Billboard Hot 100 Top 10:
1- "Havana" - Camila Cabello featuring Young Thug (+1) -- Well here's a surprise. I've been counting down the weeks until Camila tied the record for most weeks at No. 2 without hitting No. 1. A record that she will now not be eligible for because she finally did it! She got over the hump and made it to No. 1! I will admit that it crossed my mind for a few seconds that maybe she could sneak ahead of "Perfect" with the debut of her new album, but I didn't seriously consider it, so this is a genuine surprise for me that I suppose I should've seen coming. Camila's new album, titled "Camila" was timed perfectly as that, along with an iTunes discount for the song, gave "Havana" enough of a sales and streaming boost to jump ahead of "Perfect." If history serves me right, the week after an album boost often causes a song to come back down to earth a bit, so I think "Perfect" has a chance of reclaiming the lead next week, but even if that's the case, I'm glad that Camila got her No. 1 hit, which is something she was never able to do with during her days with Fifth Harmony. "Havana" took 23 weeks to get to No. 1, which ties the record among female singers with Sia's "Cheap Thrills." Only six other songs have taken longer. Camila also simultaneously gets her first No. 1 on the Hot 100 and first No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with her new album, a unique accomplishment only achieved previously by Beyonce and Britney Spears.
2- "Perfect" - Ed Sheeran (-1) -- As previously mentioned, Ed Sheeran is down but not out as he could reclaim his title next week. Although after having had six weeks at No. 1 with "Perfect," I'd be fine with letting Camila stay in the spotlight. I'm a fan of sharing the glory rather than one song dominating for a super long time. Regardless of what happens with that top spot, Ed Sheeran certainly isn't going away as he still rules radio with now 151 million in total audience for the song while still having decent sales and streaming numbers. In fact, he narrowly edged out Camila on sales this week to also remain on top there, meaning it's the streaming that got Camila to No. 1.
3- "rockstar" - Post Malone featuring 21 Savage (+1) -- Post Malone swaps spots with Bruno Mars this week. Although I have a feeling they will be swapping back next week. Or maybe that's just hopeful thinking on my part because I was ready for "rockstar" to leave the charts ever since it debuted. I'm still baffled as to how and why ANYONE is still listening to this boring piece of dumpster fire.
4- "Finesse" - Bruno Mars & Cardi B (-1) -- I mentioned last week that this song will be experiencing a second week drop this week after soaring to No. 3 last week after it's first full week of tracking. That always happens. The fact that this only dropped one spot is a good sign moving forward. It means it's probably here to stay. Compare that one-spot drop to Justin Timberlake's "Filthy" dropping 20 spots in its second week, going from No. 9 last week to No. 29 this week. Personally I prefer this song to "rockstar" as well as the three songs right below it, so if it stays in this region like I think it will, I will be happy for now, although I'd prefer it not jump ahead of "Havana" and "Perfect" as I think that's a good top two combo that I'd like to keep for a little longer.
5- "Bad at Love" - Halsey (+2) -- The radio is falling in love with Halsey. That's why this song has been holding steady after giving me false hope a few weeks ago that it was on its way out. I'm not sure why the radio has determined there's nothing else to play because I could think of quite a few songs below the top 10 that deserve way more radio play than this. But I suppose it could be worse.
6- "Thunder" - Imagine Dragons (=) -- Is it time yet to drop Imagine Dragons? They wore out their welcome a long time ago and I'm still shocked that so many people are clinging on to this boring, empty rock song.
7- "No Limit" - G-Eazy featuring A$AP Rocky & Cardi B (-2) -- I'm certainly happy to see G-Eazy slip as he swaps spots with his girlfriend Halsey. I don't really like either song, but if I had to pick it would certainly not be this song. So I'll take it for this week. Let's continue to kick this song further down!
