billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - october 14, 2023

I’ve said before that weeks like this, where you know the album bomb coming is inevitable and will cause so much collateral damage, they’re difficult to get really excited about. That said, these weeks tend to capture in microcosm the occasional interesting moment or chart flourish and I’m hoping we’ll at least get some of that… maybe something good that’ll stick around past Drake and Bad Bunny and 1989 (Taylor’s Version) in rapid succession, perhaps?

Well, before we get to that, our top ten, where ‘Paint The Town Red’ by Doja Cat holds this spot for one last week. It may hold on thanks to strong sales and still-increasing radio, but losing the top spot on streaming is revealing and I don’t think it’ll be able to hold back Drake. Then we have ‘Snooze’ by SZA at #2 - streaming got a bit of an uptick, but it’s really making the most of radio and streaking towards that top spot… something I can’t say for ‘Cruel Summer’ by Taylor Swift despite it being up to #3 - an okay week on streaming isn’t going to compensate for peaking on the radio, although it was enough to pull ahead of ‘Fast Car’ by Luke Combs down to #4 because it’s also on the radio downswing while getting overtaken on streaming. This opens up a new top ten debut: ‘3D’ by Jungkook and Jack Harlow at #5 - we’ll get into the song more later on, but it’s here thanks to sales dominance and a pretty good streaming debut even as the radio isn’t touching it… we’ll see if that changes, but the odds are stacked against it. Then we have ‘I Remember Everything’ by Zach Bryan and Kacey Musgraves at #6, predominantly here thanks to streaming dominance because the radio still isn’t moving on it - it’ll be fascinating to see how much inertia this’ll have against Drake next week, that’s all I’ll say there for now. But it held over ‘Last Night’ by Morgan Wallen at #7, even if you can tell it’s absolutely on the downswing on radio despite rock-solid streaming, which was enough to prop it over ‘fukumean’ by Gunna at #8, which spent the week losing on the radio but picking up position, and couple that to a good streaming week to hold its spot. Compare this to ‘vampire’ by Olivia Rodrigo at #9, which is also losing radio but doesn’t have the streaming to prop it up, which tells me it’s going to be forced out much faster. Finally, ‘Calm Down’ by Rema and Selena Gomez is still here at #10 - the radio finally started dumping this quickly, it’s only a matter of time before it’s forced out.

This takes us neatly to our losers and dropouts - not a lot in the latter category beyond album bomb deep cuts, but 'Love You Anyway’ by Luke Combs handily clinched its year-end list spot after an extremely respectable run. The losers are also as expected, and let’s get through the album bomb leftovers first: from Olivia Rodrigo, ‘get him back!’ at 45, ‘all american bitch’ at 73, and ‘the grudge’ at 86, from Zach Bryan ‘Sarah’s Place’ with Noah Kahan at 53, ‘Boys of Faith’ with Bon Iver at 82, and ‘Spotless’ with The Lumineers at 91, and from Rod Wave ‘Come See Me’ at 60, ‘H64’ at 87, and ‘Long Journey’ at 96. Outside of them… ‘Agora Hills’ by Doja Cat tumbled off the debut to 34, and so did ‘500lbs’ by Lil Tecca to 70… not exactly surprising for either of them here.

Now the returns and gains - and again, tough to put much stock in any of them here, but in the former category at least for now there’s a decent chunk of them: from Music Row we have ‘Pretty Little Poison’ by Warren Zeiders at 84 and ‘But I Got A Beer In My Hand’ by Luke Bryan at 97, from the regional Mexican scene we have ‘Que Onda’ by Calle 24, Chino Pacas and Fuerza Regida at 94 and ‘Rubicon’ by Peso Pluma at 98, and outside of that… ‘Oklahoma Smokeshow’ by Zach Bryan is back again at 93, ‘FE!N’ by Travis Scott and Playboi Carti hit 95, and ‘Where She Goes’ by Bad Bunny got a bit of an album hype bump to 100, which translated neatly to the gains as ‘Un Preview’ jumped off the debut to 43. And that’s not the only surprise: also off the debut ‘My Love Mine All Mine’ by Mitski surged to 49… although she was accompanied by ‘Segun Quien’ by Maluma and Carin Leon at 69 and ‘Can’t Have Mine’ by Dylan Scott at 81, and while I’m complaining about Nashville, ‘Standing Room Only’ by Tim McGraw saw a bump off the return to 75, ‘TRUCK BED’ by HARDY rose to 63, and ‘Save Me’ by Jelly Roll and Lainey Wilson hit 37 - at least ‘White Horse’ by Chris Stapleton also saw a surge to 38. Outside of those… well, ‘On My Mama’ by Victoria Monet got a boost to 76 off its return, and ‘Lil Boo Thang’ by Paul Russell continues to rise to 51, and the rest are just all over the place: ‘Oh U Went’ by Young Thug and Drake at 74, ‘Deli’ by Ice Spice at 71, and most bizarrely ‘Greedy’ by Tate McRae up to 14 - streaming has really gotten behind this one, which has me kicking myself wishing that if we’re going to have a mid-2000s revival, we’d get performers who could actually sell it!

