Billboard Hot 100 Top 10:
1- "Nice for What" - Drake (+5) -- It's the Drakeboard Hot 100 this week as Drake's new album "Scorpion" impacted the charts with insane streaming numbers that resulted in the whole 25-track album appearing in the top 60. Given that "Nice for What," "God's Plan" and "I'm Upset" had already debuted, that means 22 new songs to talk about in my new arrivals section. As pertaining to the top 10, it's no surprise that the previously released singles got a huge boost. It also came at no surprise that four new songs debuted in the top 10, meaning that Drake has a total of seven songs in the top 10, which is an all-time record previously held by The Beatles in 1964 with five. However, The Beatles still stand supreme with their domination because they got five songs in the top 10 long before streaming was ever a thing, so it's an apples and oranges comparison here. The Beatles also remain supreme because their five songs monopolized the entire top five, whereas Drake only has three songs in the top five and four songs in the bottom half of the top 10. So regardless of what report you hear about Drake topping The Beatles' record this week, don't be too impressed because what The Beatles accomplished in 1964 is still way more significant.
Regarding "Nice for What," it now celebrates an eighth total week at top on its fourth different trip, making for quite the unique journey as no other song has had four separate trips to the No. 1 spot. I mentioned a few weeks ago that this could happen, but last week I actually thought it was going to be "Nonstop" as that song's streaming numbers were the best from "Scorpion," meaning that this was slightly surprising to me, but "Nice for What" gets the top spot because it actually has radio and sales and not just a whole bunch of streaming, so it makes sense in hindsight.
2- "Nonstop" - Drake (new) -- As I just said, I thought that "Nonstop" was going to debut at No. 1 this week, but it instead has to settle for No. 2. I'll get to my thoughts on the song, along with the whole album, down below, but I'm honestly confused as to why this is the song from "Scorpion" getting the most streaming because it's not the best song from the album by a long shot. It's not awful, but it's not what you would expect from a No. 1 hit, or a top 10 song for that matter, so I'm glad it didn't debut at No. 1.
3- "I Like It" - Cardi B, Bad Bunny & J Balvin (-2) -- After hitting No. 1 last week, Cardi B gets bullied by Drake down to No. 3. But I fully expect Cardi to be back at No. 1 next week. Despite the two-spot fall, it rose in all three metrics. That consistency across the board will do wonders for it moving forward, despite my personal reservations. It's biggest competition was "Lucid Dreams," but that song tanked this week and I think it's due to Billboard making an adjustment on streaming this week by giving more weight to paid streaming over free streaming. Thus hip-hop in general took a big hit this week. Although we'll have to wait a week or two to see what the real impact of that is and what was simply Drake's album bomb destroying the hip-hop momentum momentarily.
4- "God's Plan" - Drake (+5) -- I'm also not surprised to see "God's Plan" take a big jump this week to No. 4. But given that it was No. 9 last week and on the brink of falling out of the top 10, I imagine that next week it will be gone from the top 10 as the charts adjust back to normal following the Drake album bomb. There is a chance that it sticks around, though, if there is still some residual streaming left over from this week.
5- "Girls Like You" - Maroon 5 featuring Cardi B (-1) -- On the surface you can look at this and celebrate that this song fell a spot. But if you look between the lines you'll notice that this is actually the second highest non-Drake song, meaning that this could soar up to No. 2 next week, which has me completely baffled because this song is completely useless on its own, no better than a below average album filler on an already dumb album, but is made worse by Cardi B's verse which doesn't connect at all with the rest of the song. But for some reason it's turning into a 2018 sensation. Someone save us.
6- "In My Feelings" - Drake (new) -- This is an acceptable addition from Drake. I'll dive into a bit more detail down below, but I'm fine with this being here. I don't know why he didn't list City Girls and Lil Wayne as featured credits because they're now snubbed out of top 10 entry on their resumes.
7- "I'm Upset" - Drake (+19) -- Yes, I'm going to say this again, but I can't help myself. I'm upset that this song is here. But I don't think it'll be here next week.
