Wednesday, November 7, 2018

DrogeMiester's Billboard Analysis - November 10, 2018

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- "Girls Like You" - Maroon 5 featuring Cardi B (=) -- Why is this still No. 1? It's been seven weeks at No. 1 now and that is seven weeks too long.

2- "SICKO MODE" - Travis Scott (=) -- Why is this still the No. 2 song?

3- "Happier" - Marshmello & Bastille (+1) -- Hey look! Here's something to cheer for! While "Girls Like You" and "SICKO MODE" both fall by about 5 percent, "Happier" is on the rise by about 3 percent overall. From what Billboard reports, the margins are pretty close and the balance in tipping in favor of "Happier." I feel like it's been a while since I've truly been happy about a No. 1, so hopefully the momentum keeps going.

4- "Lucid Dreams" - Juice WRLD (-1) -- I'm a bit sad that this was never able to unseat "Girls Like You." But oh well. Life moves on.

5- "Better Now" - Post Malone (=) -- I also would've been totally fine with this getting more momentum and hitting No. 1. But that also didn't happen.

6- "ZEZE" - Kodak Black featuring Travis Scott & Offset (=) -- Why is this still stuck at No. 6? Let's get it to fall down.

7- "Youngblood" - 5 Seconds of Summer (=) -- Why is this not going higher? I would love for this to camp out in the top five, ahead of some of the more awful songs ahead of it.

8- "Drip Too Hard" - Lil Baby & Gunna (=) -- Why is this still stuck at No. 8? Do people really care that much about these two or do the immature teenage boys who listen to this crap really have this much influence over streaming numbers?

9- "Without Me" - Halsey (+3) -- You know what? I'll take this. It's not the best Halsey has ever come up with, but in compared to some other songs in the top 10 right now, like the song directly above it and the song directly below it, this is certainly tolerable. The music video gave it a bit of a boost this week, so I'm not 100 percent sure about it's long-term staying power in the top 10, but we'll see.

10- "Mo Bamba" - Sheck Wes (+6) -- Haha, I learned why this is called "Mo Bamba." It's named after rookie center Mo Bamba, who played college ball in Texas and is now playing for the Orlando Magic. Apparently him and Sheck Wes were good friends growing up, so Sheck named a song after him. Although the song isn't really about Mo Bamba. It's an empty rap song about mostly nothing that mentions Mo in a line towards the beginning. And you should know by now that I'm angry that it is now a top 10 hit.


Rising on the Hot 100:





11- "High Hopes" - Panic! At the Disco (+10) -- This is such good news! The No. 11 spot always makes me nervous because so many good songs have made it to this point and peaked, so we'll certainly have to take this week by week. But if this can break through and hit the top 10, I'm going to be so happy! This is still one of the best songs to chart this year so it's great to see a quality song do well for a change.

13- "Money" - Cardi B (+41) -- Cardi wrote a song about money. Super original on her part. And this week is the song's first full week of tracking, hence the huge jump. I'm crossing my fingers that it will fall back down next week like some songs do after huge debuts. But knowing Cardi's history recently...

18- "Eastside" - Benny Blanco, Halsey & Khalid (+2) -- If we're going to bring a new Halsey song into the top 10, I'd prefer this song over the one that's in the top 10 at the moment because her and Khalid have a great connection in this song, but I'll take what I can get, I suppose.

26- "Wake Up in the Sky" - Gucci Mane, Bruno Mars & Kodak Black (+13) -- Kodak Black already seems to have "ZEZE" stuck in the top 10 at the moment, so I would really appreciate it if this song stops gaining momentum as we certainly don't need any more Kodak at the moment. And we certainly don't need more of Bruno or Gucci, either.

31- "Thriller" - Michael Jackson (re-entry) -- "Thriller" is only here for this week thanks to Halloween streaming and sales impacting the charts this week, but it's always fun to see it here. Even though it's one of the most overplayed songs in the history of like, ever, especially during Halloween, I've actually never managed to get sick of it. It's an absolute classic and I'll gladly welcome it with open arms every Halloween.

