billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - october 16, 2021
So I expected a Meek Mill album bomb this week… and we kind of got one? Overall pretty muted, mostly far below the area that causes a lot of disruption, but it feels like the chart did shift towards some form of equilibrium this week, mostly as YoungBoy Never Broke Again had a much wider presence and nearly all of that wound up gone. I don’t want to say this was a shift towards normalcy - because who know how long any of this will last - but things do feel like they’re settling down, especially as I don’t really see the next big release on the horizon.
So let’s start with the top ten, where I’ll admit a little reluctant surprise and mild disappointment that ‘Stay’ by Kid LAROI and Justin Bieber retook the #1 from BTS and Coldplay. Streaming might have been up but it does lag on sales… until you realize it’s the biggest song on the radio right now and it doesn’t show many signs of slowing down. In fact, you could argue that Billboard may have subtly nudged their formula in favour of radio, and where that shows up isn’t in our #2, ‘INDUSTRY BABY’ by Lil Nas X and Jack Harlow, which might be strong on streaming but just couldn’t make up enough of the gap. No, that comes with our #3: ‘Fancy Like’ by Walker Hayes - and this is before the video comes in with Kesha, but the sales are still here and the radio was on a ridiculous surge. Hell, it moved past ‘Way 2 Sexy’ by Drake ft. Future and Young Thug at #4, which rules streaming but just can’t pick up radio fast enough. Then we saw ‘Bad Habits’ by Ed Sheeran rise to #5 - although even despite being second on the radio it may have peaked - and even ‘good 4 u’ by Olivia Rodrigo rise to #6, despite the fact that song is very much on its way out along with ‘Kiss Me More’ by Doja Cat and SZA at #7, as well as ‘Levitating’ by Dua Lipa at #8. Then holding at #9 thanks to rock solid streaming stability we have ‘Knife Talk’ by Drake ft. 21 Savage and Project Pat, and then entering the top 10 - and it’ll be fascinating to see how long this lasts - ‘Essence’ by Wizkid ft. Tems and Justin Bieber. What might surprise you is that alongside a boost in streaming, the radio has really taken to this one - I guess you can thank Bieber for the terrestrial crossover, but this is stable for the time being, and I’m curious how long it’ll hold where it is.
On the flipside, our losers and dropouts are pretty interesting this week, mostly because in the latter category it’s pretty much all just YoungBoy Never Broke again and leftover album bomb material, although we did see ‘Rumors’ by Lizzo and Cardi B and ‘Things A Man Oughta Know’ by Lainey Wilson both fall off, the latter likely just missing the year-end list while ‘traitor’ by Olivia Rodrigo looks to be a lock. And while we’re talking about album bomb losers, from YoungBoy we have ‘No Where’ at 100, ‘Life Support’ at 88, ‘Nevada’ at 86, and ‘Bad Morning’ at 81, from Drake we have ‘Champagne Poetry’ at 65, ‘TSU’ at 98, and ‘Love All’ with Jay-Z at 99, and from Kanye we have ‘Hurricane’ with Lil Baby and The Weeknd at 44. Then we had the continued fade for ‘Waves’ by Luke Bryan to 87, along with a slip off the debut for ‘Your Heart’ by J. Cole and Joyner Lucas to 61 and ‘Too Easy’ from Gunna and Future at 59. But it seems like more of a story here is with BTS, where not only did ‘My Universe’ with Coldplay slip to 12, but ‘Butter’ fell to 58… and yet these are still selling a lot of copies! This to me says that Billboard may have tweaked its formula if not in favour of radio and streaming, but against sales… which as I said a few months ago, it was just a matter of time.
