billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - october 10, 2020

You think the biggest story of this week would be that I’m in a brand new location here - yeah, it’s going to take a bit to get the kinks ironed out of the setup, but here we are! Turns out Billboard also picked this week to have an absolute shitshow, not just through their tuning and rebalancing of their sales metrics, but also because in what looks like a back-end nightmare, it led to a brand new and hotly contested #1 that seemed to come out of nowhere!

And yeah, we’re going to start there in the top 10 because while I’ve been insanely busy the past few days for other reasons and might have fallen out of the loop, even then this kind of seemed to come out of nowhere: ‘FRANCHISE’ by Travis Scott, featuring Young Thug and M.I.A, debuting at #1. I’ll talk more about the song’s actual quality later on, but to me this seems like the textbook example of a song artificially boosted to the top on overstuffed sales and enough of a push driven on radio and streaming that it can eke out a win for a single week over ‘Dynamite’ by BTS at #2. Not that this song is innocent of such tactics either, courtesy of all the gimmickry that comes the remixes on the sales charts, and at this point I just have to look at all of this with unbridled disgust. Yes, caring about the glorified statpad accomplishment that is a Billboard Hot 100 #1 is something many of us care more about than we should, but here it’s not even about the accomplishment of getting to #1 but sustaining success in a way that doesn’t reflect the song’s legitimate groundswell. I didn’t like it when Lil Nas X played the remix game either, but at least he had the cultural groundswell to chase a record and was trying to recontextualize the song with weird or interesting choices, where the BTS remixes just feel like stan-bait. Again, ‘FRANCHISE’ is doing something similar and the way it got its #1 feels gimmicky - and it’ll probably be quickly forgotten - but it’s only a bit less hollow. Now all of this overtook ‘WAP’ by Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion at #3, and there’s a part of me that feels if there’s a song that took its #1 with real consistent traction and is holding its own, it’s this one - not great sales, but monstrous streaming and solid radio, it’ll wind up sticking around when the sales of songs above it dry up. Similar case for ‘Laugh Now Cry Later’ by Drake and Lil Durk at #4 - I don’t like the song and its radio is slowing and Drake is no stranger to questionable streams, but as of now it does have the traction in multiple channels to hold its own. Frankly, I’m just sticking up for ‘Mood’ by 24kGoldn and iann dior at #5 - legit groundswell across the board, and while it has an industry push, I’d be more enthused by this being successful than much else above it. Then we had ‘Blinding Lights’ by The Weeknd regain a spot to #6 because of a shocking radio resurgence, but likely more because ‘ROCKSTAR’ by DaBaby and Roddy Ricch is continuing to collapse at #7 in all categories, especially on radio. Now this is where ‘Savage Love’ by Jawsh 685 and Jason Derulo actually did a thing, rising up to #8… only for what looks like its gas on the radio to finally start slowing, so while it overtook ‘Watermelon Sugar’ by Harry Styles to #9, that song is on the downswing in all channels - not that huge of an accomplishment. Finally, thanks to radio and sales we have ‘I Hope’ by Gabby Barrett at #10 - I should note that she’s gotten some success courtesy of a remix with Charlie Puth who is now credited on it… and not gonna lie, he’s kind of great on it in the same way Juice WRLD was on the remix of Halsey’s ‘Without Me’, but still not enough to justify me giving Barrett much more attention.

Anyway, losers and dropouts, and there are three big ones this week: ‘Say So’ by Doja Cat and Nicki MInaj, ‘Savage’ by Megan Thee Stallion and Beyonce, and ‘Blueberry Faygo’ by Lil Mosey - considering all three of these will handily clinch their year-end spots, I’m inclined to say they had a good run. And honestly, I kind of feel the same about most of our losers here. Yeah, it’s not great that ‘Diamonds’ by Sam Smith took a hit to 70 - I think it’ll rebound in coming weeks, but it happens off the debut, and more importantly it did happen to ‘One Too Many’ by Keith Urban and P!nk at 99. Then we have the continued losses for ‘Like That’ by Doja Cat and Gucci Mane to 82 and ‘Said Sum’ by Moneybagg Yo off all its gains to 36 - good. Finally, to balance out the net win of ‘Cool Again’ by Kane Brown falling to 45, we also had ‘Rain On Me’ by Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande sliding to 55 - again, good run, it’ll have a year-end list spot, and I seem to be one of the few people who still likes the song, so I’m fine overall by this.

