billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - october 7, 2023

Here is one of the most stark observations of this week, and if this isn’t a sign things have tangibly changed on the Hot 100, I don’t know what is: Zach Bryan’s EP had more album impact than Doja Cat. Yes, some of that is inevitable given the precarious nature of her labels supporting the project whereas Warner is throwing all possible support behind Zach Bryan, but even with that in play, the popular tides have shifted in a direction I never would have expected, certainly not to this degree!

Now I don’t want to oversell this, especially when you consider our top ten and what has rebounded to #1 on the strength of her album: ‘Paint The Town Red’ by Doja Cat. To be fair, I’m not sure what is stopping it here: dominant on sales and streaming with radio surging, it was beating all of its competition here, the closest of which is ‘Snooze’ by SZA at #2, which saw its radio growth slow abruptly and not quite pick up the streaming it would need to penetrate any margin. Then we have ‘Fast Car’ by Luke Combs at #3. which having peaked on the radio absolutely now feels like it’s on the downswing, and while in a different time that would have opened up a lane for ‘Cruel Summer’ by Taylor Swift up to #4, she lags on both streaming and the radio and can’t quite close that margin. Then holding steady we have ‘I Remember Everything’ by Zach Bryan and Kacey Musgraves at #5 - streaming has held incredibly strong, which makes up for radio being painfully slow to get onboard and again, money is just being left on the table here - as well as a slight recovery for ‘Last Night’ by Morgan Wallen at #6, mostly because a good streaming week compensated for its radio collapse. Also holding steady we have ‘vampire’ by Oliva Rodrigo at #7, which the radio might be dumping but had a surprisingly good week on streaming, and either way it was enough to hold its margin over ‘fukumean’ by Gunna at #8, which is stable on streaming but just couldn’t make more headway to close the radio gap. Then reentering the top ten we have ‘Calm Down’ by Rema and Selena Gomez at #9 - definitely losing radio but probably slower than you might expect - and then holding at the bottom we have ‘Dance The Night’ by Dua Lipa, because while the radio is dropping this, it has enough of a margin there to slow its collapse.

Which takes us nicely to our losers and dropouts, of which the majority of the latter category comes with the Rod Wave album bomb with the biggest being ‘Fight The Feeling’, but we also saw ‘Where She Goes’ by Bad Bunny likely clinch its year-end list spot, with it being a little more nebulous for ‘Put It On Da Floor Again’ by Latto and Cardi B along with ‘Bury Me In Georgia’ by Kane Brown and not happening at all for ‘FE!N’ by Travis Scott and Playboi Carti. Now our losers we can chalk up to album bombs taking body blows with exits that are still lasting a little more than one might expect, especially in the case of Rod Wave as ‘Boyz Don’t Cry’ hit 46, ‘Come See Me’ at 48, ‘Call Your Friends’ at 50, ‘Turks & Caicos’ with 21 Savage at 51, ‘H64’ at 71, ‘Long Journey’ at 75, ‘Nostalgia’ with Wet at 86, ‘Crazy’ at 91, and ‘Checkmate’ at 97. Then we have Olivia Rodrigo’s album bomb losses, with ‘get him back!’ falling to 34, ‘all american bitch’ at 56, ‘the grudge’ at 64, ‘lacy’ at 84, ‘making the bed’ at 93, ‘logical’ at 94, and ‘love is embarrassing’ at 100. Then we have Zach Bryan’s first album bomb losses, with only a few with ‘Spotless’ with the Lumineers at 80 and ‘East Side Of Sorrow’ at 95, and the rest… well, ‘Bongos’ by Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion isn’t really catching on at 44, but the larger surprise is ‘Slime You Out’ by Drake falling to 12, which really seems to be fading from popular conversation more quickly than I expected, especially with that album coming up fast.

That all comes with the implication that we are between album bomb weeks, and that makes our gains and returns a little tougher to gauge. In the latter group, ‘On My Mama’ by Victoria Monet clawed back to 99, ‘Standing Room Only’ by Tim McGraw picked up to 96, and ‘Demons’ by Doja Cat saw its album bomb boost to 92, but our gains are all over the damn place and I have no idea how much any of this will last. ‘LALA’ by Myke Towers recovered all of its losses to 59, and while I’m very pleasantly surprised that ‘Strangers’ by Kenya Grace got a nice boost to 63, ‘Lil Boo Thang’ by Paul Russell also saw a jump off the debut to 74. Most of the rest of these seem like the beneficiaries of radio stability, like ‘What It Is (Block Boy)’ by Doechii and Kodak Black at 32, or ‘Good Good’ by Usher, Summer Walker and 21 Savage at 36 - although this probably got a nice boost by Usher’s Super Bowl Halftime performance announcement - or ‘Daylight’ by David Kushner at 37 or ‘Save Me’ by Jelly Roll and Lainey Wilson at 47, or ‘White Horse’ by Chris Stapleton at 57, or ‘Girl In Mine’ by Parmalee at 81. The exceptions… ‘I KNOW?’ by Travis Scott at 35, mostly because it has streaming behind it, and ‘El Amor de Su Vida’ by Grupo Frontera and Grupo Firme at 72, which actually has more radio than you might expect backing it for a little stability.

