billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - september 5, 2020

I’m not gonna say I called this one. I could if I really wanted to, but I won’t here - I may have predicted that our new #1 would disrupt the charts, and even that it would do better than previous singles, but I won’t claim I expected it to take #1 - yet another massive debut at the top in a year chock full of them. I can’t say it hasn’t made the 2020 charts interesting, that’s for damn sure, even if most of those #1 debuts haven’t lasted…

Actually, let’s just get to it: at #1, not just the first k-pop group but the first international band to debut at #1, ‘Dynamite’ by BTS. As always, I’ll talk more about the actual song much later, but credit where it’s due, it actually seems like they learned from previous attempts to hit the top spot and picked a balanced approach with this: the YouTube and sales of course were strong, but so was streaming, and most interestingly, there’s enough of a radio push to give the song some floor and thus sustainability. Now this will not hold the #1 - YouTube traction can be sustainable but such huge opening sales are not, and thus I expect the streaming behemoth that is ‘WAP’ by Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion to retake the top spot from #2 this week, which still had better streaming and is somehow on a radio run. Hell, I might even argue that ‘Laugh Now Cry Later’ by Drake ft. Lil Durk might push a little more beyond #3 - its radio is already better and even if its sales are falling back, the streaming isn’t. This places ‘ROCKSTAR’ by DaBaby and Roddy Ricch on the way out at #4 - not surprising, it looks like it peaked on the radio - and we can add ‘Blinding Lights’ by The Weeknd to that category too at #5, which might have actually picked up some sales but is still on the way out everywhere else. Then we have ‘WHATS POPPIN’ by Jack Harlow and crew at #6, which didn’t really lose much this week so much as waver in place thanks to solid streaming - which looks to be a similar case for ‘Watermelon Sugar’ by Harry Styles holding at #7, with okay sales and streaming propping up weakening radio. And I’m seeing something similar with ‘Roses (Imanbek Remix)’ by SAINt JHN at #8, where it actually had a really good streaming week to compensate for the radio dumping this with record speed. Then we have ‘Savage Love’ by Jawsh 685 and Jason Derulo at #9 - yes, it’s got the radio run and sales went up, but streaming going down at this point when I’d say the song is primed for a move is a major question that probably inhibits this from getting much higher. Finally to my annoyance we have ‘Before You Go’ by Lewis Capaldi at #10, because this song quietly became absolutely massive on the radio - need to have some bland mediocrity to fill time.

And on that fun note, losers and dropouts! There were a few big ones that locked their year-end spots - notably ‘Emotionally Scarred’ by Lil Baby and ‘Toosie Slide’ by Drake - and one that’ll be close from ‘Bluebird’ by Miranda Lambert as ‘Righteous’ by Juice WRLD falls short. But what I find more intriguing are the losses, specifically off of songs that seemed primed to do more, specifically the debuts from ‘7 Summers’ by Morgan Wallen falling to 38 and ‘Midnight Sky’ by Miley Cyrus at 41 - kind of a shame, I didn’t mind either song. Then we had the expected slides for Taylor Swift with ‘the 1’ at 85 and ‘exile’ with Bon Iver at 98, ‘Girl Of My Dreams’ by Rod Wave skidding to 87, 'Done’ by Chris Janson at 76, and the continued collapse of ‘Smile’ by Juice WRLD and The Weeknd at 52. Outside of that… ‘Party Girl’ by StaySolidRocky fades naturally at 53, as does ‘Rain On Me’ by Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande at 55, and ‘Why We Drink’ by Justin Moore fading a bit early at 60.