Now in our returns and gains… I don’t know why Niall Horan is hopping on remixes instead of pushing many of the excellent songs from his album earlier this year, but he’s on one of ‘Moral Of The Story’ with Ashe and that came back to 98 - fine. Meanwhile, the vast majority of our gains seem to be following on from last week, with the exception of ‘Blind’ by DaBaby and Young Thug getting a boost to 85. And most of them are once again country - outside of ‘What You Know About Love’ by Pop Smoke up to 40, we’ve got ‘Everywhere But On’ by Matt Stell at 69, ‘Ain’t Always the Cowboy’ by Jon Pardi at 66, and ‘Love You Like I Used To’ by Russell Dickerson at 65 - Nashville is rotating in a fall playlist, from the looks of things. Finally, connected to the small album bomb we got from Machine Gun Kelly this week, ‘my ex’s best friend’ is up to 28 - not sure how long it’ll be sustained, but as I said, the song has grown on me in a weird way, and I wouldn’t be averse if some of that forward momentum continued.

Now of course since Billboard is late and they probably shouldn’t have laid off their entire IT team if their site is going to shit the bed with such regularity - such a brain trust over there, have to say - naturally we’ve got a busy week of new arrivals, unfortunately starting with…

97. ‘Money Over Fallouts’ by Tory Lanez - …trash. I shouldn’t have to say more, but I will say it’s very telling that after Megan Thee Stallion got shot by Tory Lanez for stupid as hell reasons, provided pretty rational explanations for everything involved and why she had protected him before then, Tory Lanez tried to gaslight everyone on a song that’s the equivalent of a ‘nah, wasn’t me’ and apparently a fairly large subsection of his listening public bought it. I could go on and make the obvious Chris Brown comparison and say that misogynoir is a thing and that Tory Lanez has been thoroughly derivative and mediocre his entire career and that includes his Chixtapes, but I’m listening to the intro and I hear Mal from the Joe Budden Podcast and I’m now annoyed because now I’m stuck agreeing with his ass! Then we get to the ‘song’, as it is - the piano line and beat isn’t bad, but Tory is doing a bad Meek Mill impression as he tries to wriggle out of this by way of flexing, claiming conspiracy theories, and pointing fingers. And I’m left wondering how even Chris Brown did this better - Graffiti is a terrible goddamn album that tries to make all sorts of bad excuses, but at least he tried to convey some sense of remorse, whereas Tory tries to poke holes in evidence that already have explanations, puts Kehlani’s name in his mouth - fuck you - and then thinks it’s a smart idea for his career to reference Jay-Z backing Megan. You try to impugn her character in the same verse while implying she’s totally still into you - she’s not - where you then reference your goddamn gun again and you want to call out Jay-Z? Are you so stupid to not know what Jay-Z did behind the scenes to Chris Brown’s career for a solid goddamn year after the Rihanna incident, and now you want to say something, you sniveling coward? This might not be the worst non-confession I’ve heard because ‘I Admit’ by R. Kelly exists - you should also ask someone how Jay dealt with R.Kelly’s bullshit while they were on tour, that’s a fun story to revisit - but it’s up there, and when you inevitably get deported back to Toronto where you’ll go back to clout-chasing Drake because your touring opportunities will start drying up fast. Megan’s a superstar with real hits, you’re a derivative wannabe that will be forgotten in five years - and this is trash.