8- "Emotionless" - Drake (new) -- Mariah Carey also got snubbed out of a top 10 entry as the only reason why this song is somewhat acceptable is the Mariah Carey sample that plays throughout the song. It's her song "Emotions" that is used. Drake essentially pressed play in the studio, then talked over it as he explained why he kept his child a secret from the world. It's a fine message, but there's not much of a song here.
9- "Don't Matter to Me" - Drake featuring Michael Jackson (new) -- This is the most intriguing entry of all the new Drake arrivals as Drake now gives Michael Jackson his 30th top 10 entry of his career. Drake, on the other hand, soars up to 31 top 10 entries with all of his new entries this week. That gives him the most top 10 entries out of any male solo artist in history and ties him with Rihanna for third most all time as the two of them are behind only Madonna (38) and The Beatles (34). In this process, Drake passed Michael Jackson (30), Mariah Carey (28), Stevie Wonder (28), Janet Jackson (27) and Elton John (27). Having Drake pass all of them feels blasphemous, but whatever. None of them had the power of streaming to help them or were in the peaks of their careers when this album bomb trend became a thing, so I'm not as impressed with all these records Drake is setting. On that note, Drake now ups his total number of Hot 100 entries to 186, which is second only to Glee Cast with all of their annoying covers when that show was a thing. Give Drake a year or two and he'll pass their total of 207. That's what, one more album bomb? As far as this actual song, I have a lot to say about it down below. Short version is I'm split. I love Michael's part, but not Drake's.
10- "SAD!" - XXXTENTACION (-8) -- The strangest thing has happened to me with this song this past week. It's been stuck in my head and I can't get it out. I still don't think it's that great of a song, though, mostly because it feels incomplete. But I'm also still fine with it being here given the situation with X's murder.
Without Drake's Songs on the Hot 100:
Just for fun, I thought I'd share what the top 10 would look like this week if we completely removed all 27 Drake songs from the Hot 100. In the parentheses is their current position this week. Now it's not a guarantee that all of Drake's seven songs disappear from the top 10. I mean, his album last year disappeared from the charts pretty quickly after the album bomb, but this year could go either way. But it will be interesting to see how closely next week's top 10 resembles this list right here.
1- "I Like It" - Cardi B, Bad Bunny & J Balvin (3)
2- "Girls Like You" - Maroon 5 ft. Cardi B (5)
3- "SAD!" - XXXTENTACION (10)
4- "Boo'd Up" - Ella Mai (11)
5- "Psycho" - Post Malone ft. Ty Dolla $ign (12)
6- "No Tears Left to Cry" - Ariana Grande (15)
7- "Lucid Dreams" - Juice WRLD (16)
8- "The Middle" - Zedd, Maren Morris & Grey (19)
9- "Meant to Be" - Bebe Rexha & Florida Georgia Line (22)
10- "Delicate" - Taylor Swift (23)
Rising on the Hot 100:
75- "Life Changes" - Thomas Rhett (+17) -- It's not surprising that we don't have much of a rising songs section this week with 22 new Drake entries. Next week will be quite interesting to see what recovers as I fully expect a very long list of rising songs to discuss next week. There's only two songs that survived Drake's onslaught this week and they're both country songs that shot up super high. It makes me wonder how high both of them would've jumped without Drake. Normally I'm upset about a Thomas Rhett song doing well, but this one I'm fine with. Not overly ecstatic, but this is more tolerable than most of his stuff.
79- "Take Back Home Girl" - Chris Lane featuring Tori Kelly (+19) -- This is also another country song that I don't mind. It's fairly harmless. I just wish Chris Lane would've given Tori Kelly more to do rather than just use her for background vocals because she's a treasure and I want more of her on the charts. This could've been another "Meant to Be" situation, but instead it's just a simple, harmless country song with hints of Tori Kelly scattered in the background.
