billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - march 27, 2021

There’s a part of me that wants to consider this a breather week - Justin Bieber is coming with an album bomb next week that could well have a smattering of Lana Del Rey in competition, it’s probably going to break apart a pretty weak Hot 100 at the moment, and it basically places a giant asterisk around any of the changes or chart positioning as of now. In short, I don’t expect much that happened this week to last… for better and worse, especially as I don’t consider the new Justin Bieber a net positive.

But for a change of pace, the top 10 is actually pretty interesting right now, especially with a new #1 going to ‘Up’ by Cardi B - I’ll be very honest, I didn’t expect this song to do as well as it has, and I don’t expect it to hold the top spot next week, but it got here based on consistency in all channels. Strong sales, great streaming, and a legit radio run… the funny thing is that it won on the margins, because right behind it is ‘Leave The Door Open’ by Silk Sonic, with better sales and radio but just a little less streaming and YouTube - and I’d argue it has even more momentum in channels less likely to be blown apart by an album bomb. It is primed to go to #1 - the question is when. All of this is funny because ‘drivers license’ by Olivia Rodrigo is still here at #3 with okay streaming and on top of the radio… but it peaked there, and that makes it vulnerable. Then we have ‘What’s Next’ by Drake at #4 - I knew it was going to lose the top spot last week, and it’s got the dominant streaming to do well, but the sales evaporated and the radio run is slower - it may have landed on top, but it’ll be a fight to get back there. Then there’s ‘Save Your Tears’ and ‘Blinding Lights’ by The Weeknd at #5 and #6 - the former has more streaming and thus the lead, the latter has more sales and while a bit ahead on radio doesn’t have enough of a margin to avoid sliding. Then back in the top 10 we have ‘Levitating’ by Dua Lipa ft. DaBaby at #7, which had just a huge sales week - I want to blame the Grammys for this, because it did not get a boost on streaming or the radio - but it did hop over ‘Mood’ by 24kGoldn and iann dior at #8, which at this point is riding on residual radio and is fading pretty fast. Then we have ‘34+35’ by Ariana Grande, Doja Cat and Megan Thee Stallion somehow holding steady at #9 - basically all it has is radio, that’ll do it - but it was enough stand over ‘Wants and Needs’ by Drake ft. Lil Baby which despite having huge streaming doesn’t have anything else, so it fell to #10.

Now things get a bit interesting in our losers and dropouts too, especially the latter category. I don’t put a ton of stock in ‘Holy’ by Justin Bieber and Chance The Rapper leaving, it’ll probably be back next week, but I did find it interesting on how ‘Golden’ by Harry Styles, ‘Somebody’s Problem’ by Morgan Wallen, and ‘Tyler Herro’ by Jack Harlow all underperformed - I thought at some point all of these songs might have had more legs. But honestly, we didn’t have many losers this week - off the debut ‘Lemon Pepper Freestyle’ by Drake and Rick Ross expectedly slid to 31, ‘Real As It Gets’ by Lil Baby and EST Gee went to 58, ‘Hold On’ by Justin Bieber slid to 59 - it’ll rebound - and ‘Hellcats & Trackhawks’ by Lil Durk skidded to 94. The rest of our losers… they were just continuing from last week, with ‘Beers and Sunshine’ by Darius Rucker at 81 and ‘Whoopty’ by CJ at 45; it’s on its way out, but it does have enough to get to the year-end list… whoopy.

Now as I’ve said before in transition weeks, I don’t put a ton of stock in our gains and especially our returns - big album drops tend to blow most of the latter off the map, so even if ‘Baila Conmigo’ by Selena Gomez and Rauw Alejandro is back at 84 courtesy of her EP, ‘Like I Want You’ by Giveon got a nice boost to 87, and ‘Undivided’ by Tim McGraw and Tyler Hubbard is at 100, I don’t expect them to last. But the gains do seem stronger here. First we have ‘Astronaut in the Ocean’ by Masked Wolf continuing to 25 - it’s got momentum, people, we’re not getting rid of this - and ‘Pick Up Your Feelings’ by Jazmine Sullivan also up to 75 as she’s got some radio beneath her, which will insulate her a bit from an album bomb. Then there’s ‘Heartbreak Anniversary’ by Giveon at 30 - probably will take a hit next week but he’s got momentum too - and ‘No More Parties’ by Coi Leray and Lil Durk, which is having a streaming moment that I have to hope will last a little longer.

