billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - june 25, 2022

Normally I’d say this is a week where things have some vestige of normalcy - yeah, there’s a few noteworthy songs, but I thought we were out of the woods when it came to album bombs for a while now. But it turns out this is just another case of the calm before the storm, as Drake dropped his surprise house project and that’s probably going to have a major impact even beyond the critical backlash - believe me, I’m not exactly happy about it either.

But before we get to all of that next week, our top ten, where ‘As It Was’ by Harry Styles still holds its thin lead on the #1, basically because it didn’t let its radio gap margin and it maintains its streaming and sales lead. And that’s got to be exasperating for Jack Harlow with ‘First Class’ at #2, which sits atop the radio and is still building its lead… just not enough of one. Then we have ‘Wait For U’ by Future ft. Tems and Drake, which took the top spot on streaming and has been making its radio run, but it lags too far to seriously threaten the top spots again - again, I think ‘About Damn Time’ by Lizzo might have more of a shot rising to #4 as it finally gets a bit of streaming momentum to match strong radio, but it has quite the margin to overtake. It did get over ‘Running Up That Hill’ by Kate Bush which slipped slightly to #5, but considering it’s now getting radio to reinforce its streaming, it’s going to be fascinating to see how this song weathers the upcoming storm. The next three songs all held position - ‘Heat Waves’ by Glass Animals at #6 and ‘Big Energy’ by Latto, Mariah Carey and DJ Khaled at #7, both in decline but the former having a slight edge in other categories versus the latter’s radio strength, and ‘Me Porto Bonito’ by Bad Bunny and Chencho Corleone at #8 which just got a video and will likely see a streaming spike in the next week; hell, following in the same streaming wake is ‘Titi Me Pregunto’ by Bad Bunny up to #9! But then we have an interesting surprise at #10: ‘Glimpse Of Us’ by Joji, which got enough of a streaming smash to break through - whether it’ll survive what’s coming next week remains to be seen, but still, it’s potent.

On the flip side, when we look at the losers and dropouts… well, pretty much Post Malone’s album bomb in the latter case, and that cascades into our losers with ‘Cooped Up’ with Roddy Ricch at 29 and ‘Wrapped Around Your Finger’ at 100. The rest of our losses are mostly following from last week - from Kendrick Lamar ‘N95’ at 72 and ‘Die Hard’ with Blxst and Amanda Reifer at 80, from Harry Styles ‘Matilda’ at 86 and ‘Daylight’ at 88, from Calvin Harris, Dua Lipa and Young Thug ‘Potion’ at 98, and from Kanye West and XXXTENTACION ‘True Love’ at 98. Outside of that… well, ‘Puffin On Zootiez’ by Future slipped to 47 but it’s getting pushed as a single so it’ll likely rebound, and ‘Distraction’ by Polo G slid off the debut to 79.

So what’s filling in the gaps, at least for this week? Well, we got a decent number of returns and gains, in the former category ‘Love Me More’ by Sam Smith back at 93, ‘Desesperados’ by Rauw Alejandro and Chencho Corleone at 94, and ‘Tomorrow Me’ by Luke Combs at 97. But that’s reflective of a country rebound overall: ‘Last Night Lonely’ by Jon Pardi at 75, ‘She Had Me At Heads Carolina’ by Cole Swindell at 64, ‘She Likes It’ by Russell Dickerson and Jake Scott at 63, ‘Ghost Story’ by Carrie Underwood at 61, and ‘Like I Love Country Music’ by Kane Brown at 49. The other gains… well, ‘Te Felicito’ by Shakira and Rauw Alejandro caught a boost off the debut to 67, and ‘Sunroof’ by Nicky Youre and dazy is continuing to rise at 52 - I’d put money on this being a decent sized hit, given how much radio is onboard - but the winner here actually seems to be Doja Cat, with ‘Vegas’ jumping off the debut to 56 and ‘Get Into It (Yuh)’ all the way up to 33; hey, it might become a later album sleeper after all!

But that’s not to discount a reasonably stacked list of new arrivals, starting with…

99. ‘New Truck’ by Dylan Scott - …so there was a meme at the intersection of billboard twitter and country twitter about a song called ‘New Truck’ - I think it was about the Florida Georgia Line song, not this from last year that is only charting now, mostly because Dylan Scott is not someone remotely memorable. What’s exasperating is that I can point to the Tim McGraw song that charted a few weeks ago and highlight that it’s playing to the exact same arc of looking to sell his truck to get over the memories of a breakup and get a new one, and while this song is better produced - except for a weird tinniness at the very top of the mix - the entire mix feels overmixed off the brittle acoustic foundation with little groove to speak of, and even if Dylan Scott has a decent voice, the list-driven cliches are all still here just in a slightly different package. In other words, about as forgettable as always.

