billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - september 25, 2021

…you have to be grateful for the cooldown week between album bombs, right? Granted, calling this a ‘cooldown’ is not the complete picture, because Drake album bombs tend to linger when they don’t have real competition to push them out, but nevertheless, this is a week we can hold onto… at least until Lil Nas X blasts in next week for whatever that might bring.

Anyway, let’s start with the reset in the top ten, where to my great exasperation ‘Stay’ by Kid LAROI and Justin Bieber reclaimed the #1. This is not surprising - it’s on the path to dominate the radio, it’s still strong in other channels, as of now you’d need an insane margin somewhere else to make ground… and unfortunately we have that with ‘Way 2 Sexy’ by Drake ft. Future and Young Thug at #2. Look, the streaming is frankly enormous, it is dominant on YouTube, and the radio run is in full gear - charming. Then we have ‘Bad Habits’ by Ed Sheeran at #3, mostly courtesy of continued radio dominance and shockingly good sales - still - but holding its own behind it is ‘Knife Talk’ by Drake ft. 21 Savage and Project Pat actually gaining a spot to #4, mostly because the streaming remains really goddamn solid. Unfortunately, what it is also way more solid than it should be is ‘Fancy Like’ by Walker Hayes up to #5, courtesy of incredibly strong sales and a streaming rebound where even now the radio is making a move – folks, the Hot 100 is pretty damn unstable, this could easily get higher. But before we stare any deeper into hell, ‘Industry Baby’ by Lil Nas X and Jack Harlow surged up to #6 as the streaming and radio are on the rise – expect a jump with this next week – which contrasts with ‘good 4 u’ by Olivia Rodrigo returning to #7 facing radio instability and softer impact in other channels. Similar case for ‘Kiss Me More’ by Doja Cat & SZA at #8 and even moreso for ‘Levitating’ by Dua Lipa at #9, even the sales saw a minor rebound, and then to end things off… ‘Girls Want Girls’ by Drake ft. Lil Baby at #10, which has frankly more streaming than it should to hold this spot.

But this is where we get to the messiness of our losers and dropouts, where while Drake mostly held position, Kanye West nearly lost all of his, taking the flop of ‘Motley Crew’ by Post Malone along with him. And going to the losers, we saw ‘Jail’ with Jay-Z hit 99 and ‘Off The Grid’ with Fivio Foreign and Playboi Carti at 75. But outside of a small loss for ‘We Didn’t Have Much’ by Justin Moore at 96, the majority of our losers did come from Drake here, so starting from the bottom up: ‘Fountains’ with Tems at 86, ‘You Only Live Twice’ with Rick Ross and Lil Wayne at 83, ‘Get Along Better’ with Ty Dolla $ign at 78, ‘Yebba’s Heartbreak’ with YEBBA at 76, ‘IMY2’ with Kid Cudi at 72, ‘7am on Bridle Path’ at 57, ‘Race My Mind’ at 54, ‘Pipe Down’ at 45, ‘Papi’s Home’ at 41, ‘Love All’ with Jay-Z at 35, ‘N 2 Deep’ with Future at 33, ‘In The Bible’ with Lil Durk & Giveon at 29, ‘TSU’ at 27, ‘No Friends In the Industry’ at 22, and ‘Champagne Poetry’ at 19.

But of course the big shift in weeks like this are the returns and gains – and again, we didn’t quite see as many as I was expecting, even as a full third of the chart recovered position. In the former category, they were mostly low down in the charts with ‘In Da Getto’ by J Balvin and Skrillex at 90, ‘Come Through’ by H.E.R. and Chris Brown at 95, ‘Cold Heart (PNAU Remix)’ by Elton John and Dua Lipa at 98, and ‘Knowing You’ by Kenny Chesney at 100. But outside of the top ten songs I’ve already mentioned – and how ‘Buy Dirt’ by Jordan Davis and Luke Bryan continued up to 51, let’s first go through the songs that took the opportunity to pick up gains from holding steady last week. So it starts with ‘My Boy’ by Elvie Shane at 74, ‘Gyalis’ by Capella Grey at 70, ‘Woman’ by Doja Cat at 67, ‘Love Again’ by Dua Lipa at 55, ‘Wockesha’ by Moneybagg Yo at 50, ‘A-O-K’ by Tai Verdes at 46, ‘Cold Beer Calling My Name’ by Jameson Rodgers and Luke Combs at 43, ‘Chasing After You’ by Ryan Hurd and Maren Morris at 39, ‘Things A Man Oughta Know’ by Lainey Wilson at 38, ‘Pepas’ by Farruko up to 34, and ‘If I Didn’t Love You’ by Jason Aldean and Carrie Underwood at 24. But as for the rest… ‘Wild Side’ by Normani and Cardi B recovered to 59, ‘Late At Night’ by Roddy Ricch at 49, ‘Rumors’ by Lizzo and Cardi B at 44, ‘Arcade’ by Duncan Laurence at 42, ‘traitor’ by Oliva Rodrigo at 37, and ‘Leave The Door Open’ by Silk Sonic at 31. Then we saw the expected boost for ‘Family Ties’ by Baby Keem and Kendrick Lamar thanks to the album boost to 25, and then to finish things off… ‘Take My Breath’ by The Weeknd at 23, ‘Need To Know’ by Doja Cat at 21, ‘déjà vu’ by Olivia Rodrigo at 20, ‘You Right’ by Doja Cat and The Weeknd at 18, ‘Essence’ by Wizkid and Tems at 17, ‘Heat Waves’ by Glass Animals at 15 – seriously, how is this still here – ‘Montero (Call Me By Your Name)’ by Lil Nas X at 13 – expect a jump next week – and ‘Save Your Tears’ by The Weeknd and Ariana Grande at 12.

