billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - november 18, 2023

Okay, so I think we may be out of the woods when it comes to major album bombs barring some strange surprise, so the Hot 100 isn’t so much resetting to equilibrium as it is prepping for the glut of Christmas music because not enough of them have been forced into recurrence yet. Granted, 1989 (Taylor’s Version) didn’t really go away in full, which leaves the Hot 100 in a weird space, but I guess I’ll take what I can get with this…

And that starts off with our top ten, where replacing herself at the top again we have ‘Cruel Summer’ by Taylor Swift at #1. At this point it’s the radio margin - despite it being November it somehow still has legs at the top spot on airplay and streaming is no slouch, which places ‘Paint The Town Red’ by Doja Cat at #2 and losing on the margins - it’s winning on streaming, but it can’t close the radio or sales gap. Then right behind her we have ‘Is It Over Now?’ by Taylor Swift at #3 - chalk this one up to residual streaming where it just rules - holding over ‘Snooze’ by SZA at #4, which looks to have hit its radio peak. Then we have our first new arrival at #5, ‘Standing Next To You’ by Jungkook, driven off of his album which has translated to big sales and okay streaming overall - it’s probably not going to last up here and we’ll talk about its quality later, but still interesting to see, especially nudging over ‘I Remember Everything’ by Zach Bryan and Kacey Musgraves at #6 with the streaming traction that just won’t break - god, it’s just so very revealing of Nashville that they’re still not even attempting to get behind this! But now we have the second new arrival in the top ten, and arguably the biggest anomaly: at #7, ‘Now And Then’ by The Beatles. Again, we’ll get into the song more later on, but it’s here based pretty much just on sales - the radio isn’t moving on it and streaming is only lukewarm at best; it’s already predicted to drop off very sharply as a bit of a novelty. Compare this to ‘Fast Car’ by Luke Combs at #8, where it looks like the radio is finally running out of gas even as it saw a modest streaming revival, which brings us to Morgan Wallen who has two songs bringing up the end of the top 10: ‘Thinkin’ Bout Me’ at #9 courtesy of its radio hitting a peak, and ‘Last Night’ which is on the outs with radio but still has a ton of streaming - joy.

This takes us neatly to our losers and dropouts, where I wouldn’t really say there’s any dropouts worth mentioning beyond the extraneous Taylor Swift album cuts, which comprise pretty much all of our losers here as well: ‘Now That We Don’t Talk’ at 12, ‘Say Don’t Go’ at 26, ‘Slut!’ at 31, ‘Style’ at 45, ‘Bad Blood’ at 47, ‘Suburban Legends’ at 50, ‘Blank Space’ at 59, ‘Wildest Dreams’ at 72, ‘Out Of The Woods’ at 73, ‘Welcome To New York’ at 77, ‘Shake It Off’ at 83, ‘All You Had to Do Was Stay’ at 89, ‘New Romantics’ at 92, and ‘Clean’ at 96 - I’m frankly shocked that last one managed to hold on for a second week, neat!

Now the big story are the returns and gains, and I’m going to go through both at length because we don’t have that many new arrivals and it would make sense to get an idea where things are at, at least for now. So in the returns, it’s a split between Jungkook bringing back ‘Seven’ with Latto to 49, and a few straggling country songs at the very bottom of the Hot 100 with ‘Save Me The Trouble’ by Dan + Shay at 95, ‘But I Got A Beer In My Hand’ by Luke Bryan at 98, and ‘Sarah’s Place’ by Zach Bryan ft. Noah Kahan at 100. Now in our gains Jungkook also saw an album pickup for ‘3D’ with Jack Harlow to 58, and the one debut that saw gains from last week was actually ‘World On Fire’ by Nate Smith up to 48, but before we get into the rebounds, let’s consider the songs that were stable that managed to make up ground, like ‘Greedy’ by Tate McRae up to 11, or ‘500 lbs’ by Lil Tecca at 55, or ‘The Painter’ by Cody Johnson at 61, or ‘Que Onda’ by Calle 24, Chino Pacas and Fuerza Regida at 78, or ‘Standing Room Only’ by Tim McGraw at 86. But there’s a lot that follows this, so let’s knock off a few acts that saw multiple gains, like Miley Cyrus with ‘Flowers’ at 23 and ‘Used To Be Young’ at 25, or Noah Kahan with ‘Dial Drunk’ with Post Malone at 35 and ‘Stick Season’ at 37, or Olivia Rodrigo with ‘bad idea, right?’ at 41 and ‘get him back!’ at 60, or Jelly Roll with ‘Need A Favor’ at 15, ‘Save Me’ with Lainey Wilson at 22, and ‘Wild Ones’ with Jessie Murph at 42. Next let’s run through all the rest of the country: ‘Burn It Down’ by Parker McCollum at 80 ‘Hey Driver’ by Zach Bryan and The War and Treaty at 76, ‘Rich Men North Of Richmond’ by Oliver Anthony at 71, ‘Can’t Have Mine’ by Dylan Scott at 67, ‘Try That In A Small Town’ by Jason Aldean at 52, ‘Pretty Little Poison’ by Warren Zeiders at 46, and ‘White Horse’ by Chris Stapleton at 29, which should see an even bigger boost with the album coming next week. And now, the rest: ‘Bongos’ by Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion at 64, ‘Great Gatsby’ by Rod Wave at 62, ‘Strangers’ by Kenya Grace at 53, ‘On My Mama’ by Victoria Monet at 51, ‘Lose Control’ by Teddy Swims at 43, ‘I KNOW?’ by Travis Scott at 40, and ‘Daylight’ by David Kushner at 36. And to finish this off, ‘What It Is (Block Boy)’ by Doechii and Kodak Black at 34, ‘My Love Mine All Mine’ by Mitski at 33, ‘Good Good’ by Usher, Summer Walker and 21 Savage at 30, ‘What Was I Made For?’ by Billie Eilish at 28, ‘Lil Boo Thang’ by Paul Russell at 27, ‘Agora Hills’ by Doja Cat at 20, ‘Water’ by Tyla at 18, ‘Dance The Night’ by Dua Lipa at 16, ‘Rich Baby Daddy’ by Drake ft. Sexyy Red and SZA at 14, and ‘fukumean’ by Gunna at 13.

