billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - september 24, 2022

What is this, a week that actually appears to be less busy than expected, where there may be some chart chicanery behind the scenes but it didn’t manifest in an avalanche of annoyance, where possible album bombs just didn’t manifest? Hey, I know it’s not going to last for the next month ahead, just let me have this!

But in the meantime, we’ve got our top ten, where ‘As It Was’ by Harry Styles is still holding the #1, but its margin at the top is increasingly narrow, and considering ‘Bad Habit’ by Steve Lacy is so robust on streaming, if it was able to make some radio inroads it might have a serious shot for the top. But it has some competition - unseated from the top thanks to a big remix, it’s ‘Super Freaky Girl’ by Nicki Minaj surging to #3… and likely not getting much higher, but it’s just not getting the radio traction you’d expect to really muscle in. It did get over ‘Sunroof’ by Nicky Youre and dazy at #4, mostly because all it effectively has is radio with low streaming continuing on the downturn, but it was enough to hold the line against ‘I Like You (A Happier Song)’ by Post Malone and Doja Cat making its radio gains at #5… although here, it’s probably a margins game on bad streaming numbers. But this opens up the door for ‘You Proof’ by Morgan Wallen up considerably to #6, which is rising on streaming and has more radio traffic than you’d want to admit, especially as it hasn’t been shipped to pop radio yet and very well could be. Hell, it knocked back ‘About Damn Time’ by Lizzo to #7 - even though that song is naturally on a downturn - and that opens up a window for ‘I Ain’t Worried’ by OneRepublic holding at #8… although its radio gains seem to be a fair bit slower. Then we have the expected falloff for ‘Late Night Talking’ by Harry Styles as its sales boost ebbs away and its radio peaks… and that means ‘Wait For U’ by Future, Tems and Drake is back in the top 10 because even despite being on the downturn with airplay, its streaming just will not die.

That takes us to our losers and dropouts, and there are a few big ones in the latter category - speaking of Future, ‘Puffin On Zootiez’ looks like it’s going to be just shy of a year-end list or on the borderline at least, while ‘Numb Little Bug’ by Em Beihold and ‘Shivers’ by Ed Sheeran comfortably lock in their year-end spots.But there’s not much in the way of losers: off the debut ‘Detox’ by Lil Baby fell to 64 and continuing losers ‘God Did’ by DJ Khaled, Rick Ross, Lil Wayne, Jay-Z, John Legend and Fridayy fell to 83, ‘Sticky’ by Drake hit 84, and ‘Beat The Odds’ by Lil Tjay hit 91. Outside of that… ‘Dah Dah DahDah’ by Nardo Wick seems to be ebbing back to 59, ‘With A Woman You Love’ by Justin Moore faded to 81, ‘Where It Ends’ by Bailey Zimmerman doesn’t look like it’s catching fire at 93, and ‘Alone’ by Rod Wave hit 96.

Now moving onto gains and returns… well, there were rumours surrounding a question whether Billboard would revise some of their rules surrounding older songs going viral being allowed to chart outside of a release window, but as of now it looks piecemeal and we’ll get to that when we talk about some of our ‘new’ arrivals. As of now… well, ‘Never Sleep’ by NAV, Travis Scott and Lil Baby came back to 76 thanks to album traction, ‘CUFF IT’ by Beyonce is back at 85 thanks to virality, and ‘Wait In The Truck’ by HARDY and Lainey Wilson looks to be coming back thanks to a slight radio push. For our gains… well, off the debut ‘Romantic Homicide’ by d4vd is picking up traction to 45 - ugh - and off the return ‘Don’t Come Lookin’ by Jackson Dean picked up to 71, and to continue with bad news, ‘I’m Good (Blue)’ by David Guetta and Bebe Rexha is surging up to 31, thanks primarily to streaming; thanks for that! Outside of that… ‘2 Be Loved (Am I Ready)’ by Lizzo continued up to 67, and riding a radio push I did not expect, ‘F.N.F. (Let’s Go)’ by Glorilla and Hitkidd rose up to 42 - honestly expected that there’d be more streaming here, a bit surprising…