New Arrivals:
2- "Nonstop" - Drake -- We have 22 new songs to cover from Drake as his entire "Scorpion" album is all on the charts this week. The album is 25 songs total with "God's Plan," "Nice for What" and "I'm Upset" having debuted earlier this year. Given that 22 new debuts is a ton to cover, I'm going to be as brief as possible with these songs so that I'm not typing this up all week. I still enjoy "God's Plan" and "Nice for What," so I'm hoping to find a few more decent songs, but with Drake it's always been quantity over quality, so I'm not crossing my fingers here. And we're not off to a good start here as "Nonstop" is really boring. There's two long Drake verses where he's lazily bragging about how cool he is. He mentions that he's a hard hitter in part of that, which is funny because this song doesn't hit hard at all. It's very soft. There's a chorus in between the two verses that almost gives this song life, but there's not enough here to make it interesting. It just sounds like he spent five minutes putting this song together. Thus I'm not sure why this is the song that got the most streaming from his album this week.
6- "In My Feelings" - Drake -- I'm not sure why this song isn't listed as Drake featuring City Girls and Lil Wayne. City Girls is a new rap duo from Miami and I'm sure those two girls would've appreciated credit for a top 10 hit. And adding a Lil Wayne feature may have given more attention to this song. But it is what it is. This song has a catchy chorus from Drake where he's talking to several different girls, asking if they still love him and it's balanced by City Girls and Lil Wayne giving more variety to the song with various samples included. There's still not much depth to the song, but it's catchy enough with a variety of different sounds to make it acceptable.
8- "Emotionless" - Drake -- This Drake song samples Mariah Carey's "Emotions." And that's the only reason the song is interesting. Because that's a really good song with some strong vocals from Mariah. But the reason why this song is bad is that it feels lazy. All Drake does is talk to us while Mariah is singing in the background. He's not even really singing or rapping and there's very little background music of his own that he adds. It sounds like he stepped into the studio, pressed play on Mariah's song, then talked to the world about why kept news of his child secret, which is a controversy that Pusha T created by calling Drake out for hiding his kid. So now Drake is out to explain his reasoning, which makes perfect sense to me. He wanted to keep a low profile with his child because of the state of the world right now. So I can comment on the controversy, but I'm here to talk about a song and there's not much of a song here. I'm not going to give Drake credit for creating a good song when all he did was press play on a Mariah song and almost nothing else.
9- "Don't Matter to Me" - Drake featuring Michael Jackson -- This is the song that immediately caught my attention when I saw Drake's new album. Michael Jackson featured on a Drake song? What strings did Drake pull to make this happen? What Michael Jackson song was he sampling and how does it fit in with Drake's vocals and lyrics? If Michael Jackson were still alive today, would he have any interest in joining Drake on a song? I suppose we'll never know the answer to that last question, but the Michael Jackson song used is a previously unreleased track that he recorded with Paul Anka back in the day, but it was ultimately shelved. I'm not sure how Drake got his hands on it or who from the Michael Jackson party allowed this to happen, but I've listened to this several times in a row now and I'm unsure what to think of it. It's more mellow and relaxed than other Drake songs and it seems like Drake put more effort into the vocals in an attempt to match Michael's style, but he didn't do much with his lyrics in the verses that he wrote around the Michael Jackson chorus. Said chorus is phenomenal because Michael is the best, but I leave the song feeling a bit empty because Drake doesn't do enough to compliment Michael. I come away wishing that there were a Michael Jackson only version of this song where there's some actual substance in the verses from Michael or Paul Anka rather than just Drake complaining about a former relationship in mediocre-Drake fashion. But then we have the question that maybe this song was shelved for a reason. Perhaps Michael didn't feel good enough about it to release it on an album. But I don't know. It's certainly not the worst song on the album and if the song did extremely well, it would kinda be cool to see Michael in the limelight again in 2018 for old-time sake with a new song.
13- "Mob Ties" - Drake -- With the Michael Jackson track out of the way and the rest of these songs being below the top 10, I might spend even less time on the rest of these songs unless I find a song that catches my attention. Which is certainly not this song. Drake is saying he's sick of all these people, either his haters or his competition. I'm not sure which because he doesn't elaborate too much. That and he spends the song mimicking Migos' sound effects and echoes, so I tuned out fairly quickly. I'm not sure why Drake thinks he needs to copy Migos to fit in when he's doing much better than they are and most rappers are trying to copy Drake these days. All it does is make for an extremely annoying song with no substance as he doesn't care to elaborate.
