Billboard Hot 100 Top 10:
1- "God's Plan" - Drake (=) -- Drake is not going to last on top of the Hot 100 forever with "God's Plan." The song is in its eight week at No. 1, which is the halfway point to the all-time record that is now a tie between "Despacito" and "One Sweet Day." Again, it's the historically unmatched streaming numbers that are mainly keeping it alive. Those streaming numbers again fell by about 10 million, which it's done in each of the past three weeks, this time to 72.9 million U.S. streams, which is it's lowest total so far. Yet that lowest total so far is still higher than any previous song outside "Harlem Shake" and "Look What You Made Me Do," so it's still in the untouchable range. If it continues to fall at about 10 million per week, that means the song will become vulnerable in 3-4 weeks. The catch, though, is two things. One, the radio for "God's Plan" very well might compensate for its streaming falls and keep it at No. 1 for longer. Two, is there any song that wants the crown? Most of the current songs are pretty weak. It might take a hotshot new debut from someone that we're not anticipating at this current time.
2- "Perfect" - Ed Sheeran (=) -- It's actually kinda surprising to me that Ed Sheeran is STILL at No. 2 this week. That means it's spent eight weeks at No. 2 in 2018 alone, despite losing traction across the board. But it's been consistent enough to remain. Although I keep thinking something is going to crack. I just don't know when at this point. I still enjoy our top two songs, so it could be worse, but I will admit that I prefer movement on the charts rather than things being extremely stagnant.
3- "Finesse" - Bruno Mars & Cardi B (=) -- Bruno Mars remains on top of the radio charts for a second straight week with a slight uptick to 136 million in total audience. But the fact that the song still hasn't topped Ed Sheeran means it simply isn't doing well enough in the other categories, so it's instead stuck here at No. 3.
4- "Meant to Be" - Bebe Rexha & Florida Georgia Line (+1) -- This song wins the award for the song that's been stuck in my head most often from the last several weeks. And I don't mind that. If this ends up entrenched in the top five rotation for a while, I'm totally happy for it. And remember, I've never really cared much for Florida Georgia Line, but they do well here and mix perfectly with Bebe, a singer I've always loved. Bebe sets another new career high by moving up to No. 4 while Florida Georgia Line match their peak that they previously set with "Cruise," featuring Nelly, in 2013. The question now is can it pass "Perfect" and "Finesse"? I think so since both of those songs are losing their momentum and "Meant to Be" gained in all metrics this week, with the best jump in radio, which is what's still holding up those two previously mentioned songs ahead of it.
5- "Psycho" - Post Malone featuring Ty Dolla $ign (-1) -- It really makes me happy seeing this song fall again in its third week. A second week drop is to be expected, which is why I had to hold back my celebration last week to some extent. But falling for a second straight week tells me that Post Malone just isn't getting quite the same traction as he did with "rockstar," which is a fantastic sign. Let's keep this going!
6- "The Middle" - Zedd, Maren Morris & Grey (+2) -- Sure, this song is not the best song by a long shot from either Zedd or Maren Morris, but I still think this is an enjoyable enough song that I'm happy to see gain continual momentum. "The Middle" is starting to become a huge radio hit, so if that momentum continues upward and Post Malone continues to fall downward, I could see the two songs switching, sending Zedd and Maren to the the top five, which is an exciting prospect.
7- "Havana" - Camila Cabello featuring Young Thug (-1) -- It doesn't seem like there's a lot left in the tank for "Havana." Perhaps only another few weeks in the top 10. It's certainly been a great run for Camila. But there won't be too many tears for her as "Never Be the Same" is the top gainer in my rising charts as it looks like a solid candidate to enter the top 10 within a few weeks, depending on how things flow in the spots between "Havana" at No. 7 and "Never Be the Same" at No. 16.
8- "Pray for Me" - The Weeknd & Kendrick Lamar (+1) -- After a few weeks stuck in that No. 9 position, making me curious if this was going to start gaining or losing traction, "Pray for Me" thankfully jumps up a spot, giving me hope that this may start rising, which I would be totally down for since I think this is a pretty good song from The Weeknd and Kendrick. But I'm still not 100 percent sure what it's going to do as the No. 8 spot is often an unstable position.