But all of this translates to a slow week when it comes to our new arrivals – thank god – starting off with…

84. ‘Lalisa’ by Lisa - so I’ll admit it’s a little weird to see the solo debut singles of k-pop idol groups get Hot 100 traction, but I guess I shouldn’t be that surprised, given the genre’s greater penetration the past few years – it’s a thing on the global charts, so if a member of Blackpink is going to drop solo work, might as well get used to it? Well, if it sounds more like this I think I’ll have to pass, dropping into leaden, clanking trap percussion where there’s more bass than actual tune, and when we do get a melody it’s a squealing slice of dated electro-pop synth from the early 2010s that’s trying to go for a middle-eastern inspired tune at increasingly excruciating tones. What’s worse is that, to quote my colleague Todd In The Shadows, is an ‘I’m back bitch’ single, where it’s trying to claim a hit by being louder and more obnoxious in its birthright than even her band – seriously, the hook is her telling her audience to beg for affection! I think I’d be able to get into this more if the hook wasn’t just bare repetition and annoyance, or had a decent tune, or if Lisa showcased any deeper personality beyond just playing to the Blackpink formula at its most migraine… so no, not good.

68. ‘Lonely’ by DaBaby & Lil Wayne – I swear to god, if DaBaby is going to start playing to self-pity because of the homophobic bullshit he’s spouted, which even considering his lack of artistic versatility was a record-speed career implosion, I’m going to break something. Because that’s what this is – where he still has to assert he’s on top with plenty of money and fucking women and brand names, but he’s not happy; and yes, his older brother’s suicide would be very valid context for all of this, but his framing on the first verse is ‘the internet is angry and scared of me’, which reminds me of the reality of this mess! And I have no idea why Lil Wayne is here at all – his verse is completely disconnected from anything beyond fucking and leaving some other girl lonely, which leads into the mushy sample backing the hook and stale groove that DaBaby routinely pulls in. If anything, this feels like a throwaway for an album rollout that I feel has cratered – it’s not structured like a crossover single… it’s just proving that we’re out of reasons to keep DaBaby around.

64. ‘Meet Me At Our Spot’ by THE ANXIETY: WILLOW & Tyler Cole – okay, how to explain this… so before Willow Smith did her misbegotten pop punk thing this year, she put out a project with her boyfriend at that time Tyler Cole in 2020 called ‘The Anxiety’. I imagine this would have had hype if it didn’t drop in mid-March of 2020, but the reviews were mixed at best and I doubt this would have charted if it hadn’t got some virality on TikTok. Suffice to say I had limited expectations… and if you saw my review of that Willow album on On The Pulse, I’m going to repeat myself and say that if she wasn’t signed to Roc Nation with her parents, this would have gone nowhere – yes, it went viral on TikTok, but not all virality on that platform is organically driven and the ability to move the song afterwards comes with those connections. But it has a lot of the same issues I’ve had with Willow – she’s shoved midway back with a cluttered vocal line that doesn’t flatter her tones, the production is trying to sound barebones but is way too clean to capture a homespun vibe even if I do think the bassline is solid as hell, and while Tyler Cole is an okay singer, he’s not really distinctive either. I guess in terms of a young couple sneaking out for a late-night vibe, I get how this could work, but the atmosphere feels really inconsistent – not precisely terrible, but not really good either.

63. ‘Life Support’ by YoungBoy Never Broke Again – there’s a part of me that listens to this and openly wonders if YoungBoy is actually okay, because man, this feels messy. Part of this is the slapdash, mumbling paranoia that’s been all over his work in recent years, but the framing this time is a little different, with the whirring trap percussion accenting a piano line that I’d expect Rod Wave to croon over at his most melancholic, and YoungBoy doesn’t really sound good on it. Now some of that is intentional – existential emptiness, loneliness in the face of girls he wants to keep around but also can’t satisfy because he’s too high, reflecting on near-death experiences and the loss of a grandparent – but there’s also something about how he stumbles back to his traditional topics that sounds like he’s either drunk or high in the booth. It’s the sort of sloppiness that raises concerns, but also makes me not want to revisit this – even if this might be what you expect from him, he’s done way better.