Okay, so now onto a rather diverse list of new arrivals…

99. ‘We Don’t Fight Anymore’ by Carly Pearce ft. Chris Stapleton - you know, I was thinking the other day when we’d start getting a new Carly Pearce album, and what do you know, she has an opportunistically timed single with Chris Stapleton right as his album rolls around, that’s very convenient! And I guess I shouldn’t be that surprised that we got a pretty damn high quality single out of the collab - Pearce and Stapleton have solid vocal chemistry against the aching strings, gentle percussion, and twang of the dobro as they sing about the sort of dead relationship where it’s not even worth fighting at this point - both seem to be openly cheating on each other, and while you get the feeling both of them would love to actually open up and say something, the gap created by history is just too wide, where honestly you’d expect a breakup at the end but they can’t even muster the energy to do that. Honestly if I have two nitpicks it’d be that the song feels a bit overstated in the vocal delivery - both of them can really sing and sell that heartbreak, but maybe underplaying it would have worked better - and maybe the composition could have used a bit more texture to feel less tasteful… but again, nitpicking - this is a great song, glad to see Carly Pearce back!

97. ‘Bleed’ by Kid LAROI - why do I get the feeling that the Kid LAROI just is not getting the traction to have a more sustained career? ‘First Time’ came out nearly a year ago, and while he put out an album recently stuffed with guest features with that decently sized single two weeks ago, even that is barely clinging on thanks to whatever Scooter Braun can throw behind it, and I’m just not seeing the same buzz compared to everything around Fuck Love a few years ago. And with this… well, I get why the traction might be fading, I don’t care for this all. For one, we’re dealing with another post-breakup whinging session where she’s moved on quickly and off of the bridge didn’t seem nearly as invested as he was, and while he’s gotten marginally better at selling it, the production does him no favours as the warmer acoustics get even more compressed and runny as the drums ramp up for the final hook; honestly, they just sound filmy and gross by the end despite all the warbling textures around him. But again, the larger issue is that he sounds so damn basic and clingy that even playing to adolescent standards it’s not appealing. So yeah, I don’t care for this, next!

56. ‘Can’t Catch Me Now’ by Olivia Rodrigo - so this is the one cut from the new Hunger Games spinoff soundtrack that is built more as a pop song, which to me is very funny because apparently the rest of the soundtrack is all getting written and produced by Dave Cobb and is stacked with indie country acts, which if you remember the old Hunger Games soundtracks isn’t that far afield! But fine, you need to Olivia Rodrigo to break the crossover… and the ironic thing is that while Dan Nigro is producing, this song is predominantly inline with the country folk likely to be on the rest of the album, from the gentle creaking acoustics to the touches of strings to the boygenius-esque vocal overdubs to the remarkably dark subject matter, singing from the perspective of a revolutionary ghost haunting and taunting her adversary who may have won in the moment, but it’s a hollow victory. And it’s where Olivia Rodrigo’s skill as an actress translates well into her vocals - she can sell the darker theatricality and make the track feel cinematic. So yeah, this is really damn good too - I’ve never been a fan of the Hunger Games franchise in any form, but this was well-done.