96. ‘Put Your Records On’ by Ritt Momney - …so I’ll be honest, I’ve never really loved the original ‘Put Your Records On’ by Connie Bailey Rae. It’s a fine enough slice of easy listening that’s chill and obviously not targeted to me, but as one of those songs that wound up on radio repeat in the mid-2000s, it just fell into the background more often than not… so obviously what we need is a Francis & The Lights-esque cover by a guy with the stage name of Ritt Momney! Let me make this clear, this cover is bad in a number of ways that drive me off the wall beyond the autotune and the blocky clattering of percussion and how the groove is nowhere near as liquid or smooth, instead trying to lean into more choppy staccato keys and tempo chances that match with nothing! No, what might be worse is the recontextualization by this coming from a male singer - what was previously a breezy bit of light empowerment has this undercurrent of a longing hookup vibe that isn’t nearly smooth enough to pull it off, made all the more of an issue by the bridge; in the original, she’s talking to herself and her doubts and questions, whereas here, it’s framed as though he’s addressing her and it’s just horribly awkward! So now, I don’t get the charm or ‘vibes’ from this - even for a song I never really cared about, this is a bad cover - next!

95. ‘Good Time’ by Niko Moon - are we just choosing to get all the shit out of the way early here, my god… okay, I’ve been aware of this song for a decent bit through the grapevine, mostly because I heard it was another attempt to revive the zombified corpse of bro-country, now with trap snares and hi-hats. And that’s pretty much exactly what it is - a clunky fusion of trap snares with leaden bass and acoustic guitars for a laid back chill song that no unique ideas nor delivery. I’ve been complaining about these sorts of cuts for years, but the problem with ‘Good Time’ is one that used to be all over country around the turn of the decade but I haven’t heard in a while: this noxious, self-satisfied mugging tone that just feels insufferable in a really clumsy way. This reminds me too much of Jason Mraz’s ‘I’m Yours’ but with less whistling and worse production - thankfully it’s been dropped at a time in the year where I don’t expect it’ll last, so let’s move on.

94. ‘Ay, Dios Mio!’ by Karol G - I knew this song was coming courtesy of those worldwide charts Billboard is now publishing, but now that Karol G is not stuck with Nicki Minaj promoting a single, how is this? Honestly I’m not sure what to think about it - it’s starts with a weirdly spongy keytap of percussion off the very restrained backing melody, but before long the trap-adjacent reggaeton groove slides in and I’m just feeling that this is awfully dreary and washed out. Which I guess kind of makes a certain amount of sense given that this song is about how she formed a relationship with Anuel AA - which I discovered has been going on for a while, wasn’t aware - but even still, it’s not particularly passionate or enticing. A song like this should be designed to reinforce our interest in the couple and while she’s mostly selling it, from what I could translate of the content and the music behind here, there’s just not much that really grabs me. It certainly doesn’t match the exclamation of the song title, but outside of that… eh, just more forgettable than bad, I’d move on.

93. ‘Big, Big Plans’ by Chris Lane - Not gonna lie, I liked Chris Lane’s ‘Fix You’ way more than I should have, but even I am kind of stunned that he still has a facsimile of a career still going, given that his material has remained sterile and forgettable ever since. Now I guess in comparison this might be a bit better - it certainly feels more organic courtesy of the thicker guitar and pedal steel, but what on earth is up with the positioning of those snares on the hook? They constantly seem like they’re disrupting all those big, big plans he’s talking about on the hook, which makes the song feel weirdly jerky and reinforces that frustratingly synthetic feel. Outside of that… look, he’s building up to ask his girl to marry him and it feels genuine and sincere in his dreaming, and I like the details on the first verse that imply they’re a couple that have gotten comfortable with each other - but outside of that, while I’ve heard worse proposal songs in boyfriend country, I’ve also heard a few better. This just doesn’t make much of an impact with me.