32- "Breathin" - Ariana Grande (+9) -- Ariana's not rising quite as fast as I would like her to, but at least this song is gaining some momentum. It's a solid single from Ariana that deserves to be heard and played.

40- "Ring" - Cardi B featuring Kehlani (+5) -- If we're going to popularize a new Cardi song, can we please choose this song instead of that "Money" trash that jumped into the top 15 this week?

48- "Lost in Japan" - Shawn Mendes & Zedd (+14) -- It's great seeing this song in the top 50. Let's keep it going upwards. I would love to see Shawn and Zedd get a hit. In fact, Shawn has done fairly well for himself recently, so it's sad that he's not doing quite as well as when he only delivered empty, boring songs. Sometimes the world is mean.

62- "That's on Me" - Yella Beezy (+24) -- Why does this exist? Make it go away!

81- "Backin' it Up" - Pardison Fontaine featuring Cardi B (+14) -- I forgot that this song was even a thing. And it's only a thing because of Cardi B, so Pardison Fontaine better be on his knees thanking her for making him a thing.


New Arrivals:





28- "Arms Around You" - XXXTENTACION & Lil Pump featuring Maluma & Swae Lee -- Is there no shame in the music industry? I'm sick and tired of artists taking advantage of the death of XXXTENTACION to shamelessly boost their sales numbers. It's pathetic. Because of that, I'm boycotting this song. I'm not even going to give it a listen and I hope it drops like a rock in future weeks.

54- "Last Memory" - Takeoff -- Hey look! It's the Migos member that everyone seems to have forgotten about. I mean, Quavo and Offset seem to get all the feature credits, but we don't see Takeoff that much. In fact, this is only his second solo appearance on the charts this year. And I'm totally fine with us keeping it that way. Sure, it would be better if we ignore all of Migos, but I'll take what I can get. Apparently Takeoff has a solo album coming out that I plan on ignoring, especially if it's anything like this. He's lazily bragging about his riches and unoriginal Migos fashion. Snooze.

76- "TAlk tO Me" - Tory Lanez & Rich the Kid -- Is Tory Lanez a thing people care about? I forget. Quite frankly I was tempted to flat out skip this song after I saw that it was officially stylized like that. But I subjected myself to it anyways. I suppose Tory's voice is better than most, but he's still only talking about being rich and wanting girls to hop out of their clothes for him, so there's no substance to this. However, he does make himself look fantastic in contrast to Rich the Kid, who comes in spouting gross lyrics and mumble rapping like he was drunk in studio. It makes the song as a whole super awful, but it does make me appreciate Tory slightly more, so take that for what it's worth.

80- "Topanga" - Trippie Redd -- After listening to this song, I learned there's a song called "It Ain't Over" by Maurette Brown Clark that Trippie Redd samples. That's a solid gospel song with great vocals from Maurette Brown Clark. But holy freaking cow does Trippie Redd make an awful choice by messing with the audio in the song with his sample, effectively making her sound like a chipmunk. And that chipmunked sample plays throughout "Topanga" is just awful. I couldn't even focus on whatever was happening in the lyrics. Something about taking the girl to Topanga, a city in California, to protect her from all the gun violence. Trippie kinda lost focus there, so I'm not sure what he was getting at. But I don't really care because all that was going through my head is that I want the sample to stop. But go check out the original song, though!

83- "Dip" - Tyga & Nicki Minaj -- Nicki Minaj's 100th appearance on the Hot 100. The first woman to cross that milestone. And I'm not giving an applause because Nicki is pure garbage about 90 percent of the time. But that's a significant stat worth pointing out for those who care. And speaking of garbage, this is a pretty worthless song with Tyga and Nicki lazily rapping about everything boring and unoriginal. A pretty pathetic song for such a big milestone. But I suppose it does a good job representing Nicki's career as a whole. Pure trash. If this ends up as popular as Tyga's "Taste," I'm going to throw a fit.