Now I do think our gains and returns could be a little more interesting - for one, ‘Need It’ by Migos and YoungBoy Never Broke Again rebounded big to 69 and ‘my ex’s best friend’ by Machine Gun Kelly and blackbear at 86 looks like it’s going to make its expected run. And for another, the gains look to indicate what’s going to hold for the tail end of this year: ‘Lovin On You’ by Luke Combs at 30, ‘Got What I Got’ by Jason Aldean at 33, and ‘I Love My Country’ by Florida Georgia Line at 40 look to show what Nashville is going to be pushing this fall, and I guess with the album release we can probably include ‘I Called Mama’ by Tim McGraw up again this week to 61. Then off the debut we had ‘Caramelo’ by Ozuna at 81 and ‘Heather’ by Conan Gray at 50 - given how much streaming the latter has, it’s probably going to stick - and then we had the radio run shoving up ‘Tap In’ by Saweetie to 31 and somehow another radio push for ‘If The World Was Ending’ by JP Saxe and Julia Michaels at 34. But in the best news, in another week of massive gains, ‘Mood’ by 24kGoldn and iann dior is at #12 - sales have surged, streaming is now massive, and if that radio run actually pays dividends, this could well be a massive hit - which is great, I still really like the song!

But we actually have a pretty reasonable list of new arrivals here, starting with…

96. ‘Spicy’ by Nas ft. Fivio Foreign & A$AP Ferg - look, I didn’t review Nas’ new album. As good of an MC as he is, I can also argue there are other factors that meant it wasn’t worth me giving my time and platform to it - I’m busy enough as it is, and he’s still going to get plenty of publicity elsewhere. And yet somehow, thanks to the contributions of Fivio Foreign and A$AP Ferg, we’ve got a Nas song on the Hot 100… and even with low expectations in comparison with the other guest verses on the album, I’m not fond of this much at all. For one, Nas, in this climate why are you bragging about being corporate in your flexing - it makes the attempt at opulence feel even stiffer than the fizzy clunk of the trap beat and keyboard loop that Hit-Boy gave him. Then Fivio Foreign drops gay slurs while saying he only fucks the girls for the hype on a pretty trash verse - charming - and somehow A$AP Ferg’s bragging lets him escape with a bit of dignity. And even with that, somehow it feels like I dodged a bullet by avoiding this album, which is something I did not expect at all. And yeah, this isn’t good - next!

95. ‘You Broke Me First’ by Tate McRae - so given that I’m thirty, I’m now at the point where I might review acts that are almost half my age on the pop charts, which can be a bit awkward as on some level it feels like I could be punching down. At the same time, though, Tate McRae was a finalist on So You Think You Can Dance at 13, and then she built her YouTube channel, started uploading dance covers and then original songs and then she got signed and here we are. So with this getting a small TikTok boost… well, it looks like we have an artist trying to split the difference between Camila Cabello and Billie Eilish with the washed out watery vocal layers, spare tones, focus on hushed intimacy, and a fair amount of pitch-shifting, speaking from a post-breakup scene where this ex now wants her back after dumping her. And while I don’t mind leaning into the ominous atmosphere, get beyond that and this feels really derivative of its influences and kind of basic, mostly because it sets up for a punchline on the bridge that barely comes. It’s not a song that projects strength to push back, but it doesn’t really engage with the complexity implied by that, which leads to a cut that feels a bit flat. I guess it’s fine in terms of pop - again, the influences don’t surprise me given that McRae apparently has done some writing with Billie and Finneas - but it’s not particularly memorable, let’s move on.

90. ‘All In’ by YoungBoy Never Broke Again - okay Youngboy, let’s try again, I wasn’t crazy about your single last week, maybe this one will stick out a bit more… and it kind of does, but it leaves me a little worried about YoungBoy here, as once again we’re getting a fractured guitar squeal and clunky trap beat as he morosely rambles through painful paranoia, with the sort of slurred focus that certainly reflects all the lean he keeps referencing in his bars. And there’s a place for a sort of ramshackle balance, where in his paranoia he’s trying to focus on family and his girl and not the slew of bullets around him - but at the same time, for resigning to be as ‘ride or die’ as he is, he doesn’t sound good, with rhymes being dropped and relying more than he should on haphazard singing to fill in the gaps. I dunno, it might be better, but I won’t call this all that good, just saying.