14- "Elevate" - Drake -- This song is co-written by PARTYNEXTDOOR and has some echoes courtesy of French Montana. In case you were curious. The song has a bit of a haunting undertone to it, so if Drake had anything interesting to say here, this could've made for a good song, but he's just reminiscing about how he became so famous and tells us that he's been super busy in the studio thinking about all the money he's going to be making by releasing so much music. Yup, that's Drake for you. Release as many songs as humanly possible in order to make all the money possible. Don't worry about the lyrics because no one cares about those anyways. That's the Drake mindset. He also says he's thankful that God has been working stronger than Satan in all of this as if it's all God's will in helping Drake become so famous. If Drake having a hugely successful rap career was all a part of God's big plan, don't you think God would've helped Drake come up with lyrics and music that actually meant something?
17- "Survival" - Drake -- Here's the opening track on Drake's. And if I had listened to the album in order, I would've immediately rolled my eyes and dreaded the whole project because Drake starts us off my reminded the world how cool he is and that Drake's Mount Rushmore would be himself four times with different expressions and more of how he's on top of the world. Oh, but he can't get too far into it on this song because this is just the intro. And again he reminds us that it was God's plan to make Drake better and more popular than all the other rappers. If you couldn't tell, I'm calling blasphemy on all of that. I don't know why Drake is so popular, but it wasn't God's working. Oh yeah, this song is also just one long verse.
18- "Can't Take a Joke" - Drake -- Drake is trying to laugh with his bros, but they can't take a joke. Whatever that means. Maybe it's him trying to lightly toss aside all his haters and the diss tracks aimed at him. They're all taking things super seriously but he's just laughing it all off because they don't matter. Despite all the hate he gets, he's on top of the world. Which is unfortunately true. At least this song has a bit of a structure to it with two verses and the chorus repeated twice instead of just a boring structure with him rambling on about nothing. That's the best compliment I can think of though. This is not horrible, but it's just a boring song with little substance.
20- "Talk Up" - Drake featuring JAY-Z -- This is the other song from the album that I was slightly curious about when I saw the track listing. Is it possible that Drake could collaborate with JAY-Z and come up with something interesting? Uh, nope. Not this time around, anyways. I will say that the production is darker on this song, so if we had a rapper who knew how to be dark, this could've been ominous. But Drake doesn't do dark. He just does boring. Thus I was listening to the music behind the song and thinking it kinda works, but then I was listening to Drake rap and I was bored because Drake is boring. JAY-Z comes in and does the second half and his voice fits the ominous tone much better than Drake's voice does, but I guess when you collaborate with Drake, sometimes Drake's boringness robs off on you because JAY-Z came up with absolutely nothing in terms of content. Just more bragging about how on top of the game he is. Because we were all dying to hear that for the 1,000th time.
21- "8 out of 10" - Drake -- That's a score that I'm not giving this album. Or this song. That's way too high. That's also one number off when it comes to how much of the top 10 he controlled this week. It was 7 out of 10, not 8 out of 10. Silly Drake. But no, this song is actually saying that he could've come into this with his intensity level at a 10 and completely destroy this Pusha T and Kanye West feud with an out of this world diss track, but he intentionally dialed it back. In which case, 8 out of 10 is still way too high as this is closer to a 1 out of 10. I don't follow these stupid music feuds between artists, so I don't care about this. Drake is also stating that, despite all the hate he gets, everyone still is listening to his tracks, which I would somehow love it if that would stop because someone this boring shouldn't be this popular.
27- "Sandra's Rose" - Drake -- For better or for worse, this song made me laugh. Instead of a bunch of boring nonsense, Drake comes up with a whole bunch of cheesy lines that he shoves together in one song. I don't even want to start listing any of them because there's too much. Almost every line is something absurd and ridiculous. The main theme is that he's Sandra's rose. Who is Sandra? His mom. He's his mom's rose. That's adorable. And it's nice that he loves his mother and is proud that he helped pull her out of poverty. But that's just a small part of the song. The rest of the song is just so hilariously ridiculous that I forget the bit of him talking about his mother.