But from there, we’ve got a pretty limited list of new arrivals - pretty odd list too, but we’re starting off with…

90. ‘Settling Down’ by Miranda Lambert - there have been very few things as draining to me as a critic as watching Miranda Lambert score hits with some of her least interesting and most compromised material. I’m not saying that it’s bad - I’m happy she’s seeing success and maybe it was just a question of timing and management, either alone or with the Pistol Annies - but I remember her best material hits or otherwise that didn’t see traction, and when you know it’s less to do with quality and more to do with promotion, and that the majority of music fans don’t understand this, it’s just frustrating. Now to her credit, ‘Settling Down’ is probably one of the best songs on the album - the sandy patter of the groove might feel clunkier than I’d like opposite the guitars and mandolin and touches of organ, not helped by Jay Joyce’s production that just feels overmanaged, and I do like Natalie Hemby’s touches to punch up the writing, but I think my larger issue is that Lambert just sounds utterly disengaged on the song. I get that weariness is part of its point, the open question of how or where she might lay down roots, that she could very easily fall into that life or keep on the road, which has been an arc on her previous projects in recent years. I guess why this doesn’t amount to more comes with the fact that it’s not better than when she was touching on this territory with both the Pistol Annies and on The Weight Of These Wings - she set herself a higher standard, and the colloquial touchpoints just feel more thin. Again, it’s a good song… but she’s capable of greatness.

88. ‘Daywalker!’ by Machine Gun Kelly & CORPSE - …at this point, I have to ask why. Machine Gun Kelly, did your team just give up trying to work ‘bloody valentine’ and ‘forget me too’ as singles, because the latter one has Halsey on it and it’s a hit waiting to happen, why pivot to go in this direction? Now for those of you who don’t know, CORPSE - who also goes by Corpse Husband - is a VTuber on YouTube known for Let’s Plays, his guttural voice and his breakthrough on TikTok ‘E-GIRLS ARE RUINING MY LIFE’; quick review of that, it got overexposed due to TikTok and it’s the definition of edgelord material, but I didn’t think it was bad, especially compared to the field. This, though… this is one of those cuts that should work better than it does. The shrill, eerie synth building off the bass rumble and faster percussion might be an acquired taste but I didn’t find it bad - granted, I’ve been listening to clipping since 2014 so I think my standards when it comes to creepy production are entirely skewed - and for what this song is, a murderous moment where both rappers are talking about fighting and killing people, I actually think CORPSE kind of kills this. Pardon the pun, but in both his growl and shouts, he sounds legit intimidating… and Machine Gun Kelly just doesn’t. Forget the pop punk pivot, this really has been MGK’s problem since the beginning, he just can’t sell this type of intensity in any genre, so even if you get that tasteless Capitol riot reference, I’m more distracted by how on a hook shouting ‘fight’ he doesn’t sound like he can commit. Full disclosure, I was expecting this to be way worse, but while I don’t think it’s great, it’s not bad either… unlike…

83. ‘Follow You’ by Imagine Dragons - there’s a part of me that doesn’t want to open up this discussion by asking Imagine Dragons are still around, because they’re an established brand with a silent majority audience will back them and they were probably just taking time away. And there’s another part of me that’s very grateful that we’re not getting ‘Cutthroat’ charting, because Dan Reynolds delivering the worst vocal performance of the year thus far in any genre on that Frankenstein’s monster of a song should be buried at all costs. In comparison, ‘Follow You’ is just kind of dry and blocky with formless drums, a jagged synth line that doesn’t flatter anything, especially Reynolds’ theatrical delivery, which feels like it needs a more robust arrangement to not sound jarring, especially with all the faux doo-wop backing vocal embellishments. And that’s relevant because this song’s content is about Reynolds’ getting a text from his soon-to-be ex-wife which sparked them to give the relationship another shot and call off the divorce… but the song has a lot of weird, guilt-tripping elements, where it implies she cheated and is disappointed in herself and she’s self-destructing and he wishes he could help fix it but he’ll still follow her regardless… but there’s no sense of intimacy to the song, no sense the reconciliation makes them better or that this is a relationship that can actually last further. It just feels really haughty to me, not something I’d ever want to go back to… so yeah, this is bad. And it seems like while we’re in this territory…