91. ‘drunk face’ by Machine Gun Kelly - so when I said that Machine Gun Kelly got an ‘album bomb’, I was exaggerating - he got three new songs on the Hot 100, and let’s talk about the weakest one. Now you’d think some of this would come out of the trap skitter that opens the song’s first hook, but honestly, when it smashes into Travis Barker on drums who is way more aggressive, it fits the half-formed swagger of the song, where you can clearly tell MGK is stumbling through all manner of bad decisions where he’s barely in control and calls himself a ‘hollywood whore’. And when the guitars rev up on the hook, it’s hard not to dig the desperate fuckup trying to live hard with his half-hearted plan to grow up eventually. Can’t say I liked how the vocals were processed on the outro, but I do think this’ll go off live and otherwise is still mostly enjoyable. Not a great song, but I don’t really think it’s that bad either.

89. ‘Better’ by Zayn - this is going to sound crass, but I didn’t even realize Zayn was promoting any new projects - I think everyone forgot that Icarus Falls dropped in 2018, and yet now he’s got a new album coming with this as its lead-off single, and… it’s built on an interpolation of ‘You Light Up My Life’, that soundtrack dud that somehow ruled the 70s and inspired one of the best One Hit Wonderland episodes from Todd In The Shadows? What’s more distracting is that instead of leaning into the heavenly effervescence of the original, Zayn brought in a lump hip-hop groove with some really badly mastered bass that fractures the washed out, creaking guitars and honestly reminds me more of a Kane Brown reject than anything… which makes sense, because he’s also trying to frame it as a hookup song where even he seems to realize it doesn’t really fit together, but he’s in love and is going to make the attempt anyway. It’s just clunky in a surprisingly ugly way, and while Zayn remains a good enough singer, the production and content gives him nothing to play off of, and in comparison to what both Niall and Harry are doing, Zayn has fallen behind considerably. In a week, I won’t remember this exists.

88. ‘U 2 Luv’ by Ne-Yo & Jeremih - it feels like it’s been a while since I’ve seen either of these names - which for Ne-Yo is very true, as I’ve long suspected his run kind of ended in 2018 when that album went nowhere, but Jeremih has also been somewhat quiet for a while, with the last time he saw the Hot 100 was Wale’s ‘On Chill’ and that collab with Ty Dolla $ign the previous year. But hey, two names in R&B team up, both have the potential to deliver… and it’s pretty good, leaning into that sharp 80s R&B synth sample as both guys get on their sex jam vibe; not helped by Jeremih’s jerky flow with too much autotune and how he references one of his best songs by name, and saying how his girl should be ‘team us’ on a song where he’s singing with another guy. Frankly, even though I’m not a big Ne-Yo fan, he could have easily handled this himself, even if I think he should be above the Netflix reference. The odd thing with this is that even for a collab this doesn’t seem to have attracted a ton of attention, but it also has radio because these are both safe established acts, so this might actually stick around. And… eh, it’s fine, I’m not going to complain about it.

50. ‘bloody valentine’ by Machine Gun Kelly - okay, aside from the fact that I think we as a society owe Megan Fox a big apology for the nonsense she had to face in the late 2000s and early 2010s, this song is still pretty damn great even outside of the video. I like the slightly more liquid guitar rollick behind the slicker verses that ramps up the intensity into the overcompressed synth gloss of the hook - it’s pure clumsy pop punk plastic, but it’s surprisingly sticky in how Machine Gun Kelly tries make the moment work with some swagger and catches feelings along the way. Hell, he sounds as clueless and shocked about the whole damn thing as anything, and when the mix ramps up the blocky compression of the drums to cut loose into the verses and hooks… it’s a cheap trick to build an explosive moment, but I think it works, and the hook is genuinely great! Again, with Machine Gun Kelly, the trick is that it’s transparently artificial until even he stumbles into something real, and that’s where the bizarre magic is - great song, hope it sticks around.

