Wednesday, June 14, 2017

DrogeMiester's Billboard Analysis - June 24, 2017

The new Billboard charts have arrived and so it's time again for me to give you my thoughts! In this weekly post, I cover three sections. First, I give my thoughts on the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100. Second, I give my thoughts on the songs that experienced significant gains below the top 10. Third, I give my initial thoughts on our new arrivals this week. I reserve the right to switch things up in the future, but for now this is what I'm sticking with. I've followed the Billboard charts for a long time now and this is a great way for me to express my thoughts to the world. I hope you enjoy!

Billboard Hot 100 Top 10:




1- "Despacito" - Luis Fonsi & Daddy Yankee featuring Justin Bieber (=) -- This is the fifth week at No. 1 for "Despacito." Streaming and sales look to have finally peaked for this song as they decreased ever so slightly from last week, but are still way higher than anyone else at the moment. Meanwhile, radio still continues to climb. So yeah, no end in sight for this song's reign. And in cas you haven't had enough of Justin Bieber yet, he's got another song set to debut in the top 10 next week, this time as a featured act on a David Guetta song.

2- "That's What I Like" - Bruno Mars (=) -- Radio is what's keeping this song alive. Even though it only celebrated one week at the top, it's now had 10 weeks at No. 2, so Bruno probably isn't complaining. I am starting to, though. Our top 10 is stuck at the moment and I want some change. Plus, this song was never that great in the first place.

3- "I'm the One" - DJ Khaled featuring Justin Bieber, Quavo, Chance the Rapper & Lil Wayne (=) -- One of these weeks, "I'm the One" is going to flip flop with Bruno on the charts. But this is not that week. I'd really be happy if this just fell off, though.

4- "Shape of You" - Ed Sheeran (+1) -- What? OK, part of me is happy that we had a little bit of a change in the top five. This was the wrong change, though. Who said "Shape of You" was allowed to climb up again? 22 weeks in the top five for this song is WAY too long. Especially since it's been in the top five for it's entire chart life.

5- "Humble." - Kendrick Lamar (-1) -- But of course, "Shape of You" went up a notch because it was able to outlast "Humble." which fell down a spot. This is the one song in the top five right now that I want to stick around, so of course it's the only one that falls.

6- "Mask Off" - Future (=) -- Have I told you yet that I hate this song? Why did it get here in the first place and why is it still around?

7- "XO Tour Llif3" - Lil Uzi Vert (+2) -- Why in the freaking heck did this song rise two spots? This was supposed to be the song that fell out of the charts this week.

8- "Something Just Like This" - The Chainsmokers & Coldplay (=) -- I am glad this is sticking around for a bit longer. It's the best song in the top 10 right now. That said, it's been 58 straight weeks of The Chainsmokers in the top 10. It's time for that streak to end.

9- "Stay" - Zedd & Alessia Cara (-2) -- Well at least one song deserving of falling actually fell. Now get the frack out of this region Zedd and come back with something better, because I know you can do MUCH better than this bland, uninspiring song.

10- "Congratulations" - Post Malone featuring Quavo (=) -- At least this song didn't rise this week. I'll make sure to knock on some wood real quick because I would love it if this song went away.


Rising on the Hot 100:





13- "Believer" - Imagine Dragons (+2) -- Part of me is doubtful that this Imagine Dragons song is actually going to make it into the top 10. I think it may just get stuck right below the region. But hey, at least if it did sneak into the top 10, we'd have something different.

18- "There's Nothing Holdin' Me Back" - Shawn Mendes (+4) -- I really want new blood in our top 10, but this is NOT what I'm hoping for. That would be called jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire.

21- "Now or Never" - Halsey (+5) -- No, I'm not a fan of this song, but at least we'd have more female representation in the top 10 if this managed to make it in.

23- "Castle on the Hill" - Ed Sheeran (+5) -- For crying out freaking loud can we get rid of "Shape of You" already and replace it with "Castle on the Hill"? This is the highest this song has been since it debuted in the top 10, which is promising.