9- "Look Alive" - BlocBoy JB featuring Drake (-2) -- "Look Alive" lasted a lot longer than I hoped it would with this being its fifth straight week in the top 10 after I thought and hoped that it would tank after week one. But hey, only five weeks, and possible a couple more, is a lot better than something equally as useless as "rockstar" spending over 20 weeks. So it could be worse. I'm glad this song is failing to gain any traction whatsoever outside the increasingly annoying streaming metric that is simply poisoned by the rap genre. I swear that's the only genre that ever gets streamed.
10- "All the Stars" - Kendrick Lamar & SZA (+1) -- I was sad to see this song prematurely exit the top 10, which means I'm glad to see it back this week. This is actually another song that I've had stuck in my head a lot recently, although it's worth mentioning that SZA's part is the only portion of the song that ever sticks out to me. At this point I almost couldn't even inform you about Kendrick's part. One of his more forgettable ventures, but SZA slays, so all is well!
Rising on the Hot 100:
16- "Never Be the Same" - Camila Cabello (+3) -- I talked about this song earlier, but as a reminder, I'm glad to see this continuing to go up as it looks even more likely that Camila could straight-up replace herself in the top 10 as "Havana" is dropping out at the same time as "Never Be the Same" is looking to jump. There's a slight traffic jam at the moment between No. 11 and No. 15, though, with much of the same songs being stuck there for the last several weeks, so I hope this song is able to jump over that traffic jam as opposed to also getting stuck in it.
24- "Whatever It Takes" - Imagine Dragons (+10) -- Seriously. What's the appeal of this song? I was hoping that we'd be done with Imagine Dragons after "Believer" and "Thunder" FINALLY started to leave us alone. But yet "Whatever It Takes," another empty, useless and emotionless Imagine Dragons song, continues to slowly gain on the charts. I said that I hope "Never Be the Same" is able to jump the traffic jam in the teens. Conversely, I hope that "Whatever It Takes" somehow gets stuck in said traffic jam. We'll see if the music gods decide to smile at me or slap me in the face.
25- "Plug Walk" - Rich the Kid (+23) -- Was there a music video dropped for this song or something like that? Why the huge jump? I really hope this is a temporary stay in the top 25 because Rich the Kid is an awful rapper that doesn't deserve anymore time in the spotlight with his awful music.
26- "Say Something" - Justin Timberlake featuring Chris Stapleton (+6) -- It's been a very interesting few months for JT. He had everything set up for him to succeed in a big way, but he wasn't able to produce the content that would complete the track. So his album kinda flopped. But yet as it seemed this song would get lost in the fall, it quietly got stuck on the way down and has now started inching its way up to success. I really hope that traction continues to build because this is a really fun song from JT and Chris Stapleton. With Florida Georgia Line and Maren Morris finding huge success, it would be fun if Stapleton continued that country star success by helping this song return to the top 10 after a very brief stay earlier in the year.
29- "Everyday" - Logic & Marshmello (+14) -- Lots of Logic on the charts in our new arrivals today. We'll get to all of that stuff in a bit, but as a reminder with this song, even though I like Logic and Marshmello as individual artists, they do not mesh well, which isn't helped by the fact that neither of them seemed to put much effort into collaboration. Not a good track from the album.
32- "Wait" - Maroon 5 (+7) -- This song is still around? I keep totally forgetting about its existence. It's rather embarrassing when I say this is one of the most forgettable songs of Maroon 5's career since they've been full of nothing but forgettable music ever since Adam Levine started judging "The Voice," which is quite some time now.
36- "Heaven" - Kane Brown (+6) -- How'd we manage to let this song into the top 40? I'm honestly confused by that. Is Kane Brown really a country singer worth knighting to a country superstar? I'd say no. There's so much better country around.
41- "Friends" - Marshmello & Anne-Marie (+11) -- This is the Marshmello song that I hope has success. Let's forget about that Logic collaboration and continue to push this song instead! I like Marshmello when he's collaborating with good artists!
45- "Broken Halos" - Chris Stapleton (+6) -- The trajectory of "Broken Halos" has been an interesting one to watch. It still hasn't decided if it wants to be a bonafide hit or dwindle into country limbo. And I kinda think it's a song that would've gone away had it not been for Stapleton's collaboration with JT, which might make people more curious about what else he's done. And no, this is not a song I really care about, but I'm also not super offended that it's stayed around.