47. ‘Epidemic’ by Polo G - can someone tell Polo G’s promo team that he can work a single for longer than three or four weeks, and that constantly shoving out new ones while the radio is struggling to catch up is a dicey move that risks over-exposure, especially when they aren’t going to go further to find the meat in the content if the hooks don’t pop? Anyway, he’s taking the unfortunate route of referencing an ‘epidemic’ as to instantly date the song, but beyond that… I’m inclined to like it because it’s very much in the Rod Wave mold of melodic trap - questionable bass mixing included - but Polo G is a better writer and off the melancholic guitars he’s spitting his frustration with deaths in the street juxtaposed with how it seems like he’s dumping someone along the way who became fake. And that’s an interesting parallel - real street shit is killing folks around him, but he doesn’t connect to fakeness, even as he can work in that world, and that contrast does make for an interesting moment… but it also has this lingering sour feel that reminds in a weird way of how YoungBoy Never Broke Again mashes this sort of subject matter together; Polo G is more cerebral, but there are parallel emotions. Either way, it’s okay - nothing references the pandemic so I’m guessing the ‘sickness’ he’s referencing is less literal, which is better, but I’m still waiting for him to take that bigger step in content and insight I know he can, so we’ll see.

44. ‘forget me too’ by Machine Gun Kelly & Halsey - no jokes, this song justifies the entire existence of the Machine Gun Kelly album, and it works for a lot of the same reasons that the other great songs here connect.- there’s some mercenary deflection of emotion where you can tell at least he’s trying to deflect from any pain he feels on the breakup, but then Halsey shows up with a raw intensity that makes her sound like the second coming of Avril Lavignre and such a natural fit for pop punk you can wonder why she hasn’t made that genre pivot herself years ago! More importantly, she’s the kissoff that hits MGK square in the face that shows just how toxic and destructive this relationship is… and paradoxically how much chemistry they have! It helps that the guitars have so much nervy energy off the charging bass and slappy percussion - again, overcompressed and a song that could absolutely afford to cut back on the cymbals to let the guitars sound a bit more raw, but again, for what this is, it kicks ass. Easily one of my favourites on the album, and if this does not get a video or pushed as a single, everyone will have fucked up - this is legit awesome!

1. ‘FRANCHISE’ by Travis Scott ft. Young Thug & M.I.A. - am I the only one who cares that M.I.A. got her #1 for this and not ‘Paper Planes’? Again, it shows how the charts are a glorified stat pad that rarely if ever properly measures cultural impact, but this song in particular… I keep feeling it should work way more than it does, in part because I think the production is great! No seriously, that buzzy bass playing off the creaking, quasi-industrial scratches and haunted vibe is a great compliment for Travis in his moodiest and angriest - this’ll go off live, and when he starts switching up his flow by the final verse, it was clear he was trying to make this sound cooler than it actually is when you look at some pretty flimsy flexing. But fine, Travis Scott has always been more attitude than substance, even if this really calls for a more distinctive hook, he could have carried this on his own… I think the problems come with the guest stars. You all know I’m no big fan of M.I.A., but she can work over this production - shame that even by the standards of sloganeering that makes her most potent songs, her half-formed verse can’t even rise that. Young Thug on the other hand just doesn’t bounce off this production in the same way, especially as his flexing feels weirdly precarious as he crams his bars full of adlibs. Honestly, I think this is one of those cases where the production is so potent I’d hear other rappers on this production in remixes before an original - can you imagine Nicki or Future or hell, even Kendrick on this, it’d be nuts! Overall… I liked it more than I thought I would, but it’s too openly flawed and falling short of its potential for me to fully get onboard. Not bad, though.

Now for this week… the best are both going to MGK and I can’t believe I’m saying that, but ‘forget me too’ with Halsey is easily getting the top spot with ‘bloody valentine’ as the Honourable Mention. And the worst is stunningly easy this week too: the ‘Put Your Records On’ cover by Ritt Momney is easily the Dishonourable Mention, and that trash song by Tory Lanez remains the worst of the week and very much trash - if this charted enough to push back a return of Joji’s best songs, something has gone deeply wrong. Next week, let’s see what falls out - stay tuned!