28- "Slow Hands" - Niall Horan (+5) -- Why can't we have "Sign of the Times" do well instead of this bland song? Are we really going to embrace the boring 1D songs and reject the good ones? 

31- "Attention" - Charlie Puth (+6) -- Top 30 next week, I'm sure of it. Top 10 shortly thereafter. Because the radio enjoys having love affairs with bland pop singers.

33- "Swang" - Rae Sremmurd (+7) -- NO! GO AWAY RAE SREMMURD!!!

40- "Magnolia" - Playboi Carti (+9) -- Can we PLEASE not make Playboi Carti a thing? Reject his awful rap music and send it to the trash instead of encouraging him to write more or encouraging other dumb rappers to start featuring him on their awful music.

46- "The Cure" - Lady Gaga (+5) -- This song confuses me. I thought it was going away because the charts haven't been nice to Gaga lately and this is one of the more bland songs she's ever put out, but for some reason this has managed to stick around in the middle section of the charts.

48- "The Fighter" - Keith Urban featuring Carrie Underwood (+7) -- Eh. This is whatever. I like Carrie and I don't hate Keith, thus I'm not super offended at this climbing the charts.

51- "Strip that Down" - Liam Payne featuring Quavo (+14) -- I repeat what I said earlier, are we really going to reject "Sign of the Times" and accept this nonsense? A former 1D member has ACTUALLY put out good music, but it's the awful crap from Harry's friends that America has decided to embrace instead. What a shame!

78- "No Such Thing as a Broken Heart" - Old Dominion (+12) -- There is such thing as a broken heart, Old Dominion. Now shut up and go away.


New Arrivals: 





42- "Down" - Fifth Harmony featuring Gucci Mane -- Fifth Harmony's name no longer makes sense. There's only four of them now. Fourth Harmony? Sorry, I had to. This is their first single since Camila left the group and man she must be glad she escaped these girls because this song has no personality whatsoever. Bland lyrics. No interesting vocals. Very few harmonies in the song, making their name make even less sense. They're just taking turns singing some boring verses and coming together to slowly repeat the word "down" over and over in the chorus. I really want some female representation on the Billboard charts, but not this. I'll just take solo Camila instead. The worst part of it is that Gucci has more personality and energy than the four girls.

53- "To the Max" - DJ Khaled featuring Drake -- Oh great. The world needed more music from Drake in 2017. NOT! As expected, DJ Khaled is here to throw in his two lines, so we're left with Drake doing typical boring Drake with some rather annoying drum beats playing in the background. In fact, in this song we go away from Drake for a while to stick with this drum beat and do some sort of bridge and chorus combo for most of the song featuring some uncredited vocalists that sound like DJ Khaled lowered their volume to one when he was mixing the song together because you can barely hear them. So instead we get what sounds like some weirdly mixed background noise that DJ Khaled did when he was drunk. Overall, I have no idea what is going on in this song and I'm baffled at how anyone could listen to this garbage and refer to it as music.   

73- "4 AM" - 2 Chainz featuring Travis Scott -- Hey, this is an actual rap song here as opposed to whatever the crap that DJ Khaled nonsense was. But that's the only piece of praise this pile of trash gets from me. 2 Chainz is lazily wandering through some unintelligent, nonsensical lyrics while Travis Scott comes in for the chorus doing his best Migos impression. I don't even need to say anymore.

82- "Whatever You Need" - Meek Mill featuring Chris Brown & Ty Dolla $ign -- Well, we're slowly moving in a positive direction with our rap music this week. We go from complete nonsense to lazy rap to slightly less lazy rap. At least Meek Mill seemed like he attempted to make a rap song here and put a tiny bit of thought into it. Chris Brown comes in for a bit of a poppy, cliche chorus about a girl he claims he's going to treat right and Meek Mill gives some meh verses that don't drive me crazy while Ty Dolla $ign joins in at the very end to repeat in slightly different words what Chris Brown said earlier in his chorus. Not the worst thing ever, but I still pass.