28- "Summer Games" - Drake -- This song surprised me. Drake is quality over quantity and, as you can see, thus far it's not been so good overall. But this one might be the best one overall thus far. Drake actually doesn't do much rapping in this song. He sounds more like The Weeknd with a melodic pop-sounding voice that fits him much better than his dull rap voice. The song itself has a simple electronic beat to it that captured my attention right away. I expected to be bored when Drake himself came in, but his voice fits the tone of the song well and they combine for a mellow, relaxing groove with a touch of sadness as he discusses a relationship that fell through. No, there's not a lot of depth to it and the themes are quite similar to the Michael Jackson song, but him matching his voice with the tone of the song makes this one work. We've actually had a few songs thus far from the second half of the album, which is where this is from, and those are the ones I've given a pass to while most everything that has been crap has been the first part of the album. Am I discovering a theme here?
30- "Blue Tint" - Drake -- So much for this theory that the second half of the album would be better. If he's trying to tell some sort of weak story in this album, in our previous song he talked about not being with this girl again and in "Blue Tint" he says he's back with her. Or stuck with her as he says later, unsure how stable she's going to be. In other words, any problem in whatever relationship is going on is all her fault. Future jumps on in a few spots on this track to mumble and make noises at us that he claims is music and the rest of the song is paper thin and dull. He does manage to get in a random jab in at our current president, even though that has nothing to do with the song while making sure to again remind us that he's on top of the rap game.
32- "Jaded" - Drake -- We're back to the broken-hearted part of the album where Drake is complaining about a former relationship before they get back together again in "Blue Tint." With this song Drake is going for a slow and smooth R&B feel, but it's just slow and anything but smooth. The music is very minimalistic, but to a fault, making this a very boring song about Drake blaming this girl for doing everything wrong while making me personally think Drake was actually the one at fault, but just doesn't want to admit it because he's too prideful to take any blame.
36- "Is There More" - Drake -- I wish there wasn't more. But yeah, we still have to deal with more songs. This is the final song on the first half of the album, thus it's fitting that it's called "Is There More," because there is. But holy fetch is this song trash. There's some strange noises going on in the background while he drones in a very blocky, monotone way that doesn't sound like singing or rapping. He's just talking as if this was a song he recorded at the end of a very long day and he just didn't care about doing anything with it. I don't even really no what it is he's rambling on about here because there's no focus here with anything he's saying.
37- "That's How You Feel" - Drake -- We're back to the second half of the album after taking a minor detour to the final song of the first half. And we're back to talking about this girl that Drake may or may not want to be with. I'm not even sure where this fits in our chronology of him complaining because it sounds like this is at a point where they're together, but Drake feels like she's not feeling the same about this relationship as he does. That's all there is to the song outside some random samples of a live Nicki Minaj performance that feels out of place. This is another song where Drake leans more R&B and he pulls it off better than in "Jaded" and the song has more rhythm and flow than in "Is There More," but there's still not much to this song.
38- "Peak" - Drake -- This is the first song from the second half of the album. If I was listening to this album in order, then this would be a much needed shift from "Is There More" as Drake transitions to a more R&B and pop feel in this second half. More rambling about relationship issues as that appears to be the whole second half of the album. In this edition of that complaining, he's throwing in a whole bunch of British references, including a "Rest in Heaven, Diana" line right from the beginning. I'm not sure how that all fits in unless the girl he's talking about is from the UK. Musically the song tries to do something interesting partway through, but doesn't quite get there and thus we are left with another off-kilter R&B song that tries to be smooth, but ends up more boring with an unbalanced flow and more lyrics that are simply dull.
41- "After Dark" - Drake featuring Static Major & Ty Dolla $ign -- I honestly thought this song would be much higher up than No. 41 given that Drake actually gives featured credit to his featured artists in this song, one of them being Static Major. If you're drawing a blank on Static Major, he died in 2008 after a medical malpractice in a hospital visit before he was able to release his debut album. He's most well known for his featured credit on Lil Wayne's "Lollipop," which was released two weeks after his death. And now he shows up again on this Drake song, making this the second posthumous feature that Drake has included here, following the Michael Jackson song that debuted at No. 9. I'm not sure where Drake takes the Static Major sample from, but it's mainly just a ploy to get attention, in my opinion, as he essentially found a brief clip of Static singing the phrase "after dark" that's repeated throughout the song. This is also Drake rambling on about this broken relationship, which makes it boring after hearing the same lyrics in every song. The difference is we get a more desperate tone from Drake as he's begging the girl to come back to him so that he can prove himself. Another difference is that the smooth R&B feel actually works this time around as opposed to Drake missing the mark on several other R&B attempts in the second half of this album. So this is nothing to write home about, but it's passable.