And if you want more proof of that, let’s look at our gains and returns, where the big story is that country surged back in waves. Yeah, there are some rebounds like ‘Sharing Locations’ by Meek Mill ft. Lil Baby and Lil Durk to 23 off the album, ‘Woman’ by Doja Cat at 62, and ‘2055’ by Sleepy Hallow at 63, filling in the gap for YoungBoy, and then the continued surge for ‘Cold Heart (PNAU Remix)’ from Elton John and Dua Lipa at 32 - somehow this is beating ‘Love Again’ by Dua Lipa up to 41 and that just depresses me - and the continued rise for ‘Love Nwantiti (Ah Ah Ah)’ by Ckay at 35. But the surge back from Nashville radio gives me the impression something was tweaked beyond the regular album bomb rebalance: ‘Memory I Don’t Mess With’ by Lee Brice at 33, ‘My Boy’ by Elvie Shane at 42, ‘Buy Dirt’ by Jordan Davis and Luke Bryan at 43, ‘You Should Probably Leave’ by Chris Stapleton at 51, ‘Cold As You’ by Luke Combs at 53, ‘Drunk (And I Don’t Wanna Go Home)’ by Elle King and Miranda Lambert at 55, ‘Thinkin Bout You’ by Dustin Lynch and MacKenzie Porter at 57, ‘Knowing You’ by Kenny Chesney at 67, ‘Drinkin Beer, Talkin God, Amen’ by Chase Rice and Florida Georgia Line rebounding to 71, and ‘Same Boat’ by the Zac Brown Band at 77. Even when we look at some of our other gains the common element seems to be solid radio: ‘Gyalis’ by Capella Grey at 38, ‘Baddest’ by Yung Bleu, Chris Brown and 2 Chainz at 56, ‘Memory’ by Kane Brown and blackbear at 68, and especially ‘Chosen’ by Blxt, Tyga and Ty Dolla $ign off the debut last week to 80. Finally we have a few latin songs who picked up minor gains: ‘Volvi’ by Aventura and Bad Bunny at 73 and ‘Todo de Ti’ by Rauw Alejandro at 74. And if you still don’t believe, take a look at our returns, where yes ‘Blue Note$ II’ by Meek Mill and Lil Uzi Vert returned to 72 on the album bomb, but we also saw ‘One Mississippi’ by Kane Brown back at 92, and ‘Ghost’ by Justin Bieber at 93 which has quietly been getting a radio push. Most interestingly we have ‘Sand In My Boots’ by Morgan Wallen at 94, where Nashville radio has been quietly pushing this too… and if the machine revs up fast behind him with radio bolstered, this could pick up traction very quickly; y’all will need to be prepared when that happens. But on a different note, we did actually just get an album bomb from Meek Mill this week, so for the songs that are below the top 40 and are neither the best nor the worst of the week… ‘Love Train’ at 90, ‘Me (FWM)’ with A$AP Ferg comparing himself to Chewbacca at 89, ‘Outside (100 MPH)’ at 76, ‘On My Soul’ at 69, ‘Expensive Pain’ at 66, and ‘Hot’ with Moneybagg Yo at 60, which was close to winning me over before he blew it with the last goddamn line.
Alright, now onto our new arrivals, starting with…
97. ‘Whiskey And Rain’ by Michael Ray - I’ll admit right out of the gate I had reservations about this one - I’ve never cared all that much about Michael Ray to begin with, but given that he is the ex-husband of Carly Pearce, who just put out a pretty great album documenting their divorce, I had the gut feeling this was going to be an uphill battle. And… well, I don’t think this is bad, but if this is set up as the other side to Pearce’s songs, it can’t help but feel pretty underwhelming. Now to Michael Ray’s credit, he’s also pivoting into more neotraditional sounds with a nice fiddle, more live drums, and even if there’s some fizzy effects slipping in, they’re not obtrusive for a pretty solid, minor key melody as he commiserates over his whiskey on a rainy night. But my problem with this is pretty much the same as it’s been with the majority of Michael Ray - as a singer and songwriter, he’s just not that interesting, even if on a textural level this is easier to like - just because it’s going for tones in country I like doesn’t mean the song is that potent. As it is… I don’t dislike it, but it’s not that interesting, let’s keep it real.