85- "Small Town Boy" - Dustin Lynch -- Earlier this year I kinda enjoyed Dustin Lynch's "Seein Red." I thought it was a fun southern rock song that pretended to be country, but really wasn't. This song does feel more country than the latter, but it also has a lot less personality and still plenty of drums and guitar that make it qualify as a country rock song in my books. This song is kind of a reverse love song. Instead of singing about how much he loves this girl, Dustin is instead singing about how much this girl loves him. Thus he spends the song tooting his own horn, which I didn't find interesting at all. Chart this one up as another throwaway country song.

87- "Know No Better" - Major Lazer featuring Travis Scott, Camila Cabello & Quavo -- This song showed up last week on the EDM charts, so I've had an extra week to think it over and hope, to no avail, that it would fail to chart on the normal Hot 100. While Major Lazer has done plenty of songs that I've really enjoyed, like "Lean On" and "Cold Water," they also occasionally drop some pretty bad stinkers and this is one of them. Not only does this song scream desperation by featuring Travis Scott, Camila Cabello AND Quavo, but the three don't mix together very well to create anything musically interesting and Major Lazer feel like they're phoning it in with some lazy, almost non-existent electronic beats. There's been plenty of good EDM music this year, but it's sad that a song like this is what crosses over while the others get ignored.

94- "It's Everyday Bro" - Jake Paul featuring Team 10 -- After listening to this song, my first thought was where in the frack did this come from? And who is Jake Paul? I mean, he's rapping about how famous and awesome he is, how much money he's making and how he's number one. Yet I hadn't even heard this dude's name. Like, what the heck? So I looked him up. And apparently Vine made him famous, then Disney Channel cast him in a sitcom called "Bizaardvark." And now this. Suddenly it all makes sense. And now I read that the song was written in a day and everything was produced by Jake Paul himself. The music video has 38 million views with an equal number of likes and dislikes. One million each. Perhaps that will tell you the story of this. To be fair, the sound and flow of the rap is better than most of the new rap songs I've covered this week, but the lyrics are just so unintelligent and annoying. A nobody rapping about how he's better than everyone else. And one of his friends from this Team 10 crew actually states that the U.S. is awful (that's a censor on my part) and that England is his city. Like, really? Hate to break it to you bud, but England is NOT a city. Then shortly after one of them starts rapping in Spanish. I obviously don't mind Spanish, but that was so out of left field. If we could just send this away next week, I would be really happy.

97- "Somebody Else Will"  Justin Moore -- In our latest addition of country rock to the Billboard charts, Justin Moore is singing about how if he doesn't go ask this girl out, buy her a drink or something like that, then somebody else will. Well that's all fine and dandy. But did you do it, Justin? I thought that this song was going to go somewhere when it started. Like, I was expecting Justin to tell us that he did ask this girl out and that they had a good time and he's glad he did. But that doesn't happen. He just keeps repeating the sentiment that if he doesn't do something, then somebody else well. Like if somebody sat down and started telling you a story, but instead of finishing it, they told the beginning of the story three or four times, then walked away. This just feels empty and incomplete. And barely even country, in case anyone cares. 

99- "Nobody Else But You" - Trey Songz -- We end our glorious week with a new song from Trey Songz. And in a crazy turn of events, this winds up as the best song of the week. But don't chalk that up to this song being great. Chalk it up to this week just being plain out horrible. The lyrics here aren't anything special or deep on Trey's end. He's just singing about this girl and how he doesn't want anybody else but her. But at least it appears that he has made an effort to write a decent song and the rap itself is alright. Most rap these days makes me cringe for multiple reasons. Either it's mumble rap, Migos style of echos and sound effects, and/or lyrics that just make me want to throw up. But this does none of that. I can understand Trey. I am not annoyed by Trey. And Trey's lyrics are fine. Nothing special or deep, but totally acceptable. In a week riddled with a bunch of awful crap, I'll certainly take this.

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