46- "44 More" - Logic (+19) -- Again, a lot of Logic is about to be covered by me here in a bit with the drop of his album. And again, this song is not a Logic song I care about and I hope it goes away after the album boost goes away.
75- "Tell Me You Love Me" - Demi Lovato (+19) -- I'm surprised to see this song get a huge boost this week. I thought its run was finished. But that surprise is definitely a pleasant surprise. Demi's album that she released last year is all over the place and thus very forgettable, but this was one of the better songs from it that I was hoping would turn into a hit. Can it somehow manage to get a second wind here?
New Arrivals:
54- "Zombie" - Bad Wolves -- It completely broke my heart when I learned of the death of Dolores O'Riordan, lead singer of 90's band The Cranberries, this January at the young age of 46. Upon hearing that, I listened to "Dreams" on repeat for a while and it made me super emotional. I've always loved that song. I was hoping that in honor of Dolores, we'd get a resurgence of The Cranberries on the charts. And I was kinda sad that "Dreams," "Linger" and "Zombie" never re-entered. But now we have some sort of ode to them on the Billboard charts this week as it's the cover of "Zombie," by the band Bad Wolves, that enters this week. It was interesting for me to look back and learn that The Cranberries didn't have a huge impact on the Billboard charts in the U.S. at the time with only one top 10 hit in "Linger" and only four songs to appear at all on the Hot 100. In fact, had the original "Zombie" charted back in January, that would've technically been a new entry as that song never charted here. The Cranberries were huge over in their home country of Ireland as well as some other European countries. I suppose we were just late to game in the U.S. as I've definitely heard "Dreams" on the radio quite a bit growing up. Based on that and nothing else, I would've assumed that "Dreams" would've been The Cranberries hit that has stood the test of time best, but if I look at The Cranberries' YouTube account, it's "Zombie" that has 700 million views while "Dreams" has around 100 million views. So this is their most well-known song.
So how is this cover? Well it's absolutely fantastic. Metal is a genre that's not often represented on the Hot 100 and that's a darn shame. "Zombie" is a bit of a heavier song for The Cranberries anyways, at least when compared to songs like "Dreams," which is more light and, dare I say, dreamy? So going even harder with this metal cover fits it quite well. There's a lot of raw emotion and power coming from lead singer Tommy Vext that I think Dolores would be proud of. In fact, she was apparently supposed to record with Bad Wolves, but died just before the recording session, so I imagine she had her personal stamp of approval. This song was initially written by Dolores as an outcry towards humanity as she witnessed the decades-long conflict between Ireland and the U.K. and compared all these violent warmongers to mindless zombies killing for no reason. Her lyrics say it's the same old theme since 1916, which Bad Wolves updates to saying that it's the same old theme in 2018. Which is true. I mean, I don't personally know much about the conflict between Ireland and the U.K., but the violence around the world today is quite tragic, thus making the original song extremely relevant and this cover quite powerful. I'm not going to go as far as saying this is an improvement over the original like I did with Disturbed's "The Sound of Silence," but it's definitely a really good cover. I'm guessing you'll love it if you're a fan of the original.
56- "Indica Badu" - Logic featuring Wiz Khalifa -- It's the Logic show on the charts today as his new album "Bobby Tarantino II" dropped recently and has debuted eight new songs for Logic on the charts, giving him a total of 10 songs on the charts this week out of a total of 13. Again, I like Logic as a rapper. He's better than most rappers today and I loved what he accomplished with his suicide prevention song, but his previous two promotional singles from this album, "Everyday" and "44 More" didn't impress me, so I wasn't crossing my fingers with the album. Yet we'll take this one song at a time and see what we come up with. And, well, we're not off to a good star here as Logic joins up with weed-smoking legend Wiz Khalifa for a weed smoking anthem where the two of them go off on how amazing it is to smoke weed for exactly 4:20. The instrumentation fits this well as it has a more relaxing tone to it and both rappers flow well with their bars. So I'd prefer this over most of the untalented mumble rap. But content means a lot to me and I don't like weed-smoking anthems, so this song doesn't do it for me.