Anyway, we’ve got a reasonably sized list of new arrivals for once, so let’s get it started with…

92. ‘The Secret Recipe’ by Lil Yachty & J. Cole - I can’t escape the feeling that both J. Cole and Lil Yachty have had rather strange years when it comes to their recorded output - which will only fall under a greater microscope given their contributions to Drake’s album bomb - but with this cut from a compilation EP of songs Lil Yachty assembled that apparently was mostly freestyled… and wow, with Yachty you can really tell, as against the smooth, funky, horn-accented Manchild sample he routinely stumbles off the beat to a frankly distracting degree; J. Cole found a pocket comfortably on this, how is Yachty this clunky again? And when Yachty is as defensive as he is on this song about his influence on the game and how disrespected he is, it’s not a great look to sound this messy. Thankfully Cole manages to come through with a stronger verse, but it still has problems: he’s got legit targets going at rappers faking gang connections, or those who try to get his name for the streaming boost and little else, in particular at YoungBoy Never Broke Again who stood him up in a studio session, but his bitterness at journalists and activists, the latter of which he seems to dislike profiting too much when in the same verse he’s bragging about stacking cash. I dunno, there are complicated issues within the BLM organization, but why do I think Cole’s more interested in making the ‘you critique society, and yet you participate in it’ hypocrisy argument because he’s still pissy at Noname than say anything deeper? Overall, if I’m just keeping it at a standard of a freestyle, I’d say about half of it works - any higher expectations has me thinking it’s just not that good, next!

90. ‘God Gave Me A Girl’ by Russell Dickerson - I’ve been sick of Russell Dickerson for years now, and when I see a song title like that for a track that first dropped nearly a year ago, I’m almost certain I’m just getting the dullest possible boyfriend country market-tested for Christian-leaning Hallmark channel movies. And yep, that’s exactly what this is - blocky programmed percussion, hazy blur of electric and acoustic guitar that feels weirdly lacking in warmth, not helped by the compression slathered over Dickerson’s vocal lead, and content all about how Dickerson was a wild guy… but God gave him a girl that he married, with little to no actual detail about who this woman actually is or whether she has more personality than an achievement trophy. The one thing I can appreciate in the first verse is that Dickerson acknowledges the bars kind of left him feeling empty - that feels real, I guess - but in a year where there is so much better country, there’s no more excuse for gunk like this, let’s move on!

89. ‘Stars Like Confetti’ by Dustin Lynch - …trust someone who knows, there are worse Dustin Lynch songs coming, if you don’t know, savor that ignorance. Anyway, this almost feels like an even older throwback to the slicker side of bro-country: the vocal cadence, the utterly flimsy mix where the tinny cymbal frequency is distractingly left in across nearly the entire mix, the bog standard melody, and lyrics about hooking up at the back of a truck on a starlit night; Dustin Lynch was active a decade ago and was making marginally better music in that era, why does he still think this is what folks want? Granted, this is also from over eighteen months ago and is only charting now, but still… the most it has going for it is that Lynch is trying to bring some upbeat energy and the crowd vocals around the hook are an okay touch. Otherwise… this was played out and disposable at least seven years ago, next!

83. ‘Shaq & Kobe’ by Rick Ross & Meek Mill - …anyone else feel like the buzz around this reunion came and went? Or that it was there for a bit and then just evaporated? Granted, both Meek and Ross are years away from their commercial peak, but you’d think there’d be a little more attention towards this… then I heard the song and I got it, because it feels very rote to me. Meek Mill and Rick Ross bragging about how much money they made with a bunch of vague threats against ‘you’, as the haters, and while the flows are on point, the hook is underpowered and the flex of ‘too much money and power’ behind all the faded filters does not impress me especially with the wiry but oily beat feeling as dour as it is. It honestly feels like an artifact of a sound that I wasn’t nostalgic for in the first place so… I guess it’s fine, but I also understand why folks moved on from this in record time.

80. ‘Stick Season’ by Noah Kahan - …you know, I said back in my mostly negative review of Noah Kahan’s Stick Season that even if I didn’t like the album, I could recognize savvy craftsmanship and with the right promotion he was going to be huge. I think the big surprise for me in 2023 is not only how right I was, but also how Noah Kahan was going to be smart enough to at least pick the good songs from that album to push or remix - that Kacey Musgraves remix of ‘She Calls Me Back’ can’t be pushed fast enough. This was not on my list of favourites from the album, but given its success worldwide and the fact that I can recognize a really strong hook when I hear it, I’m not surprised that it’s finally crossed over… even if when you break it down this is a very cleanly produced acoustic song with the subtle harmonies on the end has the feel of a campfire song. Granted, when you actually pay attention to the lyrics this is the sort of cloying post-breakup whinging that can test my patience - this is no ‘Dial Drunk’ - but there are weird turns to this song, like the self-awareness of his wallowing that can’t quite cover up how upset he really is with the upbeat willowy tones, or the clunky line about how there’s ‘COVID on the plains’, which is a line that feels dated until you realize that COVID is fucking everywhere and hasn’t gone that far away. In the context of a single pop folk song and not the album, this is more likable in a Mumford & Sons vein, but he also absolutely has better songs, keep that in mind.