A humorous element about this song is that at the end he includes a montage from a radio station in Canada, making it seem like one of those songs riffed from the radio back in the day. Part of this bit from the radio station has the dude give out the number to call in, which made thousands of people call into this station after the album was released out of pure curiosity to see if it's real or fake. And it's real. 93.7 WBLK in Toronto. The number is 716-644-9393 if you feel like giving them a call. The radio station responded to Drake very appreciative of the huge spike in attention.
42- "Finesse" - Drake -- I don't like Bruno Mars' song "Finesse," but it's much better than this song. I don't know if that's a surprise or not. It feels like a broken record in saying what these lyrics are about. It's the same relationship roller coaster. Although this is Drake saying how much he is in love with this girl, so it appears to be before all the fiasco of breaking up and complaining, then getting back together and possibly breaking up again. Or whatever. I don't know if Drake really planned all of this out. He just probably wrote a whole bunch of romance songs for some reason. While "After Dark" that I just talked about hits the R&B rhythm quite well, this is another example of Drake completely botching it as this song is extremely boring.
51- "Ratchet Happy Birthday" - Drake -- If you ever play this song for me on my birthday, I just might thrown the whole cake at you because this is quite the cringe-worthy happy birthday song as Drake uses a happy birthday backdrop to say how much he loves this girl, like on "Finesse," but also subtly insulting her by mentioning how unemotional she is. Because that's a nice thing to sing to a girl on her birthday. And the chorus of happy birthday begins with "It's your brrrrrrrrrr..." in annoying Migos fashion.
56- "Final Fantasy" - Drake -- We're almost done with Drake. Just one more song after this and we're free until his next album bomb, which will probably happen next year. This here is by far the worst song on the album because Drake spends the whole song graphically describing all of his sexual fantasies with this girl. I don't know if it was supposed to sound sexy, but he describes this fantasy in a dull, monotone style, which makes this sound creepy as if he was a sexual predator planning on going after this girl. I know this isn't what Drake was going for, but he just misses the mark so hard with what he was aiming for that this is what it ends up sounding like. And what an insult to people who like the Final Fantasy games. Drake names his song after that, but it has nothing to do with the games and is instead a gross sexual fantasy song.
57- "March 14" - Drake -- Drake finishes the album with a song that's not really a song nor a rap. He's just kinda talking to us with some noises in the background that sound like drunk fairies while detailing the story of his child, which seems to be a main theme of this album. Pusha T called Drake out regarding this secret child and now Drake is opening about that and how he's a single dad because he has a child, yet is not in a relationship with said child's mother. What's the significance of March 14? I don't know. He doesn't say. Thus your guess is as good as mine. I can appreciate his take on this whole controversy regarding his child. But this is not a song. It's one long verse of him talking to us. So I'm not giving him any credit with the lyrics.
Now that all 25 songs from "Scorpion" have been covered on this blog, 22 new songs this week plus his three lead-off singles, my final grade for the album is a D+, which is higher than the D I gave Drake's album "Views" last year and also higher than albums this year from Post Malone, Logic and Cardi B. That's because there are several good songs scattered throughout on the album, but it's all quantity over quality, so you have to sort through a whole bunch of messy, boring nonsense to find the few songs that are actually worth listening. That's Drake for you. Are you surprised?
63- "Karma" - Queen Naija -- We're done with Drake this week, but we're not done with new songs from the Hot 100. We have five more songs from artists not named Drake. And we start off with another song from Queen Naija? I didn't see this one coming. Her song "Medicine" was a very enjoyable angry track aimed at her ex-husband after the YouTube couple split. But being that she was a YouTube personality and not a professional singer, the song disappeared rather quickly. Until recently when it resurfaces on the Hot 100. And now we get a second single from her. Does this mean she's going to make the transition into a legit musician? Because I would like that. This girl has potential. Although eventually she's going to have to pick a new subject to sing about because this is another angry song aimed at her ex as she details a lot of the things that he did wrong in the relationship and warned him that what goes around, comes around. Her voice is still really good and she has some emotion packed into this song. But it does feel like she repeated a lot of what she already said in "Medicine," so I don't know how much more of these I will continue to give a pass to if she keeps on going with them, but for now I'm fine with it.