60- "Contra" - Logic -- We go from a weed anthem in "Indica Badu" to a song in "Contra" about how famous and awesome Logic has become. That's even worse. Luckily he doesn't spend time on all of his riches, fancy car, jewelry and girls he's been sleeping with like other rappers who constantly drone on about this subject. But still. The whole song is about how awesome and famous he's become while trashing on the people who have tried to jump on the bandwagon just because he's famous. As in girls wanting to love him now that he's famous instead of being with him from the beginning. So sure, it could've been worse. But still. He's just rapping about how famous he is and that's boring to me. Logic is capable of a whole lot more.
63- "NBAYOUNGBOAT" - Lil Yachty featuring YoungBoy Never Broke Again -- In addition to Logic's album "Bobby Tarantino II" impacting the charts this week, we also had the arrival of Lil Yachty's "Lil Boat 2," which luckily only had three tracks of the 17 total songs debut on the charts. So bad timing for Yachty, but great timing for me as it would be awful if I had to cover all of that. "NBAYOUNGBOAT" is Yachty's collaboration with YoungBoy Never Broke Again, an awful name that is somehow better than NBA YoungBoy, his previous rapper name. And this song is just the two of them starting with lot of skrts and wops at the beginning, then the two of them taking turns rapping about their lavish lifestyles, which is worse than anything Logic put out with his album, which is saying something because that album isn't good at all, as you'll come to see here. There's a non-explicit version of this album and half of the song is censored.
68- "Overnight" - Logic -- What did I just barely say in my thoughts on "Contra"? Logic rapping about how famous he is bores me. And again, that's all that he does here. He even adds in how much money he's making and how your girl wants to date him now. At least he says he's going to give the money back to the people who made him famous and he acknowledges that he doesn't know why your girl is trying to date him, speculating that it's because you haven't been treating her right. But still. The song comes off as quite condescending as he brags that all of his fame came because he was good to everyone and worked a lot harder than everyone. Well, people who are truly good people don't spend their time bragging about how they are good people, so he cancels that out. And if he worked hard in the past to come to where he is, it certainly doesn't seem like he worked very hard on this album. And he's doing better than everyone else BECAUSE he's been trying and working hard? Well, that's funny. Has he noticed all the awful rappers that have had success lately? How hard you work on your music means nothing today, which is a shame. But it also means Logic's bragging has no base to it. Rappers are becoming successful overnight for absolutely no reason.
73- "66" - Lil Yachty featuring Trippie Redd -- The second of three awful songs from Lil Yachty as he combines his boring, autotuned mumble rap with Trippie Redd's uninspired nonsense. All I got from this is that Yachty was senseless thug in high school who dropped out and became super rich, because apparently our generation loves giving rap careers to people who barely know how to rap. So all of Logic's bragging about how hard he's work is the reason why he's so successful is nonsense because Lil Yachty has probably spent his whole life doing and selling drugs and he's charting songs just as high as Logic right now.
74- "Midnight" - Logic -- This is a two part song. Part one is Logic rapping about how it feels good to be the man and how all his old girls all want to date him again. Part two is a completely different sound and flow, but it's mostly one long verse surrounded by two choruses. The verse in the second section has much better flow that the rest of the song, but he's just bragging about all the credentials, money and awards he's made since being famous. Do I need to keep repeating myself? It's not interesting.
83- "Wassup" - Logic featuring Big Sean -- In this next song by Logic, he's bragging about how awesome it is to be better than everyone else in the rapping industry and how his old girls are coming back to them and need to go away. Sound familiar? The only thing different here is Big Sean gets a verse where he totally owns Logic in his own song. That's embarrassing. Although I got caught up on one line from Big Sean. He says his change will be surprising to people like it would be to see Vader wearing all white. What? I guess that would be a shock, but that's a really random comparison to make.
84- "Delicate" - Taylor Swift -- I saw some people on the internet predicting that this latest single from Taylor's "reputation" would debut in the top 10 and I kinda laughed that off since "reputation" has severely underperformed for Taylor, at least when it comes to her singles, which have fallen off the face of the earth right now. The world has seemingly moved on from "reputation" and I don't blame them because the album as a whole is very experimental and scattered. As she says in "Look What You Made Me Do," a song I still don't mind, the old Taylor can't come to the phone right now... because she's dead. The older Taylor is gone in "reputation," not because she completely lost it and fell off the deep end, but because she heavily explored an electronic undertone with the album, which didn't really work for me in most of the songs. However, there are a few standouts from the album. The three major ones for me when I explored "reputation" were "New Year's Day," "Dancing with Our Hands Tied" and "Delicate," with a couple of others being good, too.
