got onboard again as this becomes a single promoting Donda 2 - guess he already made his profit with faux-exclusivity on the Stem Player, now he’s going to push it to the public proper, because of course he was going to do that! And that’s the thing: there’s nothing surprising about how XXXTENTACION’s voice sounds run through a half-dozen filters to make it passable on record to surround Kanye’s one verse, where he’s once again ranting about Kim Kardashian and separation from his kids where they’re not wearing the right Nikes, they should be wearing Yeezys and they should dig a tunnel to the house he’s at so he doesn’t have to feel like he’s borrowing his kids and ‘scan ‘em like a barcode’ when they go back, and I cannot be the only one who finds this just gross and dehumanizing at this point? I get the sentiment that Kanye is trying to express, that his love for his kids should not be complicated - conveniently ignoring all the parts he played in the split from Kim - and I’ll even support some of the percussion from Mike Dean on the song, but the more Kanye has slathered his divorce drama on every verse, the more I feel disgusted, and feel bad for the kids. It feels cheap and exploitative, and I’m thoroughly sick of Kanye stans giving this manipulative mess any attention on the charts when it belongs in therapy or a courtroom.

So yeah, easily the worst song of this week, with the Dishonourable Mention going to…’7500 OBO’ by Tim Graw, because he should be way past making songs like this by now. Best of the week… yeah, Cole Swindell with ‘She Had Me At Heads Carolina’, with Honourable Mention… kind of a tossup, but I’ll have a tie with ‘Until I Found You’ by Stephen Sanchez pretty much just on some texture with ‘Wild Hearts’ by Keith Urban, which is not produced well at all but there’s at least a core to it that was a nice surprise. Next week… we’ll see if Post Malone comes through, I have my doubts…