76- "Kiss Somebody" - Morgan Evans -- New country song from a new country singer. I feel this guy has a name similar to a hundred other country singers, which is why I thought I new him, but nope. This is new. Apparently he had a debut album back in 2014 that like two people listened to and now this is a song released in July 2017 for his upcoming second album. I casually read over that and assumed that said release date of the song was this month. But no, we're in 2018, which means this song is a year old. I'm not sure why it's just now entering the Hot 100 or where that second album is, but I don't really care enough to figure out because this is another bland, generic country song from a guy who sounds just as bland as every other boring country singer in the business right now. However, as I was listening more to this song, I started to feel like this was a bit conniving. He's talking about drowning your sorrows after losing someone by drinking, which is nothing new, but then he started saying that if drinking doesn't work out, then go kiss somebody, thus planting the thought into this person's head, after which he suggests she come and start kissing him. In other words, he's trying to take advantage of a girl who is lost in her sorrows by suggesting they start making out. That actually didn't sit super well with me as I thought about it.
86- "Sunrise, Sunburn, Sunset" - Luke Bryan -- Perhaps Luke Bryan should learn to wear sunscreen. His whole summer with this girl is sunrise, sunburn, sunset, repeat. He says they lit July on fire, but it appears that July lit them on fire. Anyways, as opposed to Morgan Evans sounding like a creepy man you should avoid after he's attempting to take advantage of a brokenhearted girl, Luke Bryan is simply chronicling a simple summer with a girl. This is a harmless song with a bit of a catchy chorus. I could see country fans gravitating towards it. But there's not enough in the song to make me really care about it. Instead I find myself asking weird questions like where did Luke get money from that summer? Did he not have a job or anything else to do with his life rather than spending every waking moment in the sun? Not that those details matter, but sometimes overly simple songs don't work well for me.
93- "Hotel Key" - Old Dominion -- Hey look! We have an Old Dominion sighting! I haven't seen them since they bored me with "No Such Thing as a Broken Heart" and "Written in the Sand" last year. "Hotel Key" comes from the same album, so you know I was stoked for this. And you should also know that sometimes I use a lot of sarcasm, especially when it comes to country singers or groups that have not piqued my interest with their music. And yeah, "Hotel Key" doesn't work for me, either. Just Matthew Ramsey from Old Dominion singing about a one-night stand he had with a girl. The two of them didn't care about three little words unless those were "Do not disturb." In other words, they didn't care about love or about each other. They just wanted to have sex in a hotel room at night after spending the day leading up to that drinking and smoking. They wondered if anyone would miss them if they ran, but then it's stated this isn't a story that ends that way. And he doesn't really say how the story ended because that's the final verse of the song. He just repeats the chorus a few times after that. I guess the twist ended is that she kept the hotel key, inferring that they never saw each other after that. So yeah, boring story that I didn't need to hear from a boring country group singing a boring song with boring music around it.
99- "Growing Pains" - Alessia Cara -- We've finally made it to the end of this long week of new arrivals. We finish off with the one song I was excited about when I looked at this long list. Alessia Cara. I like her and so does pop radio, so hopefully she can provide a bit of life to the charts. This song here is fairly simple as she's talking about the growing pains that are keeping her up. It's the lead-off single to her new album coming soon and it feels more like an introduction to that album with more details to come in later songs. But I don't know, this is been such a an awful week with so much Drake and the three previous country songs not helping things, that this feels like a nice breath of fresh air. Finally there's a song that I can feel happy about. I think the beat in the song is subtle, but it also has a nice little groove to it with an excellent vocal performance from Alessia that matches the more painful tone of the song. So yeah, I enjoy this and it makes me excited for what Alessia has in store for us later this year.
No comments:
Post a Comment