44. ‘Harley Quinn’ by Fuerza Regida & Marshmello - oh lovely, one of the acts I like the least in the regional Mexican scene teaming up with one of the worst EDM producers of the past several years! So listening through this collab, which has already divided some folks… I don’t hate it the way I thought I would? My primary issue with a lot of the regional Mexican sound is how underproduced it can be with the rickety acoustics and farty horns, which is still true here, but there’s a little more of a bass gallop built in and the vocals feel a bit better micced - the two-step drop that Marshmello adds is not overpowering, and the scant polish he adds is still polish. Granted, then you translate the content which is all about the frontman trying to get this girl to cheat amidst a lot of sleaze and gangland posturing, which feels even more awkward with this production palette, but as a whole, it’s very obvious that Marshmello is trying to piggyback on the sound and it got roughly up to the level of mediocrity; could have been much worse, I’ll say that!

32. ‘Cobra’ by Megan Thee Stallion - there are a few parts to this conversation, the first being that this is Megan’s first release on her independent imprint and was reportedly much darker than a lot of her crossover material, specifically focusing on the loss of her parents when she was younger, depression, alcohol abuse, and a certain ex-partner for whom she has a lot of venom. And this darkness is not that out of character - Meg’s material has always had a harsher edge if you read between the lines, and that feels obvious out of the gate with the jagged riff underscoring the trap percussion and faded flute, and while I’m not sure her delivery is the best fit, I’d argue the bluntness of the writing translates her sentiments effectively enough. Of course, the other side of this story is the rock remix with Spiritbox, where the riff gets even more snarled, the trap percussion get some live support, and Courtney LaPlante adds her sung and screamed vocals to extend the hook and flesh out the cobra metaphor, which is a really nice touch. I’m kind of split on whether I think the rock remix is better - given the subject matter, I think Megan might be stronger on her own - but either way, this is the sort of promising swerve I’ve been looking for Megan to make, and it’s a really strong song as well - great stuff!

7. ‘Now And Then’ by The Beatles - you know, it’s funny, most weeks out of the year, the song by the goddamn Beatles would probably run away with this, especially one tagged as the ‘last’ Beatles song, written by the late John Lennon and originally part of a 1977 demo, produced by Paul McCartney, and featuring Ringo Starr on drums and the late George Harrison on guitar… and here’s where things get sketchy. Apparently this song was originally intended for the Anthology album, but two days into session work it was halted when George called it, and I quote, ‘fucking rubbish’, which is why they never finished the song… and yet after the original writer and the member who hated it died years ago, we’re getting a finished version… and we’re not keeping the same energy we reserve for other fragmented posthumous releases, especially ones like this one that are patched together and have plenty of rough edges to tell? Because once you step away from nostalgia, this isn’t good - yeah, the guitar work has a pleasant mid-90s melancholic vibe, but I don’t love the electric guitar or strings blended in and the vocal harmonies are really rough, mostly because John’s recorded vocals have been weirdly processed. I don’t love the lyrics either - the song feels underwritten, a hazy draft that is getting propped up on wistful longing for bandmates long gone, and I’m just not wowed by it. Call it heresy, but if Paul is using this to finally put a stamp on ending ‘The Beatles’… yeah, I don’t care for this at all.

5. ‘Standing Next To You’ by Jungkook - I am a little surprised we didn’t get more new Jungkook songs that charted beyond the one, but I did hear this was the best of the album and ‘3D’ was a really nice surprise a few weeks back, so I actually had some hope with this… and huh, looks like someone really wants to pivot towards nu-disco, with that fat snarled bass and fizzy percussion and hazy jam courtesy of watt’s production that honestly feels really oversaturated in trying to blur together the strings and more robust horns; this is a song that feels like it should be way tighter than it is, not helped by Jungkook sounding like he’s trying to fight his way over this mix without the punch he needs. What’s also obvious is that I can tell this song really wants to crib notes from ‘Uptown Funk’ but the song is just bereft of any broader flair in the lyrics or performance; for a song all about ‘you and me against the world’, it sounds more like Jungkook needs help to get from under the weight of this production. And this is bizarre because on ‘3D’ he proved he had that tighter swagger, but that song also had a more minimalist groove that didn’t try to overwhelm everything - here, it doesn’t compliment Jungkook as well as it should, and that’s disappointing. Not bad, per se, but if it falls off, I won’t complain.

So that was our week… honestly, pretty strong all things considered, with a tie for the top spot going between ‘Cobra’ by Megan Thee Stallion and ‘We Don’t Fight Anymore’ by Carly Pearce and Chris Stapleton, with Olivia Rodrigo getting the Honourable Mention for ‘Can’t Catch Me Now’. Now for the worst… yeah, Kid LAROI is getting this for ‘Bleed’, but Dishonourable Mention… yeah, ‘Now And Then’ by The Beatles, I don’t like it and I’m not beholden to nostalgia to compensate for a painfully weak song that if it came from anyone else it would not get a pass. Let’s see how much of this lasts going into next week, stay tuned!