But now onto a reasonable list of new arrivals, pleasantly starting with…

100. ‘Burn, Burn, Burn’ by Zach Bryan - so for those who don’t follow my main channel, you might not realize that Zach Bryan has already dropped a 34-song album and a nine song EP this year… and this song is not on either of them, because he does not slow down shoving out material. I’ve got mixed opinions on this - yeah, a lot of it is great but not always refined as it could be and he will eventually hit diminishing returns, like here where this potentially blocked ‘Oklahoma Smokeshow’ from getting promotional traction - but fine, new single… and shocker, it’s really damn good, if not altogether surprising. The liquid touches of electric guitar around the acoustics and subtle groove are great, Bryan’s effective behind the mic - although I wasn’t really wild about how he started howling on the outro - and I like the content, where Bryan muses about newfound success that takes him out of his element to cities where he’s still got his rough edges and wishes he could take off to quieter places and live a life free of cheap artifice for as long as he can. It does remind me a lot of Jason Isbell’s ‘Last Of My Kind’, and doesn’t quite have that added nugget of self-awareness of his own path that would notch it a little higher with me… but yeah, this is still great, check it out!

95. ‘Purge Me’ by YoungBoy Never Broke Again - I bet a lot of you didn’t know that YoungBoy Never Broke Again dropped another mixtape a few weeks back - partially because he put it out in the middle of a tracking week but also because he’s been trying to get off of Atlantic and that means a bunch of promo just evaporated. In any case, it was still enough for him to get two songs on the Hot 100 here… and honestly, I’m a bit torn on this. Yeah, it’s barely over two minutes with a single verse and YoungBoy spends most of the song in his upper-register crooning, and I think this is production that was left over from a Rod Wave album… but it’s not bad for it, with the gentle acoustics and piano that helps YoungBoy sell a more organic, melancholic atmosphere where even if you don’t like his autotuned squawk, he’s at least trying to be a little more romantic with less murder on his mind and even a plea not to be hurt in the same way when he’s high and vulnerable at this point. Now this doesn’t wow or impress me much - it’s a pretty natural extension of what YoungBoy normally does - but you know, I can’t call this bad either.

90. ‘Mary On A Cross’ by Ghost - alright, so remember when I said Billboard might be changing some rules to enable songs that are a little older that go viral with just enough traction to chart? This is a prime example, and just so happens to be Ghost’s first ever song on the Hot 100 about seven years late! Now for context, this was a song originally put on Ghost’s 2019 EP Seven Inches of Satanic Panic - get it - as a b-side, but since it’s gone viral the band cannily re-released it as a single, plus a version that was slowed and reverbed because the internet. But for the standard version… yeah, it’s a Ghost song, but it’s not one of their better ones, with more of a focus on that seedy organ line than a strong bass groove or a guitar with some muscle. And yeah, the content is transgressive in the road warrior hookup and the horniness of the quasi-Satanic blowjob implication of the hook - I’m going to skip on the lore because in recent years it’s probably received more attention than it’s deserved - but when the atmosphere is less impressive and the writing feels oddly clunky with overwritten verses and a hook that’s maybe leaning into its sillier 60s affections more than it should… why the hell couldn’t ‘Dance Macabre’ go viral instead? So yeah, it’s fine, I guess… but I did expect more.

77. ‘Flawless’ by Yeat ft. Lil Uzi Vert - so here’s an observation I made publically a few days ago: despite Yeat’s insane streaming numbers, his pure sales are jawdroppingly bad, and even if he’s more of a streaming artist, the opportunity cost of streaming compared to selling records or tickets is going to impact how he’s treated by the label and how much traction he ultimately gets. In any case, this song has a big Lil Uzi Vert feature, so no surprise it’s charting now… and wow, I don’t like this at all. The bass-boosted mix where the sickly sweet synth seems to slosh around it with what might be Yeat’s worst vocal performance to date - this guy has no power and just sounds sloppy on the mic with cruddy vocal blending - so it’s really just a mechanism for Uzi’s verse. And… look, I get his appeal, but between the empty brand name porn and some pretty empty TV references in the wordplay, it’s not a good enough verse to save this song.