53. ‘Range Brothers’ by Baby Keem & Kendrick Lamar - …no, this doesn’t count as a meme song, even if Anthony Fantano made a TikTok dance for it. Frankly, I’m surprised that Baby Keem didn’t see more chart presence if not a minor album bomb, but I guess he’s just not there yet, so might as well leverage the family connections for another crossover? And… yeah, I won’t deny there are memetic moments like Baby Keem wailing about how he needs a girlfriend before going into his awful falsetto, and then the song picks up classical elements that actually have some credible bombast… and then Kendrick goes into his ‘top o’ the morning’ goofiness in the final change-up and as weirdly funny as it is, I’m left thinking that this still should be way better than it is. A big part of this is that we’re anchored to Baby Keem trying to go through a lot of pretty basic flexing, come-up bars and while he’s an okay rapper and I like the contrast off of Kendrick trying to warn him that wealth will not truly satisfy him, I don’t feel like I’m getting enough from him to say more or feel more unique. A lot of the weirdness feels anchored in Kendrick, especially when the rumbling trap grooves don’t really coalesce to strong hooks, and it feels like I got a song stitched together from disparate parts that don’t really pay off. So no, it’s not bad, and I’ll have more to say about Baby Keem in the next episode of On The Pulse, but like with ‘Family Ties’, I’m not really won over either.

28. ‘Have Mercy’ by Chloe – so I’ve been keeping my ear to the ground about Chloe x Halle, mostly because the sisters duo seem to be getting a lot of the promotional buzz that’d you’d expect from being proteges of Beyonce, but for as much as that last album seemed primed to blow up on the charts in 2020, it didn’t quite happen, and that feels odd when you place it alongside this solo debut single that has wildly outperformed the duo… mostly because TikTok virality blew it up. And that doesn’t surprise me – the very spare sample behind the leaden percussion reminds me a lot of the R&B inspired by the south that blew up across the early-to-mid 2000s, and I’d also skip the Beyonce comparisons because Chloe’s vocals are softer, more pillowy, having all the elegance but less forceful overall, more reminiscent of Aaliyah or Ciara. Granted, the issue I had with this production fifteen to twenty years ago was that it could feel like the melodic skeleton of a song that could use more layers to really go off – especially when on a lyrical level is basically an ass-focused flex song – and while the lush vocal harmonies are doing a lot of work, I wish there was a little more tune beyond the guttural synth fragment near the back. Basically, while I know this’ll work and likely be a hit – presuming Chloe doesn’t have Normani’s luck with spare, retro-leaning R&B – I think for me to vibe more with it like its forebears I have to hear it go off in a club, and given current circumstances… I’m more lukewarm, at least for now.

16. ‘Shivers’ by Ed Sheeran – so I have no idea what’s coming with this next Ed Sheeran album later this year – ‘Bad Habits’ was whatever – I don’t hate it like a lot of folks seem to - but ‘Visiting Hours’ was stunningly beautiful, and I heard ‘Shivers’ was great too. And… well, it’s pretty damn good, but this might be one of those cases where I can tell Ed Sheeran is trying a little too hard to play to modern pop and it’s led his sound to be a bit less interesting or idiosyncratic. Yes, the plucky melody behind the shuffling groove and acoustics is propulsive – even if the entire mix feels really overcompressed which doesn’t let the horns breathe the way it should – but maybe it’s the handclap that feels like just a little too much alongside the lyrics that are going for the dance floor love connection and don’t quite have the detail to rise to more. Yeah, it’s catchy, but if I were to compare this to, I dunno, ‘Shape Of You’, the reason I still like that song is because as a sex song it’s grubby and lived-in and feels real – this has the textured sanded away and while I’m sure it’ll clean up at pop radio, Sheeran is more interesting than this. Still a good song… but at least for me, not yet a great one.

And that concludes a pretty rough week here – for the best… I was planning on giving it to ‘Shivers’ by Ed Sheeran, but I think that’s the Honourable Mention with ‘Have Mercy’ by Chloe nabbing the best, mostly because it feels like it’s better produced and has more of a chance to really grow on me. But the worst here…yeah, ‘Lonely’ by DaBaby and Lil Wayne, mostly because of the waste of the latter and the ugly attitudes that creep through every noxious and increasingly bland reference, with Dishonourable Mention to ‘Lalisa’ by Lisa because it’s a headache and a half. Next week Lil Nas X will unleash his album bomb, so stay tuned for that!