96. ‘Esta Danada’ by Ivan Cornejo - …you know, just because a half-finished fragment of a song goes viral on Tiktok doesn’t mean you have to rush out the fragment as a single. Because that’s what this feels like, another regional Mexican act who caught a brief flurry of activity off an acoustic ballad - the second time this has happened this year - and then a kid with less of a profile than me online winds up with a charting hit… and not a good one. And I don’t place this on Ivan Cornejo, whose crooning and writing is not special in trying to win over this damaged girl but also has the feel of something intimate and unrefined that wasn’t intended for a wider audience - not helped by the fact that he’s placed midway back in the mix and let’s cut to the chase, the composition and production of this is a total mess. The blending of the clashing acoustic and electric tones has no central focus or groove, the choppy, off-rhythm acoustic plucks are louder than the vocals, the entire song stutters through with nothing in terms of structure, there are passages where it seems like the guitarist forgot the next note, it sounds sloppy but is way too cleanly produced to fit a bedroom pop vibe. Again, this feels like a label capitalizing on a moment without any focus on developing this kid - it sounds amateurish in the worst way, and not the sort of song I’d otherwise review anywhere. I mean, this is pretty bad, but be conscious of where you place your backlash.
95. ‘Ride For You’ by Meek Mill ft. Kehlani - So here’s the funny thing with this cut: it absolutely feels like a formula radio record would have dropped in the 2000s with the R&B hook with generally softer content which tends to be pitched for pop crossover right out of the gate. And normally Meek Mill is pretty bad at this style - he’s got one mode that’s aggressively in your face, so even with the rickety guitars and vocal sample around the trap beat, he needs a singer that can hold her own opposite him, and I think Kehlani is enough of that to make it work, specifically hitting the ‘ride of die’ balance where they go hard for each other and the edge balances out. What I’m saying is that while this doesn’t exactly elevate either of their strengths that strongly, it’s more melodic and efficiently constructed, and the fact that Meek Mill can actually make a track like this work nowadays is a sign of growth, albeit small. So yeah, I actually think this is pretty decent, make of that what you will.
91. ‘Feelin Like Tunechi’ by Lil Wayne ft. Rich The Kid - is anyone else just convinced that Rich The Kid’s rap career is an extended money laundering operation by his bewildering number of friends? Because somehow he put together a collaborative mixtape with Lil Wayne and this is the breakthrough song… and wow, Rich The Kid sucks, but is that a surprise at this point? His hook is a flagrant Young Thug ripoff, he stumbles through his verse and flexing that I don’t remotely believe, with a flow I’d call derivative if it was in any way coherent, and with the warbling acoustic line behind the trap percussion, he doesn’t even seem like he has a pocket. And I’ll be honest, I don’t particularly Wayne’s verse either: the drug abuse, the shooting people, that’s nothing new, but do you really want to hear about him skeeting on them tiddies, or his ‘fresh plate of pussy, not cleaning the dishes’? I’m not going to deny that his punchlines connect, but when you contextualize what he’s actually saying, I just don’t have much of an inclination to check out more, especially when the rest of the song isn’t good.
83. ‘The Feels’ by TWICE - I’m actually a bit surprised this is the first time we’ve gotten a TWICE song on the Hot 100 - a k-pop band that has projects in both Japanese or Korean, nine girls that have built some traction over the past five years, this is their first English single and my first exposure to them outside of hearing in passing. And… it definitely still has a k-pop feel in the slightly off-kilter lyrical structure for a love song - and prechorus delivery that kind of reminded me early Kesha - and a bit more compression that I’d prefer, but for a slice of flashy nu-disco overflowing with vocal personality, I was having fun with this! It definitely feels reminiscent of the more plastic side of late 90s pop, but when the groove and hook is well-delivered, it’s a slice of nostalgia bait that feels well-realized. So yeah, I’ll get behind this - fun stuff, definitely curious to see if TWICE continues to try and compete in this market!
