billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - november 5, 2022

…yeah, I got nothing. Let’s put aside the fact that I spent nearly a half hour on my main channel discussing my complicated thoughts on Midnights, or that I specifically put in album bomb rules to constrain the weeks where a single artist just overruns the Hot 100, there are those cases and then there’s Taylor Swift. And while I can assign caveats that the Hot 100 especially the top 10 was weak compared to previous years, and that it’s unlikely this’ll last beyond a week or two with Drake and 21 Savage on the horizon, on some level it’s worth highlighting how unprecedented this is. Swift took over the entire top 10 based on streaming alone in a year where streaming has been de-emphasized compared to the radio and sales, and on the topic of sales, Midnights handily crushed all competition for the entire year. I guess I’m surprised the album has so much mass appeal, and it leaves me a little concerned that folks aren’t fully grasping everything Swift is doing here, that the science of the release and promotion is going to be conflated with the artistry - and I’ll admit I’m a little uncomfortable because I think the album is great but part of its appeal was how its style of pop wasn’t quite built for mainstream consumption, and I was completely wrong on that front. But it’s hard to argue that this isn’t the biggest event on an otherwise slow Billboard year - and it raises a big question of a chart’s value if one act can just overrun all competition, even one as massively successful as Swift - and that means by necessity this is going to be a long episode….

…although not when we’re talking about our top ten, because again, Taylor Swift literally has every single slot in the top 10 for identical reasons: massive streaming and more sales than you’d expect. So might as well just rattle them off here: At the #1 is ‘Anti-Hero’ which is primed to be the big single, which is then followed by early album cuts ‘Lavender Haze’ at #2, ‘Maroon’ at #3, and ‘Snow On The Beach’ with Lana Del Rey at #4. Then we have ‘Midnight Rain’ inching up at #5 and ‘Bejeweled’ at #6 - this is likely going to get a spike along with ‘Anti-Hero’ because of the video - and the rest of the top 10 are a bit more scattered: ‘Question…?’ at #7, ‘You’re On Your Own Kid’ at #8, ‘Karma’ at #9, and ‘Vigilante Shit’ at #10.

But now we have the much messier part of this week: losers and dropouts, where given how the Hot 100 operates with recurrency rules after twenty weeks and the exodus of Lil Baby, ironically there was more of an impact on the Top 50 than the bottom. And as such we’ve got some big dropouts: ‘In A Minute’ by Lil Baby, ‘First Class’ by Jack Harlow, ‘Left And Right’ by Charlie Puth and Jungkook, ‘BREAK MY SOUL’ by Beyonce, and ‘Numb’ by Marshmello and Khalid which is likely just shy of the year end list. But now when we get to the losers… again, it’s nearly half of the chart! But this week… just for a level set I’m going to go through all of them, because it’s worthwhile examining just how monumental this was. So, starting with the Lil Baby album bomb, we have ‘California Breeze’ at 44, ‘Forever’ with Fridayy at 46, ‘Heyy’ at 55, ‘Real Spill’ at 63, ‘Stand On It’ at 66, ‘Never Hating’ with Young Thug at 67, ‘Not Finished’ at 71, ‘Pop Out’ with Nardo Wick at 73, ‘Perfect Timing’ at 91, and ‘From Now On’ with Future at 97. Then off the gains ‘Gotta Move On’ by Diddy and Bryson Tiller fell to 90 and ‘Poland’ by Lil Yachty hit 75. And now, the rest: ‘Evergreen’ by Omar Apollo at 88, ‘Glimpse Of Us’ by Joji at 84, ‘Last Last’ by Burna Boy at 83, ‘Betty (Get Money)’ by Yung Gravy at 78, and ‘Whiskey On You’ by Nate Smith at 76… followed by ‘Don’t Come Lookin’ by Jackson Dean at 64, ‘What My World Spins Around’ by Jordan Davis at 62, ‘Romantic Homicide’ by d4vd at 61, ‘Star Walkin’ by Lil Nas X at 60, ‘Son Of A Sinner’ by Jelly Roll at 59, and ‘Victoria’s Secret’ by Jax at 58. Then we have two Bailey Zimmerman drops with ‘Rock And A Hard Place’ at 53 and ‘Fall In Love’ at 52, ‘Thank God’ by Kane and Katelyn Brown at 51, ‘Unstoppable’ by Sia at 50, and ‘Hold Me Closer’ by Elton John and Britney Spears at 47 - at least we’re getting rid of some junk. Then we’ve got ‘Me Porto Bonito’ by Bad Bunny and Chencho Corleone at 42, ‘She Had Me At Heads Carolina’ by Cole Swindell at 40, ‘Late Night Talking’ by Harry Styles at 38, ‘The Kind Of Love We Make’ by Luke Combs at 37, ‘About Damn Time’ by Lizzo at 36, and ‘Titi Me Pregunto’ by Bad Bunny at 35. Next we have ‘Tomorrow 2’ by Glorilla and Cardi B at 34, ‘Wait For U’ by Future, Tems and Drake at 31, ‘Wasted On You’ by Morgan Wallen at 29, ‘Something In The Orange’ by Zach Bryan at 28, ‘Vegas’ by Doja Cat at 27, ‘I’m Good (Blue)’ by Bebe Rexha and David Guetta at 24, and ‘Sunroof’ by Nicky Youre and dazy at 23. Finally, to end off with what was left of our previous top ten: ‘Super Freaky Girl’ by Nicki Minaj at 22, ‘You Proof’ by Morgan Wallen at 19, ‘I Ain’t Worried’ by OneRepublic at 18, ‘I Like You (A Happier Song)’ by Post Malone and Doja Cat at 17, ‘As It Was’ by Harry Styles at 16, ‘Bad Habit’ by Steve Lacy at 12, and ‘Unholy’ by Sam Smith and Kim Petras at 11!