8- "New Rules" - Dua Lipa (+3) -- IT'S ABOUT FREAKING TIME!!! This is the 25th week on the charts for "New Rules" and I've been wanting it to become a top 10 hit for quite some time, but a part of me wondered if it was going to camp out there right below for forever. Dua first grabbed my attention in a huge way since providing the vocals and depth to Martin Garrix's "Scared to Be Lonely," a song I live. She's since released her album, which I think is a solid pop album, so I'm glad we're accepting her into the circle of stardom here in the U.S. as we could use more female pop stars getting attention after we unfairly kicked a whole bunch to the curb last year. We're a little late to the party as Dua already topped the U.K. charts back in September, but better late than never, right? Now let's please send this song even higher now!
9- "Too Good at Goodbyes" - Sam Smith (-1) -- I'm going to cling onto this song for as long as I can. I don't think it has too many weeks left as there's quite a few songs knocking on the door right below the top 10. But I'm glad it's gained a lot of traction by failing to depart even if it wasn't quite able to climb as high as it deserved to.
10- "MotorSport" - Migos, Nicki Minaj & Cardi B (=) -- Migos and their girlfriends stubbornly stick around for one more week at No. 10 as it was Justin Timberlake's "Filthy" that was the only song to depart the top 10 this week. Considering that "Gucci Gang" is sitting at No. 11 with "Gummo" at No. 13, I suppose this could be worse. But we also have "Love." by Kendrick Lamar at No. 12, "Let You Down" by NF at No. 14 and "Meant to Be" by Bebe Rexha and Florida Georgia Line at No. 17, so let's invite one of those, or all of those, into the top 10 and kick Migos out. They've overstayed their welcome. Although I will say I'm glad that this song didn't get any bigger as it peaked at No. 6 after only being in the Hot 100 for 12 weeks now.
Rising on the Hot 100:
13- "Gummo" - 6ix9ine (+6) -- I'm trying to figure out why this rose this week, but haven't been successful. I don't see a new album or a music video release, so I'm confused and worried. This song peaked around here several weeks ago and then thankfully started to drop, but now it's back up and I'm back to being angry. If you missed in, 6ix9ine claimed the top two spots in my worst songs of 2017 list and this was one of them. I'm convinced that all the people streaming this horrifically awful song aren't paying attention at all to the lyrics or else I would hope they would stop streaming it. Or maybe they wouldn't. Considering all the horrible rap music poisoning our charts today, I'm not sure anyone who listens to that genre ever pays attention to the lyrics they are listening to or even cares. And if that offends you, then so be it. Listen to better music.
18- "End Game" - Taylor Swift featuring Ed Sheeran & Future (+18) -- It's really strange to me that this seems to be the song gaining Taylor Swift some traction after the other two songs have completely failed. There's several songs that I could pick out from "reputation" that deserve to gain traction if Taylor would release them as singles, but "End Game" is the absolute worst of the album, so I'm not happy. It's only here because of Ed Sheeran and his part in the song is completely wasted. It got such a huge boost this week due to the new music video, so I can only hope that it falls back down next week and starts to go away, but we shall see.
20- "I Fall Apart" - Post Malone (+6) -- I gain comfort in knowing that this is a slow riser on the charts, meaning I don't think it'll ever hit the levels of "rockstar" even if it does creep into the top 10. But please, for the love of everything right, lets keep this away?
30- "Never Be the Same" - Camila Cabello (+35) -- Camila's other song also gets a huge boost from the album release. By the way, I listened to the album and really enjoyed it. This isn't one of the better songs, but I enjoy it, but I'm not upset that it's doing well.
36- "Roll in Peace" - Kodak Black featuring XXXTENTACION (+9) -- I was hoping that we could leave these two in 2017. Let's discard this garbage and not let it get any higher.
40- "Lemon" - N.E.R.D & Rihanna (+10) -- If this song is going to be a 2018 hit, it's taking an awfully long time to get there. But at the same time, it has managed to gain consistency. This is a fun song. I'm rooting for it!
41- "Lights Down Low" - MAX featuring gnash (+6) -- This is a song that has been slowly rising. And I'd be a lot happier for this song if it was just MAX with his original and not the gnash remix which ruins the song because gnash totally doesn't fit into the context of the song and is just thrown in there to give the song popularity. But it's whatever.