But we do have a lot of new entries this week… and none of them fall under album bomb qualifications so we’re talking about all of them, unfortunately starting with…

98. ‘Can’t Have Mine’ by Dylan Scott - how in the Nine Hells has Dylan Scott stuck around into 2023? I was covering this guy back in 2017 and I thought being stuck on Curb Records meant that his career was doomed, but really it just translated into six years between albums with this being a late single from the project over a year ago! And… okay, it’s not as bad as it could have been, where he’s trying to convince one of his single friends that the right girl is out there, but said friend can’t have HIS girl, and the song is generally produced okay with the warmer, more organic tones… although for some reason they crowbar in a fake snap and programmed percussion onto the hook when it’s really not needed. I think my larger issue is that Dylan Scott just can’t sell this - he’s got a brash, loud energy that feels like the poor man’s Brett Eldredge with no subtlety or restraint, and it makes the song fall flat. Not the worst thing he’s done, but nothing worth caring about, next!

88. ‘HVN On Earth’ by Lil Tecca & Kodak Black - okay, maybe it’s my fault that I’m this surprised that Lil Tecca managed to nab slots off of his most recent album; I liked ‘Ransom’ back in 2019 more than most, but are folks really still checking for him? Granted, with this song we can probably tack up the reason it charted to Kodak Black… or because it’s vaguely catchy because the song is rooted in a pitched-up sample of Lil Tecca squeaking the acronym for ‘heaven on earth’… which is H.O.E. The exasperating thing is that once you get beyond that one bad conceit, the rest of this song is either flimsy or incompetent: Lil Tecca is trying to assert loyalty and not to think too hard or he’ll hurt himself - pretty obvious in hindsight - and then Kodak Black comes in with one of the worst verses I’ve heard in the past few weeks; a flow that sounds like he’s falling all over himself, focusing more on threatening his opps than any women in flagrant defiance of the song’s concept, and then saying that he feeds a bad bitch baby food and has them on his ‘macadamia’. And with the production being nothing all that distinctive or interesting, this is lousy in the way that has me questioning why on earth anyone cares for more Lil Tecca, let’s move on.

83. ‘Segun Quien’ by Maluma & Carin Leon - So I’ve said in previous episodes that of the regional Mexican crowd, I like Carin Leon more than most, and going back a few years I’ve also been kinder to Maluma so this was a team-up where I actually have some expectations, hopefully they would have good chemistry and it would work well. And… oof, I’m not sure this works at all, and let’s get the production issues out of the way first - the staccato farty horn line against the rickety acoustics have little in the way of groove, and don’t cater to the smoothness that I know both of these guys can sell, as well a weird synth glaze sitting behind the hook that’s distracting as hell. But then there’s the content… honestly, I’m tempted to call this a joke song, where these guys are ardently denying that they aren’t over this girl, because one of their ‘friends’ tipped said girl off that they were being drunken messes shouting her name at the bar and are very obviously not over her. But the joke feels poisoned by how sour and petty the song is, especially by the second verse - it’s just ugly all the way around, maybe it was my mistake expecting more, but I really did not like this!

76. ‘My Love Mine All Mine’ by Mitski - …you know, after multiple albums where Mitski was slowly pivoting in a pop direction for a larger audience, it’s the spare, Americana-leaning “love” song in 2023 that goes viral on TikTok and lets her crossover, go figure! And I won’t lie and say that it’s weird this is her first debut and not, say, ‘The Only Heartbreaker’, but if we are gonna see it, this is one of the better songs of that album that I just did not like as much as everyone else did. I don’t love the live-sounding vocal arrangement, but that’s nitpicking for a song with some gorgeous pedal steel and gentle piano touches for that vintage country ballad feel - and I think it should be stressed that this isn’t really a love song so much as an entreaty to a higher power that if she winds up perishing, her love is the one thing she can cling to as being hers alone, half metatext as the love also underlines the passion that goes into her art, half deeply sincere and heartbreaking as she feels that she can be sure of nothing else but this. Again, not quite my favourite from the album, but it’s the sort of track that’s so refined and tasteful that it almost doesn’t feel like it belongs on the Hot 100; still great though, I’m happy it’s here.