So yeah, maybe Taylor should've STARTED with "Delicate" as a single and maybe the world wouldn't hate her right now. This song is very radio-friendly and feels closer to classic Taylor as she's simply being herself rather than trying to make a huge statement about her reputation. And yeah, she does talk about her reputation again in this song, but she's doing it in a more romantic context as she's saying that this guy must like her for her because her reputation has never been worse. Which is funny, the thing that ruined her reputation is her talking about her reputation so much. But hey, my problem was that Taylor went away from her classic style and tried to be too experiment. I didn't mind the whole reputation stuff. In terms of her experimental style, this is one song where it really worked out for her. The smooth electronic undertones in the song are more subtle and do a great job of adding to the tone of the song, thus enhancing the listening experience, which is what it should do instead of being so distracting in her other songs. All in all, though, Taylor should go back to her old self because that's what works best for her. And she did that in "New Year's Day," the best song on the album. I hope she tries that one out as a single next.
87- Yuck" - Logic -- The title of this song has been my reaction to this whole album from Logic. In this song, he's rapping about how he never responds to other rappers who have a beef with him as he lets the success talk for itself. Which is funny because if he really had the philosophy to never respond to beefs, then he would've never written this song. So it's his way of just making himself sound cool and humble when it just sounds super hypocritical. I learned from this that apparently there's a beef between Logic and Joyner Lucas and this song is most likely directed specifically at Joyner. I suppose Logic justifies himself by not specifically name-dropping anyone, but I don't buy it. And neither does Joyner who called him a coward.
88- "BOOM!" - Lil Yachty featuring Ugly God -- The third and final song from Yachty this week is his collaboration with... Ugly God? OK, forget about the lack of quality from this thug for a second and ponder about me as to WHY Yachty chose to collaborate with him. He charted one awful, partial song last year called "Water," which was only on the charts for a few weeks, and that's the extent of his rapping career on the Hot 100. Doesn't Yachty want to join up with someone who's actually done more on the charts? But oh well. Whatever. These two are going vroom and zoom in this song, then they get to a room with a girl and go boom. Guess what? They can come up with dirty, juvenile rhymes that make both of them sound like they have the IQ of a middle school thug who stumbled onto a bunch of money. Now please let's get these two thugs off the charts and out of my life. That would make the world a better place.
97- "BoomTrap Protocol" - Logic -- This song feels a bit nonsensical to me. I don't know what Logic is getting at here. Bragging about how awesome he is, the greatest alive according to the lyrics, and how he's drinking, smoking and letting us all know what the protocol is to be considered BoomTrap, a more thug version Boom Bap? Whatever that is. I guess I'm just out of the loop there. This song is less annoying than some of the others I just covered. But I still don't give it a pass as I just felt lost while listening to it.
98- "Warm It Up" - Logic featuring Young Sinatra -- Who in the frack is Young Sinatra? Well, I guess that shows I don't know much about Logic because Young Sinatra and Bobby Tarantino are alter-egos of Logic that he uses. Apparently Young Sinatra was an older alter-ego that he is bringing back for this song. If that means something to you, then I'm happy for you, I suppose. I'm not interested in any of it. Instead I see a guy who's claiming that he's the Messiah and God of rap music, which I find find extremely arrogant and annoying. He's also talking about all the money in the bank he has as well as the sports cars he's purchased. So yeah, he went down that route here. And he makes a few strange pop cultural references like "Pass the Mary Jane like I'm runnin' a train with Peter Parker" and "On tour, I'm having more sex in the city than Sarah Jessica Parker" to describe his lavish lifestyle his enjoying with all of this fame.
That does it for "Bobby Tarantino II." Just for fun, I listened to the three other tracks that didn't chart so that I could give the whole album a grade. We have the "Rick and Morty" intro "Grandpa's Space," which is Ricky and Morty bragging about how awesome Logic is. We have "Wizard of Oz," which is Logic rapping about how he is the Wizard of Oz of the rapping world and "State of Emergency," featuring 2 Chainz, which has a solid beat and an acceptable verse from 2 Chainz, but Logic again bragging about how famous he's becoming. So no, none of this is good. My final grade for this whole album is a D. There's worse rappers out there, but Logic is someone who actually has a lot of talent, so it's disappointing seeing him create an album that is void of any quality.
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