84. ‘5 Foot 9’ by Tyler Hubbard - but speaking of Florida Georgia Line, it looks like the ‘lead’ singer of the duo is striking off on a solo run - this is not surprising, the band has been rumoured to break up for the past few years now, but this is his first proper shot at it. And… I should not like this as much as I do. I’ve never been that bothered by Hubbard’s vocals - even with more reverb than they should have here - but I should be complaining about the list-driven bro-country that really is the roots of all the country things he likes and everything that god makes women, I’ve seen this formula hammered into the ground for years. So call it a case of better than expected production and a good hook - yeah, it starts off clunky with the spare acoustics and drumbeat, but when the patter picks up to support the pedal steel and touches of fiddle, there’s a gentle bounce to it off the backing pianos that has some real charm. I’m not going to call it great - it’s absolutely benefiting from low expectations here - but this is a pretty good song, I’ll take it.

76. ‘I Ain’t Worried’ by OneRepublic - I can’t be the only one who is surprised that OneRepublic is still charting hits in 2022; I know they put out an album that was not exactly received well last year, but apparently there was enough behind this new single to get it to chart - likely thanks to being tied to that Top Gun movie - and wow, this would have sounded dated in 2017, where between the whistle, gang vocals around the falsetto, spare bass, and touches of horns it just sounds like Ryan Tedder is trying to rip off ‘Feel It Still’ years late! And look, I like ‘Feel It Still’ even to this day, but I can recognize a ripoff when I hear it, from the general feelings of clinging to nostalgia in the face of lingering dread to the fact that this is built to soundtrack commercials. And this… it feels really vacant, and while you could make the AJR comparison with the vocal harmonies, this just feels formless and crappy in a non-interesting way, let’s move on.

73. ‘Run BTS’ by BTS - so BTS charted two songs on the Hot 100 this week off an anthology project that prefaced news the band was going on hiatus, of which their label then had to do damage control because when the majority of boy bands go on ‘hiatus’, it’s codewords for ‘breaking up’. For me, it’s kind of a tossup - regardless of my opinion on BTS I don’t think their labels are equipped to lose that much money by the band breaking up - but we’ve got two charting songs, with this one calling back to their older mid-2010s style. And you can tell: leaning more heavily on choppy rap flows bouncing off the spare trap percussion and revving guitars behind them that’s defiantly less pop in its whiplash transitions, although I’ll give credit for being a bit better mixed than those older songs were. It’s still not exactly my thing - this is an era of Korean hip-hop I don’t think has aged especially well, and the lyrics are still a little undercooked from what I translated in its running wild flex - but there’s enough swagger to this that I generally liked; and in comparison with the majority of their recent, antiseptic pop hits, I’d prefer this.

55. ‘So Good’ by Halsey - look, I’m not particularly interested in the conversation about labels pushing artists to make TikTok videos as promotion; take it from me, it’s not a skillset every online creator has, a lot of labels have been dogshit at supporting artists to help them promote in this ecosystem, and that’s before we get to the TikTok subgenre of ‘artists complaining about making TikTok videos’ as promotion by stealth, which is not as good of marketing as some conspiracy-minded folks tend to think it is. Take this Halsey song: I heard more about the controversy they were having with TikTok and their label refusing to release it rather than about the song itself… and that’s a shame, because this is pretty good! It’s clearly trying to thread the needle of their previous pop projects and the alt-rock of their album last year, and while their vocal lead is overcompressed and too close to the front of the mix, and they never let the guitars explode properly, there’s a pretty good bounce in the groove and the chiming keys add a little more tune to a song that reminds me a little of ‘Who Knew’ by P!nk in more ways than one, especially in the breakup reflected over years and what could have been. And Halsey delivers one of their best performances to date… and while I wouldn’t call this all the way one of their best, I liked this more than I thought I would - good stuff.