66. ‘Pain, Sweet, Pain’ by Zach Bryan - okay, we have five Zach Bryan songs to get through, and since I’ve already reviewed the EP on my main channel, I’m going to try and get through these relatively quickly, starting off with the one song on the project that I’m less fond of. That does not make it bad, I should stress - the fiddle sounds good, I like them ramping the tempo into a more bluegrass inspired rollick with the acoustic guitar, and the overarching sentiment of trying to get a friend to forgive his past and extend some help as he realizes that he might be better off heading home is good; I think I’m just cooler on the hook that probably needed a little more development. Still a good song… but in comparison with the rest of the EP, not quite a great one.

65. ‘Un Preview’ by Bad Bunny - looks like we’re getting more teasers of that Bad Bunny rollout for the next project after ‘Where She Goes’, with this being a swerve back into reggaeton with Tainy handling the production for a sound that we’ve honestly heard a lot less of on the Hot 100 this year. And calling it a preview is probably smart, as this feels more like an abbreviated teaser to whatever’s coming than something that’s very new or a single that’s going to go off as he tries to be coy with this girl he’s dancing with the likelihood of falling in love again at the forefront, where he’s probably being a little sloppier with the hookup and any other partners she might have than is wise. I think if I have something that loses me on the track it’s the melody - it’s this grainy chiptune-esque sound that might fit the abrasive atmosphere, but it’s not a tone I like, it doesn’t sound as good it should. Again, more a teaser than a full-fledged track, it’s passable, but the followthrough is what is going to be interesting.

62. ‘One More Time’ by blink-182 - okay, I’ll say it: the mini pop punk revival of the early 2020s seems to have stalled out way too soon, especially if all of this is going towards a new blink-182 project where there are so many other acts that are considerably more interesting that Travis Barker seemed to be pushing… and then the promo just evaporated, what happened? But hey, Tom DeLonge is back, and the band is leaning into making a predominantly acoustic if overcompressed pop punk ballad talking about their reconciliation and the tragedies that brought them back together having changed over the decades. And… you know, I’m not the biggest blink-182 fan, but I get why a song like this would have a ton of resonance for longtime fans in this reunion. So yeah, this is good - probably will have the most resonance for diehard fans, but I can’t deny that this works.

60. ‘500 lbs’ by Lil Tecca - so I guess this is the Lil Tecca song that folks are getting behind to push any degree of hype… and I dunno, I’m not hearing it with this one. The oily chiptune synths behind the rickety, cheap-feeling percussion with that crunchy snare that seems like he wants to split the difference between trap and rage music, and then the content… honestly, it feels messy, between half-formed flexes, paranoia, and a weird underlying sense of confusion where it seems like half the time Lil Tecca would rather be doing other things than putting on this show, where I’m not even sure he knows what he wants. Yeah, it’s somewhat catchy, but there’s not much here that’s pulling me back… I don’t think this has the same staying power, let’s move on.

55. ‘El Jefe’ by Shakira & Fuerza Regida - am I the only one disappointed that for as active as Shakira has been this year, it’s been in a lot of collaborations and dallying in other sounds? Maybe it’s just me who remembers what she did twenty years ago, but I was not looking for her to go into the regional Mexican sound, much less with an act I don’t think I like at all! So credit to Shakira for showing up to basically carry this against the much faster strumming where the bass has more bounce and the horns are less obtrusively farty and annoying - she’s got considerably more charisma and verve and while Fuerza Regida’s frontman is trying… there are levels, come on here. But then I translated the lyrics and I burst out laughing because it’s trying to play like an exasperated working class anthem for those who have expensive tastes but are going nowhere in their jobs, along with Shakira taking a potshot at her ex-father-in-law; oh, so now when you get indicted for tax evasion now you want to play this card, I’m not sure that’s how the revolution works, Shakira! Either way… I don’t think I can call this precisely good, but it’s more than I usually like a Fuerza Regida song and Shakira is always welcome, even if this all feels incredibly silly, I can take that.