Now here’s what’s funny: given that the majority of the impact was felt higher up the charts we actually did get a gain and a return this week lower down! Yes, the gain was off the debut for ‘Just Wanna Rock’ by Lil Uzi Vert to 48 and the return was ‘Dark Red’ by Steve Lacy to 96, but they’re worth calling out! But more importantly, we are in album bomb territory, and while the vast majority of the standard edition of Midnights blows past my rules, the bonus cuts do not. So with that, ‘Bigger Than The Whole Sky’ hit 21, ‘The Great War’ hit 26, ‘Paris’ hit 32, ‘High Infidelity’ hit 33, ‘Glitch’ hit 41, and ‘Dear Reader’ hit 45 - this one was close to notching among the best, just mentioning that here.

So that only leaves us with seventeen songs to get through, and while I’ll try to be quick with the Taylor Swift songs because I did already review the album at length, we’re unfortunately not starting with her…

99. ‘Miss You’ by Oliver Tree & Robin Schulz - so the controversy behind this is really stupid - several months back a producer by the name of southstar took some of the vocals from ‘Jerk’ by Oliver Tree and reworked them into a song called ‘Miss You’, and he got it cleared with everyone on Oliver Tree’s team and label. Then Robin Schulz showed up, took the exact arrangement, subtly tweaked some elements of the synth, bass, and vocal mixing, and released it with the same title, in about as flagrant of an example of plagiarism as I’ve heard in years! Now given southstar has been signed to a major there is going to be lawsuits about this that’ll likely make copyright law even worse, especially when the underlying arrangement just flat out sucks. I’d argue Schulz’s production makes it worse by making the pitched-up chipmunk squawk louder, compressed, and clipping the front of the mix against the runny synths and pulsating house beat with the old school pianos, but at the core we’re stuck with Oliver Tree’s petulant ‘I never liked you anyway, go away’ vibes that even if it’s coming from an authentic place is still delivered so badly that I wind up likely nobody here. This entire mess sounds and feels cheap, a complete headache that completely sucks, next!