43- "Ric Flair Drip" - Offset & Metro Boomin (+5) -- Migos has a song rising on the charts that I surprisingly enjoy. Let's just focus on that one and not this Offset solo song.
55- "Nowadays" - Lil Skies featuring Landon Cube (+30) -- OK, this isn't the most offensive song on the charts when it comes to these untalented SoundCloud rappers that we're giving careers to. And this is the slightly better of the the Lil Skies songs, but let's not get too carried away. I would still prefer it if this song would go away.
59- "Written in the Sand" - Old Dominion (+10) -- The highest rising country song this week. And the only one that rise high enough to make this section this week. I'm not particularly happy, but there's worse things happening right now, so I'll move on.
60- "Stir Fry" - Migos (+12) -- This is the Migos song I enjoy. So let's drop "Ric Flair Drip" and any other Migos song and let this be the only riser. Although let's not push this too high because that means other Migos songs might follow it and I'm not convinced that this trio is capable of pleasing me twice in a row.
69- "Red Roses" - Lil Skies featuring Landon Cube (+29) -- No. I'm whatever with "Nowadays." But this song needs to go away and stay away because it's extremely boring and dull, even if it still doesn't cross over into offensive territory.
New Arrivals:
47- "The Champion" - Carrie Underwood featuring Ludacris -- This here is the song that Carrie Underwood will be singing to kick off Super Bowl LII. I'm really excited for that moment because this is the perfect song to get me in the mood to watch the Super Bowl! I also think this would work great if ESPN and other sports networks picked this up to advertise other sports games, like, say, March Madness coming up. This most recent college football season, ESPN used "Walk on Water" by Thirty Seconds to Mars to advertise their game of the week and that was perfect. I'm sad it never charted on the Hot 100 because I would've praised it to the high heavens. I also remember "Centuries" by Fall Out Boy being the perfect sports anthem, too. "The Champion" fits right along with those two songs as a great song to get you pumped up to either watch or play a game. If I'm going to play a basketball game, this will be the perfect song to play on my drive there. And being that this is more of a pop song closer to Carrie's Sunday Night Football song during the NFL regular season than her typical country stuff, the addition of Ludacris makes more sense. He fits in quite well with a motivational verse turning the word "champion" into an acronym. So let's bring on the Super Bowl! And go Eagles!!!
64- "Keke" - 6ix9ine, Fetty Wap & A Boogie wit da Hoodie -- I had one stipulation for 6ix9ine before going into this song. Don't spend the whole song bragging out murder and gang rape and maybe I'll give it a slight pass. And to give him credit, he doesn't spend a whole lot of time talking about those. He only has a couple lines talking about his gun and he's not signing about rape in this song, so it's not nearly as offensive as "Gummo" and "Kooda." Granted, he is singing about sex, drugs and other stuff he's doing while in the hood, so I'm not giving this song a complete pass. But it's less offensive than the other two. This also happens to be a remix of 6ix9ine's "On the Regular" where we only have to deal with 6ix9ine for the first third of the song. Fetty Wap takes the second third and Boogie takes the final third. Those two aren't great by any means, but at least both of them have decent flow and are rapping at me instead of yelling at me. I'm not sure why they didn't keep the original title when they redid this song. "Keke" makes less sense than "Gummo" or "Kooda" when it comes to the titles and "On the Regular" is the line that's repeated throughout, so that title made sense.
71- "Outside Today" - YoungBoy Never Broke Again -- In case you were curious, YoungBoy isn't going outside today. He's going to stay inside and enjoy all of his riches. This is a song from his upcoming album called "Until Death Call My Name." Let's hope I don't have to cover too much of that album when it drops because this song is useless. Granted, he's not mumbling and he doesn't spend too much time with his sound effects, but the song barely passes the two-minute mark and rappers bragging about how rich they are got old a really long time ago, so I give no credit when rappers make no effort to come up with something unique or original. It's just lazy.