79. ‘Lost’ by NF ft. Hopsin - this is the first time that Hopsin has ever charted on the Hot 100. Yeah, years away from all the times you'd expect he’d have broken through and all the times I would have expected his career was over, he’s now a guest star on an NF single… where we get the same hazy backing symphonic arrangement with bombastic trap snares and strings and where I could swear that NF spends half his goddamn verse off-beat. And… yeah, Hopsin killed this, almost to a distressing degree - not only is his flow better whenever he switches it up, he just sounds way more hungry and naturally than NF going into his structured but dry technician approach to rapping. And the content is better too - Hopsin acknowledges that to some he might as well be a parody of what he tried to do, and that he had fallen off hard and lost his passion for rap, and if this is his one moment to redeem himself, he’s gonna take it! I guess my frustration is that this is all on a NF song, and NF is all about framing the song about the duality between his pride and the underlying terror that he’s losing everything. Not a bad premise, mind you, but this is where his lack of lyrical detail and his willingness to go for bargain barrel aspirational platitudes doesn’t have the same intensity or reality as when Hopsin cuts deeper, as someone who was genuinely lost. So the entire track feels a bit unbalanced… but I did like this more than the last NF single we got, and if 2021 is going to give us a Hopsin redemption arc, hell I’ve rooted for worse things.

70. ‘On The Ground’ by ROSÉ - so I’m kind of stunned we got this. For those of you who don’t know, ROSÉ is a member of BLACKPINK, who came off a pretty robust worldwide breakthrough last year, and while it’s a thing for k-pop acts to have solo side projects, normally you don’t see them until the group has a stronger, more consistent foothold, or if they do they’re confined to mixtapes and they certainly don’t see charting crossover, which is what seemed to happen with JENNIE’s single release in 2018. But here we’ve got a single from an upcoming two-song EP… and I suddenly get why this has some traction, mostly because ROSÉ’s English is stronger due to being born in New Zealand and that lets YG immediately leverage her crossover appeal. And I don’t mind the content either - reflecting on how much success you’ve seen, but looking to ground and center yourself, that’s a good sentiment, which is probably why this song actually starts more in acoustic pop. The problem is that it doesn’t really stay there - as we get a buzzed-out synth breakdown with more faded backing vocals after the hook and with the pop percussion slipping in behind her, it feels more flimsy overall. It’s not a bad tune overall, I can’t say I dislike it… but if YG wants to work a crossover single that could have legs… just push ‘Lovesick Girls’, that song is terrific and deserved more of a run.

36. ‘Street Runner’ by Rod Wave - and to round things off, Rod Wave has a new single for his project coming this year - I’ve been rooting for this guy for a decent bit, and even when I see another song that’s just one verse, an abortive bridge, a limited hook and an extended outro, I really wanted this to be great. And… yeah, this might be the best thing he’s done to date, or at least it’s close. What shocked me is how this sort of song should really work for me - it’s a little underwritten, the production still has some rough edges in the percussion blending, hell it’s built off of a slightly chipmunked sample of a Ruth B song - yes, the woman who made ‘Lost Boys’ back in 2016! And yet… I don’t know if it’s just the fact that Rod Wave has that deeper, soulful presence that can anchor this or the fact that the backing pianos nail the tired, melancholy vibe of being on the road, or the fact that the extended voicemail message in the outro is rough enough around the edges to feel real and not cloying or overstated - hell, I’d argue its greatest strength is that it feels personal and intimate in a way that most trap doesn’t allow itself to be. It’s funny, that Miranda Lambert song plays to very similar sentiments and has a lot of parallels, but that was a song where its rougher edges didn’t flatter or augment its open questions, and the lack of specifics hold it back where ‘Street Runner’ might want to deflect away, looking to the lights taking him higher, but her presence keeps the picture more human. I have to admit, this got to me in a way way more than I thought it would - and now I’m annoyed that next week it has to face album bombs and hold its streaming.

Well, I hope it does - best of the week by a country mile, what an excellent song. Worst of the week is Imagine Dragons with ‘Follow You’, but outside of that I can’t even complain about the rest. Next week we’re in album bomb territory, so strap in.