95. ‘Made You Look’ by Meghan Trainor - so I caused a minor stir on Twitter by highlighting that nostalgia for what Meghan Trainor was bringing to pop in the mid-2010s was perhaps misaligned - even if you like the pop from that era, let’s not engage with historical revisionism and act like she wasn’t at the bottom of that ecosystem, even on the sophomore album where she tried and mostly failed to ‘update’ her sound. What I came to discover is that Trainor and her team were trying whatever they could to gin up that nostalgia in the weeks leading up to this release where she would also release alongside Taylor Swift - it’s like late 2014 all over again - and stan twitter fell for it and I played into the outrage. Fair enough, she got me, she made me look… and to her credit, this isn’t terrible. Now it’s not precisely good - the brand name porn on the hook is distracting, the vocal mixing feels really synthetic that clashes with the retro doo-wop she’s returned to, and Trainor has always had this self-impressed swagger she just can’t back up, especially with how vainglorious the song feels. But in a strange way the song leans into that and it feels a bit more convincing, and while the mix feels undercooked, the more restrained bass and flashes of horns actually sound pretty good, even if the song is very obviously structured for that hook to go viral on TikTok. And while we do need to have a long conversation about how the retro fetishism of the 2010s didn’t always deserve the acclaim it got - and this is playing the exact same tune - it’s not bad for it. I’ll give Trainor that much, and nothing else.

65. ‘Monotonia’ by Shakira & Ozuna - First, a clarification - Ozuna actually had a very gentle ballad back in 2018 called ‘Monotonia’, this is not that. Instead it’s a rather canned-sounding attempt to hop on bachata that actually had some rollicking promise before realizing the majority of the song has this squeaky guitar melody that feels distracting against a second guitar line smothered in reverb. And yes, Shakira sounds good here, she nearly always does even if Ozuna can’t remotely match her, but the problem came when I translated the lyrics, where Shakira is trying to take the high road post-breakup and how it was nobody’s fault, just monotony when it petered out. Here’s the problem: this track is trying to run off the tabloid drama of Shakira’s ex cheating on her after over a decade and two kids where she put a significant amount of her career on pause, with Ozuna kind of playing the guy in question, and it produces this weird, dissonant stiffness to the song where even keeping to its own context it feels too wonky to match the proposed ending of boredom. As a whole, the song just doesn’t really work - not terrible, but I won’t go back to it.

20. ‘Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve’ by Taylor Swift - so we have a lot of Taylor Swift songs to get through here, so I’m going to try and keep a brisk pace going through these. Starting with the highest charting bonus cut, and it makes sense as to why: apparently Taylor wasn’t done with John Mayer, because while you can tell she blames herself for jumping into a relationship for the wrong reasons with such an age gap, she’s still furious for him taking advantage of her, trying to memory hole the relationship and his culpability. I think where the song isn’t quite as strong for me comes with leaning so hard on Christian purity metaphors and some oddly clipped mixing and mastering of the percussion - yeah, the guitar simmer is nice, but I’m not sure that’s enough to notch this into a higher tier. Good, not great.

15. 'Sweet Nothing’ by Taylor Swift - yeah, this one was cute for me: the little twinkling melody and hushed vocals as Antonoff allows the mix to ride gentle touches of autotune and expand with touches of horns around the edges, the sort of intimate love song that Swift cowrote with her partner as it highlights how he wasn’t really looking for anything from her, especially juxtaposed against the industry and those screaming that she could do so much more. I do wish the patter of the bridge flowed a little better off the hook - the song kind of stalls out there - but otherwise, this is a cute song that I like a lot, good stuff.

14. ‘Labyrinth’ by Taylor Swift - if there’s a filler song on the standard edition of Midnights, it’s probably this one, with its slight oily squonks, ethereal harmonies, very muted percussion, and pitch-shifted breakdown. Still a song I like a decent bit - the fear in the pit of your stomach of your own heady rush of passion, where you know exactly what sort of heartbreak could be right around the corner, and when everyone expects her to bounce back quickly, she just wishes she could have more time to process everything. That, along with the harmonies, tip this into quality.