80- "My My My!" - Troye Sivan -- It's been a while since we've had a Troye Sivan song on the charts. Well, he showed up briefly last year on a Martin Garrix song, but as a lead artist, it's been since 2015 since his debut studio album "Blue Neighbourhood" produced the song "Youth" shortly after "My Happy Little Pill" from an EP in 2014 became his first charting song. I remember enjoying "My Happy Little Pill," but I don't remember "Youth" too well and I didn't care to give it a re-listen. As far as pop goes, "My My My!" is not an awful song, but it's a lot more slow and boring than it should be and the lyrics are as empty as something that Shawn Mendes or Charlie Puth would write. Just an extremely generic love song that doesn't give me much hope for his upcoming second studio album that he will release at some point this year.
84- "Tequila" - Dan + Shay -- A country song about drinking. Also super original. I remember enjoying Dan + Shay more than some country acts, but when I listened to this and discovered how generic and boring it was, I was disappointed. Whichever one of them is doing the singing here, he's saying that he can drink any drink or be with any girl, but for some reason it's tequila and only tequila that reminds him of his ex-girlfriend, that apparently doesn't even come to his mind when he's kissing another girl. Only drinking tequila reminds him that he wants her back in his life. Again, something that doesn't come to his mind at any point, proving that he doesn't actually need or want this girl back. So I don't know. The vocals are good. But the lyrics are boring.
91- "King's Dead" - Jay Rock, Kendrick Lamar, Future & James Blake -- Here's the second "Black Panther" track to chart after last week's "All the Stars" with Kendrick and SZA. After looking at the title, I thought I knew exactly how this is going to fit in. Black Panther was introduced in "Captain America: Civil War," where the King of Wakanda was killed, meaning that Black Panther aka T'Challa will take over as the new king. So this is going to be a song themed to that and will play towards the beginning of the movie, right? Well... sure. I guess? I examined these lyrics and I have no idea how they fit into the world of Wakanda or any superhero movie for that matter. First off, we have way too many voices for this and I don't think Future or Jay Rock got the memo that they are making a song for a Marvel movie because they are not on subject at all, which I suppose I can't blame them for because Kendrick isn't on subject either. Lot of references to girls, cars, new watches, lots of money. All that boring rap stuff that has nothing to do with T'Challa, Wakanda or any superhero stuff. It'll be the random rap song that means absolutely nothing that'll play during the movie and that's disappointing. I hope the movie will turn out better than this soundtrack is.
92- "IDGAF" - Dua Lipa -- As I previously mentioned with "New Rules" entering the top 10 this week, I like Dua Lipa and I think her new album is a solid pop album. But this isn't one of the highlights. It's not as annoying as "Blow Your Mind (Mwah)," but it might be second or third worst. While listening to this song when I covered the album, I was hoping this wouldn't be her next single, but part of me feared it might be. Dua is singing about a broken relationship. When he comes back to her wanting to get back together, Dua tells him that his time is up because it's too late and she's already spent too much time crying. She just doesn't give a... well... you look at the title and fill in the blanks there. This is not a bad song, but it's just not that interesting and it doesn't showcase her vocals like some other songs from the album. If you're curious, I prefer "No Goodbyes," "Homesick," "Be the One" and "Garden."
98- "El Baño" - Enrique Iglesias featuring Bad Bunny -- In case you didn't know, "El Baño" is Spanish for "Bathroom." Enrique is telling this girl that they should go to the bathroom where no one can see them. Then he tells the girl if she doesn't know him, she can get to know him there. Examining the lyrics, I don't think Enrique goes as scandalous as he often does, so this can be a harmless Latino dance song. I do my best to focus mostly on the music and the beat when it comes to these Spanish songs since I don't speak the language. On those terms, Enrique is one who is known for the extremely catchy dance songs that really make you want to jump up and dance, regardless of what language he's singing in. This song isn't like that. It has the typical Latino beat to it, but it's not as upbeat as it could be and Enrique kinda sounds like he's bored in the song and I think he included Bad Bunny because featuring Bad Bunny in a Latino dance song is the cool thing to do right now. So this song feels lazy when it comes to Enrique standards. I appreciate that the lyrics aren't as dirty as they could be, but they also don't sound like he put a ton of thought into them, either.
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