67. ‘Water’ by Tyla - okay, so this is a song I’ve been intrigued about for a bit - Tyla is a South African pop/R&B and afrobeat artist who has seen this single pop off on TikTok and catch a lot of fire worldwide, with it finally crossing over to the states. And honestly, I get it - the fluttery melodies around the gentle shuffling afrobeat groove paired with some generous vocal overdubs behind Tyla’s generally expressive and pretty singing, all about wanting some guy to completely blow her mind in bed… it’s a simple formula that almost feels like a throwback, but it’s effective and reasonably well-produced. I do think some of the bass mixing is a bit clunky - it can feel weirdly muddy in patches - but otherwise for this sort of pop/R&B, this does a lot right; good song, nice to see it crossover.

55. ‘Mamaw’s House’ by Thomas Rhett ft. Morgan Wallen - look, I’m not surprised that Thomas Rhett went to get Morgan Wallen when his own neotraditional pivot has mostly stalled out, especially as Morgan Wallen cowrote this, but as someone who’s dealt with entirely too much Morgan Wallen in 2023, I wasn’t exactly seeking out more, especially if it’s just the quick label cosign for a greatest hits album. And… honestly, songs like this are hard to get that annoyed with, a pretty simple country tune with a decent amount of pedal steel to accent warmer guitars about their mom’s houses growing up, although the line about wishing that the world would be better and more proper if everyone had that feels kind of hamfisted. But the chemistry is better than you might expect, and while it feels a little compressed and synthetic around the vocal leads, it’s not actively distracting. Overall… count it in the lower tier of songs like this if only because I can remember ‘Meanwhile Back At Mama’s’ by Tim McGraw or really just a huge chunk of Southern Family does this formula better, but it’s not that bad either.

25. ‘Better Place’ by *NSYNC - okay, let’s make this clear: the only reason this is charting at all is because Justin Timberlake is leveraging his soundtrack connections with the Trolls franchise of all things in order to spark a reunion because every other attempt at a comeback this year has gone nowhere and it’s not like the rest of N’SYNC is going to say no. Hell, on most streaming platforms the song is credited to N’SYNC second after Timberlake, but fine, is the song at least good? Honestly, as the guy who always liked the Backstreet Boys more in the boy band wars, I can recognize when something isn’t particularly special even by N’SYNC standards - the ramping of the tempo is a cute idea, but the rest of this song feels so antiseptic and lacking impact, from that dinky whistle to the light funk bass groove borrowed from an off-brand Dua Lipa song. Honestly, given the hand off of vocals and lack of more harmonies and utterly generic lyrics, it reminds me a lot of one of BTS’ English crossover songs that are agreeable but not special, and certainly lacking the magnetism of their best work, with only the more developed percussion and harmonies backing the bridge and final hook getting close. I dunno, after waiting so long for an *NSYNC comeback, this is severely lacking, let’s do them all a favour and forget this exists.

5. ‘3D’ by Jungkook & Jack Harlow - so what some of you might not know is that as of recently, Scooter Braun reportedly got dumped by a lot of his major American clients, which has been spun as him refocusing more on his CEO role at HYBE America, and thus it makes sense that one of the clients he still manages is Jungkook. And he’s put in a lot of legwork give his solo career traction with cuts like ‘Seven’ with Latto and now with this… because hey, Jack Harlow dropped an album this year that sparked conversation for about a week before vanishing, and he could use an actual hit away from that! And what’s ironic is that on the same week as a *NSYNC comes back and tries to sound like BTS, Jungkook has a song that feels like vintage *NSYNC, from the tighter vocal delivery to the punchier bass groove to the fluttery electric simmer behind the prechorus to the minor-key flourishes in the vocal line! Hell, there’s definitely something Timberlake-esque in Jungkook’s attitude on this song, and he sells it better here than damn near anywhere else, to the point where Jack Harlow’s laid-back charisma can’t match it and the flaws in his wordplay rush to the forefront. “When I seen that body, you would think it was a dead body”, calling Asian girls ‘ABGs’ - as in ‘Asian baby girls’, the counting gimmick on his verse, the desperate-feeling outro… I know he was never as cool in reality as his attitude could conceal, but it becomes flagrantly obvious how desperate he is to recapture some attention and it’s not good here. Kind of a shame because I like the rest of this song - get me the remix that’s already been released without Jack Harlow on it, you’ve got a great pop song!

But that’s our week… and yeah, it might be an easy pick, but ‘Water’ by Tyla runs away with the top spot… and I’m giving a tie for Honourable Mention with ‘3D’ by Jungkook and Jack Harlow with ‘Stick Season’ by Noah Kahan, in that both songs are close to being something special but are held back by rather obvious flaws. The worst of the week is much easier with ‘God Gave Me A Girl’ by Russell Dickerson, with Dishonourable Mention… I was tempted to give it to *NSYNC, but ‘Stars Like Confetti’ by Dustin Lynch is so badly mixed that it kind of overrides my opinion there. And next week… yeah, it’s Drake again; I’d say to stay tuned but y’all know it’s not worth it.