78. ‘Last One Standing’ by Skylar Grey, Polo G, Mozzy & Eminem - you know, after Eminem made ‘Venom’ a few years back as one of the most hilariously awful songs in his career - and trust someone who knows, that’s a tough list to crack - I would have thought he would have stayed away from this franchise. But it did wind up successful - somehow - and Eminem is a comic book nerd and has never shied away from good taste - probably how he got Skylar Gray the lead credit on this song - and so, are we two for two on disasters? Well no - unfortunately I don’t think this song is interesting or memetic enough to fall in that category, even if it is better - Skylar Grey’s hook is pretty anonymous pump-up material, Mozzy’s verse was solid but not that interesting, and the piano-backed production slipping into the desaturated metallic chords reminds me way too much of Recovery-era Em and while I get the appeal, it just doesn’t have the same flavour for me. And when it comes to his verse… yeah, it feels better structured and there’s no outright embarrassing lines - although comparing his angst to his feelings on 9/11 was certainly a choice - but it feels very muted with his delivery, more focused on aspirational content that can feel a little stale from him. Honestly, I think Polo G runs away with this song: his verse is sharp, plays to his strengths, he sounds hungry as hell… which means the entire track peaks early, but it at least keeps it in the realm of mediocrity. Not bad by any means, but I’m not sure I’m going to care about this long-term, just saying.
75. ‘Jugaste y Sufri’ by Estabon Armado ft. DannyLux - okay, maybe this is just me not in this space on Tiktok, but this is another act drawing on traditional Mexican sounds to land virality, and I’m just surprised it’s caught so much traction, especially as this crooning is not that impressive and the guitars and vocals are still mixed very clumsily given how they peak off the more developed bassline. But then we get into the content, where this is framed as guys betrayed and left behind by some horrible girl where her love was poison, and it feels kind of noxious with this gentle acoustic backdrop, where I’d say the bass adds some darker menace but it just doesn’t convey properly. Yes, it’s better composed, but does that mean much when it otherwise feels this sour - I’d put money on if you flip this to English, the romanticism would slip away and this would scream ‘fuckboi’ a lot more. So yeah, I definitely don’t care for this either - and I’m really starting to dislike this trend.
36. ‘Intro (Hate On Me)’ by Meek Mill - and of course we’re ending off with the intro from Meek Mill, because at this point we all know the biggest draw from a Meek Mill album is the bombast intro that serves as the hype anthem. And I have to feel at this point it’s setting up expectations I’m not sure he can back up, even if it feels representative of the extended victory lap of the project and why I’m just not left with much to say about his album cuts. Yeah, the sandy trap groove riding off the fractured Nas sample does feel propulsive and Meek Mill’s rhymes are sharper as he rattles through the brand names, flexing, and threats to shoot people… but it doesn’t hit the same as his best intros and I think I know why: it’s a victory lap, and thus the crescendo and progression isn’t there in the same way. Yes he’s still grinding, but he’s on top already, so he doesn’t have that dramatic framing and thus the ‘I’m still going up’ progression isn’t as interesting given Meek’s limitations in flow and storytelling… which is true across the entire album. Still, not a bad intro… but not close to his best.
And that leaves a bit of a weird week here, not gonna lie. Yes, Meek Mill is going to get Honourable Mention with ‘Ride For You’ with Kehlani, but I’m actually giving my best of the week to ‘The Feels’ by TWICE - call it playing to nostalgia, but it really worked for me! And the other surprise is that Meek Mill doesn’t get the worst of the week either: that dishonourable mention goes to Lil Wayne and Rich The Kid for ‘Feelin Like Tunechi’, with the worst of the week going to ‘Esta Danada’ by Ivan Cornejo… again less on him, more on those who behind him who pushed this. Next week… maybe a bit of stability, finally?