79. ‘Hawai’ by Maluma - okay, normally when it comes to cliched reggaeton, I have a better than average view of Maluma because he tends to be a bit more organic in his choices and a little smoother than some of the field, so I actually had something close to expectations with this. So even when the traditional groove slid in, it felt a little more soft-focus along with the watery cushion of burbling guitars, and Maluma’s singing is a nice compliment… which probably doesn’t help Maluma concern-trolling his ex on vacation with her current boyfriend in Hawaii, where it becomes abundantly clear he’s not over her and could well be stalking her! Now granted, maybe he sells it better in Spanish, but I will say the framing of this sort of storytelling is kind of jarring, especially as Maluma is charismatic enough to maybe make it work! So yeah, outside of the content I actually mostly like this - not bad, and I’m not sure how I feel about that.

74. ‘The Plan’ by Travis Scott - so I’ll admit when I heard that Travis Scott was cutting a song to support the Christopher Nolan movie TENET, I was intrigued but skeptical - it’s a weird pairing to craft a theme, that’s all I’m saying, when you think about a musical artist working with Christopher Nolan, I don’t think Travis Scott is the first name that springs to mind! And yet… honestly, I think this kind of kicks ass, half because it pulls Travis out of his smoked-out comfort zone of lethargic trap grooves and WondaGurl and Ludwig Goransson give him something with more muscle - that coursing low-end synth, the deeper swells of atmosphere, the song feels cinematically appropriate for a Nolan movie but then allows Travis to overlay his scattered brand of cool onto it. And that synergy makes sense - both Nolan and Travis like a very masculine, sleek but slightly shallow brand of ‘coolness’ that makes the action food junkie salivate, and while Travis’ content is nothing to write home about, it fits the darker, ‘man on a mission’ vibe. The only thing I’d criticize is that it’s playing in very similar territory to the Black Panther music - where Goransson worked on both the soundtrack and composed the score - but otherwise? Yeah, it’s cool stuff - maybe not great, but definitely very good, I dig it.

1. ‘Dynamite’ by BTS - so BTS got their #1, and as someone who explored their entire back catalog this year to review their album, I was curious what genre pileup approach this k-pop group will have taken with this, especially considering the run that ‘Boy With Luv’ was on as probably still their best crossover single. And having heard this… that’s still true, but it’s not because ‘Dynamite’ is bad - basically, what it sounds like is if that Jonas Brothers comeback last year was actually good and was able to bring forth brighter production, stronger hooks, and more charisma. But like with that project, there’s something so utterly mercenary about its calculation for a breakthrough that kind of puts me at a distance and seems to strip back some of BTS’ flavour, which doesn’t always work for me but is uniquely theirs. I’m not against the song entirely being in English for this sort of lightweight, bouncy dance jam with rollicking groove and boatloads of charisma, but like with all BTS songs it can feel a little sterile in the production and there’s a part of me that can just recognize when lyrics are structured to bait clicks, specifically that LeBron reference in the first verse. More to the point, we don’t get any out-of-nowhere pivots on the song - no rap bridge or trap breakdown, the most we get is an old school key change to compliment the horns, and while that’s perfectly fine, it doesn’t have that same distinctive splash the best BTS songs have. It’s frustrating because if you had described this song to me, I’d argue it would be the perfect crossover moment for BTS, and while that’s true, I’m not sure it made for a great song, and I really wish it had.

Still, on a shorter week, ‘The Plan’ from Travis Scott is netting the best - I don’t think it’s gonna last, but man, it’s a cool pivot there. The worst… yeah, it’s Nas with Fivio Foreign and A$AP Ferg with ‘Spicy’, just a complete clunker that unfortunately proved more suspicions than I expected correct. Still, next week is the fallout, given we don’t have any larger releases on the horizon outside of maybe a bit cascading from the VMAs, we’ll have to see there.