89- "Waste it on Me" - Steve Aoki featuring BTS -- Believe it or not, BTS collaborating with Steve Aoki sounds rather redundant on paper since BTS usually has an EDM dance vibe already, like a lot of K-Pop music. Steve Aoki's influence gives them a bit of a unique flavor, but not much. The most surprising part of the song is that there's no Korean spoken at all in this song, so I'm not sure what the point of bringing BTS in and making them only sing English is, especially since the lyrics here are is generic as they come with pop love anthems and you can barely tell when one BTS singer stops and when the other starts. They all blend together to sound like one boring pop singer with a generic Steve Aoki beat on the backdrop. So yeah, this is a lazy song done solely for the sake of sales and money on Steve Aoki's side, not because he thought it would make sense on a musical basis. The song is not particularly awful, it's just that if it falls away next week, I'll have already forgotten that it existed.

90- "A Million Dreams" - P!nk -- I'm trying my best to erase "The Greatest Showman" from my memory. That movie caused me so much pain, both in terms of my viewing of the film as well as how persecuted I felt for not liking it. So imagine my frustration when I learned there's a new soundtrack coming out called "The Greatest Showman: Reimagined" with famous musicians singing the boring, empty pop songs that the musical provided. If it fails to impact the charts whenever it's released, I'll be thankful. But so far the two songs that have been released are "The Greatest Show" by Panic! At the Disco and this, "A Million Dreams" by P!nk. And well, despite my disdain for both the movie and its soundtrack, those are the two songs from the movie that I actually didn't mind, probably because they're both from the beginning of the movie before things started to quickly nosedive downhill. That Panic! At the Disco cover of "The Greatest Show" is actually rather wild and fantastic. I kinda like that way more than the original. And this P!nk cover of "A Million Dreams" also does a great job of taking a decently sweet song from the movie and giving it a lot of power. I mean, P!nk is the type of pop singer that can get away with singing a generic song and making it seem fantastic simply because she has the vocals and presence to make anything work, but still. This is the one song from the movie that actually has something in terms of content, so giving it to P!nk is a match made in heaven because she takes it and runs with it. We might as well toss the original in the trash and call this a P!nk song now.

94- "Be Alright" - Dean Lewis -- Here's an international hit that's finally crossing over to the United States. "Be Alright" is from Australian pop singer Dean Lewis and hit No. 1 in Australia earlier this year. It's also hit top 10 in at least 13 other countries so far. It makes me jealous of other countries actually having good songs in their top 10 because I would like that over here, too. Because, yeah, this song is excellent. It's a super sad song about Dean Lewis coming to the harsh terms that a girl he once cared for has moved on and now he has a friend in the song telling him to stop trying to pursue because doing so is not going to do anything. Breakup songs are certainly not a unique thing to sing about, but I think this one stands out because it feels so personal and specific rather than being generic lyrics written to please a crowd. Because of that, I feel like I can relate to the song quite a bit and I think many other people will, too. But it's not just a sad song about that feeling that overcomes you when you realize it's officially over between you and a former lover, there's a strong message of hope that everything will be alright in the end. Sometimes the best healer is that of time. Once you give yourself time to overcome something difficult, you can then move forward and realize there's other people out there and other opportunities available that will make life better. This is a really deep and meaningful song that I can see myself really connecting with even more as time moves on.

97- "Kamikaze" - Lil Mosey -- Hey, we were on a roll there for a bit! Unfortunately we have to end on a bit of a sour note with Lil Mosey thinking he's Eminem with this song's title. Although there's certainly no fire or rage present like on Eminem's album this year. Just a boring, dull rap song from a punk kid who thinks he's super cool and for some reason is getting rewarding with a career. And when I say kid, I mean that literally. Lil Mosey is only 16 years old, so let's please collectively choose to ignore him. If he gets any bigger, I'm going to throw a fit.

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