26. ‘Cash In Cash Out’ by Pharrell ft. 21 Savage & Tyler, The Creator - this is the sort of collaboration that the first time I heard about it just felt a little too obvious; of course Tyler’s going to find any reason possible to work with Pharrell, and 21 Savage has proven versatile enough to fit on that production, so it could be interesting, especially if it leads into Pharrell dropping another proper album. And… I think it’s okay, but it should be better; defaulting to brand name flexing feels a little stock for everyone involved, and some of the lines get rough as a result - 21 has the line ‘Kim Jong-Un in my pants, it’s a missle’, Tyler compares one of his yellow diamonds to piss, and even if they get a few good lines off and the delivery is good, I feel like both of these men could do more, even if I couldn’t help but smile whenever 21 highlighted how he gave back to his community and how Tyler bent his verse in odd ways as he plays the pretentious artist in his flexes. Speaking of which, this beat from Pharrell is not impressive either - very bassy and stripped of melody on a repetitive hook that sounds blocky and overblown, and when we do get a melody it’s this hollow creaking squonk that just gets annoying fast. Again, I’m not going to complain about this… but there should be a little more to it, that’s all.

24. ‘Rock And A Hard Place’ by Bailey Zimmerman - I can’t be the only one a little surprised at how quickly Bailey Zimmerman seems to be getting traction - this song caught fire on both sales and streaming and while radio is slow to get onboard as usual, there seems to be a push, as this is charting higher than even his first hit. Maybe it’s something about how he’s cribbing openly from Morgan Wallen’s formula especially in the vocals, and that’s got some broader appeal when his production is a little more organic, especially in the percussion and leaning more on pedal steel and fiddle. And I actually like the content this time around - it’s still pretty sour as it catches a relationship on the midst of collapse, where he’d prefer to ride out the fight and make it work but the sheer amount of effort and tears is making that hard to justify, and that feels more real and lived in, gives the song some weight. So again, it’s hard to escape the obvious influence… but I also think this is better than the majority of Morgan Wallen songs I’ve heard, so… yeah, I can support this too, good stuff.

13. ‘Yet To Come’ by BTS - and now, the second BTS song, which broke as high as it did thanks to massive sales and I have to wonder how well this’ll perform across the summer given a few of the album bombs in line and how Billboard surreptitiously tweaked things for dampen the sales tactics that dominated last summer. As it is right now… yeah, this is pretty decent too, but in a different way, playing to a k-pop trap ballad mold off the pianos and softer percussion splashing between the English language crooning and the attempts at harder rapping. But it plays to a more relaxed vibe, reflecting on the past but with better times on the horizon, and while some of the vocal leads can feel compressed or not really fitting the vibe, there’s at least a little more character to this, and I respect that - good song, I’ll take it.

10. ‘Glimpse Of Us’ by Joji - I feel like Joji’s been owed the big smash hit for a while now, even if it’s got an uphill battle to sustain any of it - hell, some of his last run of singles should have easily been bigger on the Hot 100, but I’ve got a running suspicion that his deal with 12tone isn’t nearly paying the industry dividends it should to get him there. But hey, big new track with a ton of hype behind it… and I’m honestly a little torn on it. Don’t get me wrong, as a piano ballad it’s quite good: very muted and well-balanced, the vocal layering feels smooth without neglecting character or Joji’s expressive range, and the content is nice too, where Joji sings about being a new and happy relationship but still having eyes for his ex, where he’s ‘passing time in her arms’ hoping that he can find a glimpse of the old spark, made all the more complicated by his ex moving on and seeming quite happy too. I appreciate the muted melodrama, there’s a good emotional resonance here… but I feel like there’s a grander spark with Joji’s best work that this doesn’t really have, where I’d almost say it’s playing to the mainstream. Hell, I’ve seen some argue that if you give this to any other pop singer-songwriter type like Ed Sheeran it would be getting a lot less acclaim… which is just true, but also doesn’t give Joji his credit as selling this really effectively. And yes, I want to see him succeed… but I would have dug it more if it came from ‘SLOW DANCING IN THE DARK’ or ‘Run’ or ‘Sanctuary’, whereas this feels almost ordinary. Very good, but not quite special.

And it makes the pick of the best and worst of this week kind of messy, because there’s little in the way of absolute standouts either way… well, okay, the worst falls out easy, that’s ‘I Ain’t Worried’ by OneRepublic with Dishonourable Mention for ‘New Truck’ by Dylan Scott. Best of the week, though… it’s tough, but I think Halsey and Joji are going to tie for Honourable Mention with ‘So Good’ and ‘Glimpse Of Us’… because ‘5 Foot 9’ by Tyler Hubbard is getting the best of the week; I dunno what to say, the hook and production are really good, it works for me! It’s certainly going to be better than the Drake album bomb that’s coming… but that’s next week, stay tuned for that…