68. ‘Freestyle’ by Lil Baby - and here’s where the rule shift I was describing really comes into focus… because this is a freestyle from Lil Baby that got commercially repackaged after going viral… from 2017! This was five years ago, and about two or three years before folks outside the diehards would acknowledge that Lil Baby was remotely interesting! So with that in mind, I had low expectations… and they were met but certainly not exceeded. The barebones melody with the cheap trap percussion, the Migos triplet flow with only traces of the melodic embellishments that would come, the stock flexing and content that had folks calling him a Young Thug wannabe… it’s a prototype of what he’d become, and while it might serve as a curiosity to the fans, I’m only barely onboard now, the beginning of his journey is just not compelling to me whatsoever. So yeah, I guess 2017 revivalism is starting early - like Lil Baby I’m going to keep moving.

66. ‘Put It On Me’ by Youngboy Never Broke Again - and here we go, the second YoungBoy track… and maybe it’s just me, but I at least get the potential with this one - the sing-song hook against the skittering piano isn’t bad, a bit of a Lil Wayne-inspired melody that works with YoungBoy’s squawking even if the actual tune is suffocated behind the vocals and percussion. But let’s not mince words, even with a second verse this song is not finished - the second verse is a fraction of the first, the ramble between gunplay and sex is seriously scrambled, YoungBoy sounds more like he’s delivering a freestyle than Lil Baby just did on a song of that name, it’s that much of a mess. It has me wonder that without serious label backing and just how inconsistent YoungBoy has been the past year whether he’ll be able to sustain beyond the diehards, because this sure as hell isn’t getting there.

36. ‘Under The Influence’ by Chris Brown - okay, context: Chris Brown has been putting out utterly bloated projects the past few years, either on their original or extended versions, basically flooding the market for his remaining diehards and making it damn near torture for any critic trying to parse through it. Which is why after a certain point critics just stopped talking about his albums and the labels have given up with proper pushes - they’re not making as much on the back end with Chris Brown given that he owns all of his masters, and if he’s not delivering a product they can credibly sell outside Team Breezy, why bother? That has not stopped some singles getting the radio push or songs from going viral, hence this track from the extended edition of Indigo from 2019 hitting the charts now. I get the feeling Billboard will be treating this as an ongoing, case-by-case basis thing instead of with any consistent rule, and all of that is more interesting than this stale trap R&B cut, where Chris Brown is smothered in autotune to simulate being high on cough syrup, everything besides the bass synth sounds cheap and weedy including the hi-hat whirs, and the lyrics are stock half-crooned attempts to lure some girl to come over with no credible atmosphere. In other words, it’s the sort of forgettable deep cut that outside of Tiktok, even the fans would have forgotten - and it’s also lousy, the sooner we move on, the better!

22. ‘Thank God’ by Kane Brown & Katelyn Brown - alright, so Kane Brown made a song with his wife Katelyn and they both have credits on it - apparently they’ve made songs before and they were just looking for the perfect time to push this… and let me get my production niggles out the way, in that it’s a Dann Huff mix so the percussion and snaps all sound synthetic and fizzy and not quite as warm as it should opposite the pedal steel and guitars. But outside of that… well, Katelyn Brown is a better singer than I was expected and her higher, breathier tone is a nice compliment to Kane Brown, and they have some chemistry, but otherwise this feels so generic, stock boyfriend country that leans on the religious iconography and the hope you find this couple romantic or interesting. And with the very underwhelming composition… it’s fine, but there’s not enough here to really hook me; it’ll work for the Hallmark crowd, I’m going to forget this exists.

But yeah, this week falls out very easily: worst is ‘Flawless’ by Yeat and Lil Uzi Vert with Dishonourable Mention to ‘Under The Influence’ by Chris Brown. Best of the week… I mean, come on, there’s not much that’s going to beat ‘Burn, Burn, Burn’ by Zach Bryan, and I guess Honourable Mention goes to ‘Mary On A Cross’ by Ghost by default, even if I personally expect more. Next week… actually seems pretty quiet, at least until those rounds of album bombs hit in a few weeks, we’ll have to see…