54. ‘Nine Ball’ by Zach Bryan - alright, we’ve got a swathe of Zach Bryan tracks to get through, and let’s start with one that’s probably the most conventional of those on the EP - the acoustics build into the harmonica, strings, and electric guitar, the vocal pickup is rougher, and Zach Bryan is telling the story of a parent who pushes his son to win games of pool to settle drunken bets while ignoring what that son might want to really do with his life. And it’s a moment that kicks off the thematic arc of the album, where said child has bigger dreams and talents than the local bar, where the tragedy comes in whether he chooses to leave family behind. I’m not sure this has the gutpunch of an ‘Oklahoma Smokeshow’, but it plays in the same territory and works really well… just perhaps not as well as…

45. ‘Deep Satin’ by Zach Bryan - the penultimate song on the EP, where Zach Bryan winds up in New York City having rejoined a partner there… and what you can tell is that despite following her there and the heady intoxication of her and the trip, it’s not working, partially because he’s kind of a homesick, staggering drunken mess, but also because that’s how her friends see him, and he knows he can live down to that reputation. And that works for a song with the mournful electric guitar pealing across the deeper mix with the thicker roil of the bass and sharper percussion - it’s more composed, exposing where he isn’t. So yeah, great song… but I still think it can get better…

26. ‘Boys of Faith’ by Zach Bryan ft. Bon Iver - the title track, and arguably the most simple song on the project but the one that had me most intrigued - Justin Vernon’s unique texture does not work well with everyone, especially on a song that he didn’t produce. It’s a road song, where he’s looking at the folks who have kept the faith even as men like him tend to fade into their own vices along each step on the tour, which Zach Bryan can sell in his sleep but Justin Vernon is a good counterweight. But what impresses me the most here is the production - the intermingled fragments of electric guitar with enough feedback left in the mix to add texture to Vernon’s willowy but faded vocals, where the rough edges on the vocal mix add to that camaraderie even as the elegant waves of strings swell up; it’s a really cool texture and it gives them a different chemistry, but a good one. Still not quite my favourite on the EP, but it’s excellent all the same.

18. ‘Agora Hills’ by Doja Cat - full disclosure, when RCA and Kemosabe started making a serious push to get Doja Cat her #1, I honestly thought she’d have a credible shot at a proper album bomb… but it looks like someone at the label didn’t push the Spotify button so this is the only new debut she gets… and it’s not exactly one of my favourites. Beyond the exasperating reality of this being another entry into the leaden category of Doja Cat trap and R&B where the sample feels flattened out and the bass swamps the mix - and I think Doja Cat is only so-so in this lane, especially when it relies on her to rap a little harder like on the second verse - for all of the push that she was making a more abrasive project, this is the furthest thing from it. Outside of that… well, at least from the first verse Doja Cat really wants to show off her new partner - and I’m not as against the ‘I don’t fuck incels’ line given the sheer amount of bullshit certain shitholes on the internet have thrown in her direction - but what throws me are the sampled spoken word that peppers the song that is trying to be cute but ends on a weirdly sour note that he might be lying to her… it’s tonally confused, and I’m not sure it works. As it is… I dunno, I’ve never really liked Doja Cat’s R&B material, this doesn’t impress me either.

14. ‘Sarah’s Place’ by Zach Bryan ft. Noah Kahan - I get the feeling that a lot of folks are going to be annoyed with me for years for being as harsh on Noah Kahan as I was last year, because he’s doing to a lot of heavy lifting to rehabilitate his reputation with me, mostly through collaborations. ‘Dial Drunk’ with Post Malone, taking Ruston Kelly on tour with him, that upcoming remix of ‘She Calls Me Back’ planned with Kacey Musgraves, and now with this… yeah, he’s got incredible chemistry with Zach Bryan and this is the best song on the EP. And I like how the song starts with a slightly more conventional acoustic line as they trade verses and the tempo begins ramping up with that sharper snare and electric guitar interplay as they have pleasant but longing reminiscences about an old partner that left for the city and what they’ve needed to do to keep up. There’s a shaggy, homegrown vibe to this I found quite charming, where it could have played for the guilt trip but it’s more settled and complimentary than that - reminds me a lot of ‘LAX’ by Jake Owen, arguably his best song. So yeah, I think this is absolutely excellent - not my favourite from either act, but it’s up there, and if they’re going to keep spurring on each other’s careers… that could be a big win.

And that’s our week… felt long, but not unapproachable, and the best and worst fell out fast. In the latter category, I’m giving the worst to ‘Segun Quien’ by Carin Leon and Maluma, just a total disappointment, where as Dishonourable Mention ‘HVN On Earth’ by Lil Tecca and Kodak Black had no expectations to even meet. The best… yeah, Zach Bryan is sweeping this, with ‘Sarah’s Place’ with Noah Kahan taking the top spot and ‘Boys of Faith’ with Bon Iver tying for the Honourable Mention with ‘My Love Mine All Mine’ by Mitski… what can I say, when it hits, it hits. Next week… it might be a bit quiet as I don’t think the new Ed Sheeran album is going to give us an album bomb from his indie label, but if we get a breather before Drake, I’ll take what I can get.