13. ‘Mastermind’ by Taylor Swift - now here’s a song I’d chalk up as one of the best on the project, albeit one I feel is getting misinterpreted. A lot of folks especially on TikTok are playing into how calculating it is, but I think that misses two major factors, the first being the major risks she’s taken and how it’s shaped how so many men and women have come to see her, especially given its roots for her in childhood, but more importantly how her partner recognized what she was doing the entire time and came to meet her as an equal. That ramps up a different strain of adult romance that plays with the cascading muted flutters and rush of strings for a phenomenal final climax - god, what a terrific album closer, but it also works as a standalone cut, fantastic song.

10. ‘Vigilante Shit’ by Taylor Swift - this is widely derided as one of the weakest songs on the album - half because you can clearly tell she’s cribbing notes from Billie Eilish and Pure Heroine-era Lorde, half because it’s drawing on certain Tumblr cliches like ‘draw a cat eye sharp enough to kill a man’. But I’d argue it works - the creeping minimalism plays to a different strain of tension and danger where instead of white collar omerta she exposes his crimes to the FBI, which breaks away from the docile high class white women who wouldn’t dare compromise their partners. Swift is smart enough to understand the very gendered expectations at this class level, and while she might not ‘break the rules’ in reality, she has that capacity; it’s a threat she can back up, and that’s why this works, really solid song.

9. ‘Karma’ by Taylor Swift - I get the impression this is a fan favourite on the album and it’s not one of mine. Yes, it’s one of the poppiest on the project with the lockstep snare and hi-hat and warping percussion all surrounded with glittery touches, but it’s Swift revelling in her petty side with a stiffer atmosphere, especially if you buy that a lot of it is targeting Scooter Braun yet again. It’s really saved by the bouncier vocal interplay and the breakdown after the bridge, but I think what would have put this song in better territory would be the acknowledgement that karma can also bite her too. So yeah, it’s decent, but again, not quite a favourite.

8. ‘You’re On Your Own, Kid’ by Taylor Swift - whereas this is a cut I like a lot - if anything it reminds me a lot of Swift’s earliest work, from the softer focus on pulsing bass and guitars to the high school party and friendship to picking through flower petals as she realizes she’s going to have to get out of this small town and chase her ambitions. But the song just hits a tremendous climax on the bridge after the glassy edges of the mix swell around her, where she made the changes to become a superstar and the tremendous cost took on her body and those old friends who have no idea how to really contextualize her now - if they even could - and where even in that moment she’s aware that it’s all so fleeting, and she’s still lonely. It’s a plea to cling to whatever friendship you can find… I dunno, this one really stuck for me.

7. ‘Question…?’ by Taylor Swift - this is one of those tracks that I think deserves more attention than it’s gotten - not a personal favourite of mine but one I think does a lot of thematic heavy lifting with its spare, pulsating taps and a mix that’s quaking with tension that picks up some breezy momentum by the second hook. And that’s before we get to the content, where Swift interrogates an ex where she tried to be earnest and make a big swing in their high-class social scene… and then at a response of laughter that becomes winking applause, he bails and leaves her wondering how much of all of their conversations were just empty artifice while he pined for someone else. I feel like this track is missing another gear to really knock out of the park, or one more great turn of phrase, but it is still good, I’ll take it.

6. ‘Bejeweled’ by Taylor Swift - Okay, I get why this is the single - the hook is chirpy and staccato but it does stick in your head, the glittery mix mirrors the concept, and the moral ambiguity of reveling in frustrated late night escape and the admiration of potential suitors is some easy wish fulfillment. And for what it’s worth there are some nice details - how she characterizes the hierarchical decay of neglect and lingering contempt, how she’s put in the work but was ‘graded on a curve’, and ultimately how she still loves this guy but wants him to pull his shit together. But especially with the overdone Cinderella music video stuffed with cameos, it’s another example of Swift over-extending a metaphor, playing for indulgence and not in an interesting way, and it can feel weirdly immature compared to the rest. Again, I get why it works and it’s not a bad song, but I think it’s the weakest on the standard edition of the album, it won’t get much play from me.

5. ‘Midnight Rain’ by Taylor Swift - this is one of the more minimalist cuts and I wouldn’t quite put it among my favourites - the synth gloss off the crisp cymbals and muted percussion is really nice, but I think the pitch-shifted hook is perhaps a little too restrained when Swift could have easily sung it regularly. Kind of a shame because once again I like the writing a lot: Swift highlights her desire for passion and advancement where her partner wanted her to fit inside a domesticated box and while she understands the comfort that provides and there’s still some yearning that remains, it wasn’t built to work. Potent song, I really dig it.

4. ‘Snow On The Beach’ by Taylor Swift ft. Lana Del Rey - The running joke with this song is that you couldn’t hear Lana Del Rey’s contributions, long-overdue after Swift has been cribbing notes since 2014 at least. But I think that might have been for the best, even if it does contribute to an interesting enough ethereal vibe courtesy of the jangling guitars and very gentle groove - it picks up the hints of glamour but allows Taylor’s authorial voice to hold strong, where her exasperation at this newfound, strange connection feels tangible where they might have been going through the motions until they were sure the love was real - and wasn’t that strange? It’s a nice love song with some odd pop culture references - the Janet Jackson one in particular made sense but feels a bit tonally misaligned - but it’s also really damn pretty, I’m just fine with it.

3. ‘Maroon’ by Taylor Swift - This was the first song on Midnights that really convinced me we had something special, and not just because of how masterfully tense the atmosphere feels with the subtle low-end patter, the sharper percussion, and the synths building to accentuate some excellent vocal harmonies; I really like when Swift goes towards her lower register, it’s perfect for cuts like this. And for once it’s playing off her own mythos really effectively - the reds deepen to maroon, the heady love is now grown up with such stark, tumbling details and its decaying collapse all the more vivid - the carnations he thought were roses as he stands with hollow eyes in a NYC hallway is just stark as hell. I like that whatever legacy here is messy and it gives her venom on the bridge some teeth - easily one of the best songs here, I really hope at some point she can lean more into this.

2. ‘Lavender Haze’ by Taylor Swift - I feel like I’m really close to loving this song: the pitch-shifted elements, the creaking skitter and the burbling effects, how much Swift jumps into a breathy falsetto on the hook, it creates this unease that’s potent as hell in the atmosphere but also doesn’t have that same deeper resonance for me. It’s kind of a shame because like with ‘Midnight Rain’ it hits that precise balance between the seductive glamour rooted in old fashioned iconography - hence the Mad Men reference - but also the confines of it, especially when she’s in a relationship with folks who want to dump a ton of projection onto her and her future, and she wants none of it and that sort of objection doesn’t go down easy. Again, I wish I liked the execution of the track a bit more, because otherwise this is really potent - still very good, though.

1. ‘Anti-Hero’ by Taylor Swift - it’s funny, the lead-off single winds up as what might be the best song on the album and certainly one of her best ever lead-off singles. And what’s startling is just how many pieces of this song work for me - a terrific conversational hook and structure where she balances canny poetry with blunt, confessional moments, the shuffling patter of the groove, the glossy melodies around her that leave this as probably the most accessible song on the album, and writing where so many lines just hit. She sees so many bridges burned, her own machinations in sharp view as she just once again becomes ‘too much to handle’, the sarcasm with a bit too much truth in the line ‘covert narcissism I disguise as altruism’, and then the bridge where she sees the nightmarish scenario that she could leave behind in years ahead, so it’s not getting better. It’s why the two lines that end the hook have such resigned poignancy, staring directly into the sun but never in the mirror, and it must be exhausting always rooting for the antihero. It’s the moment of self-aware humanity I think a lot of folks have been looking for Taylor to deliver, where there’s a part of her embracing her problematic side but also aware of those consequences, which is something some of the more enthusiastic Swifties emulating their idol might mistakenly confront, and as such it feels like there’s a whole slew of people not prepared to confront that messiness and it’s led to some profoundly stupid discourse.

But for me… yeah, best on the album and best of the week, with Taylor also snagging ‘Mastermind’ as the Honourable Mention, shocker! Now for the worst… ‘MISS YOU’ by Oliver Tree and Robin Schulz, unsurprisingly, but the Dishonourable Mention is going to ‘Monotonia’ by Shakira and Ozuna, I really wanted that to work better than it did. But next week… the fallout from all this, stay tuned!