Billboard Hot 100 Top 10:
1- "thank u, next" - Ariana Grande (=) -- Ariana's really lucky right now that she got a third week on top of the charts. This song debuted two weeks ago at No. 1 with just five days of tracking. It stayed No. 1 last week after its first full week of tracking. And now in week No. 3 it fell hard in sales and streaming, but still managed to stay on top because it was so far ahead in the previous weeks. I'm not surprised at that. In fact, I'm more surprised that it stayed at No. 1 for a full three weeks. Next week I feel Ariana is destined to fall a couple spots on the charts, which makes me really nervous about what might happen next week given what's still in second place.
2- "SICKO MODE" - Travis Scott (=) -- I don't understand this. I don't understand this at all. "SICKO MODE" is not particularly dominate in any category at the moment, but it's pretty strong in all three categories and is also maintaining steady across the board, even on radio. I don't know why any radio station would even touch this. And now because of this, Travis Scott is the biggest contender to go to No. 1 next week. If that happens, I would officially declare the song the worst No. 1 hit of 2018. And that's saying something since there's been several bad No. 1 hits this year.
3- "Happier" - Marshmello & Bastille (=) -- Pardon the continued puns, but I would be much happier if this song went No. 1 instead of Travis Scott. But sadly "Happier" has really struggled to jump ahead of "SICKO MODE" and at this point it looks like it's stuck behind it. Even though the radio remains super strong, the sales and streaming just aren't strong enough to get it over the hump. And that's sad.
4- "Without Me" - Halsey (=) -- I'm still fine with this sitting here in the top five. I'm not sure it has the momentum to jump ahead of the song right in front of it, unless of course Ariana takes a huge tumble. I would also really hope that "SICKO MODE" somehow falters and gives way to something better. But that doesn't seem like it's going to happen because our stupid country is too busy drooling all over themselves while listening to Travis Scott and Drake rap about how awesome they are.
5- "Lucid Dreams" - Juice WRLD (+1) -- Hey look who's back in the top five? I don't anticipate that this will last too much longer. It's just here because the floor completely disappeared from under Maroon 5 this week, which is great news.
6- "High Hopes" - Panic! At the Disco (+2) -- In continued great news, "High Hopes" has jumped to No. 1 on the radio charts. And I can only hope that said radio momentum continues to be strong enough to keep this song around for a long time. With a few of the previously mentioned songs in the top five looking a bit vulnerable, it would be fantastic if this song could take its place in the top five and camp out there for a while.
7- "Mo Bamba" - Sheck Wes (=) -- Meanwhile, let's keep this song far away from the top five. The last thing we need is for another stupid rap song to stick around.
8- "Girls Like You" - Maroon 5 featuring Cardi B (-3) -- It makes me so happy to see this song finally tanking. It deserved to be gone a long time ago. In fact, it never deserved to be this high in the first place. Hopefully we'll only have another week or two before it's gone for good. It's been 25 frustratingly long weeks with this in the top 10.
9- "Drip Too Hard" - Lil Baby & Gunna (+1) -- "Drip Too Hard" swaps places with "ZEZE" this week, making me angry that both songs are still here. Let's get rid of them.
10- "ZEZE" - Kodak Black featuring Travis Scott & Offset (-1) -- See previous comment.
Rising on the Hot 100:
14- "Wake up in the Sky" - Gucci Mane, Bruno Mars & Kodak Black (+3) -- Do we really have to make this song a thing? Stupid Bruno Mars. He's the big reason why this is here. I'd tolerate another boring Bruno song, but seeing him drag Gucci and Kodak with him is rather upsetting, especially Kodak Black. I don't know why we're making him a thing.
15- "Trip" - Ella Mai (+3) -- I thought that this song was going to take its place in the top 10 since it had a lot of momentum on its side. I suppose it'd be better to see this song instead of No. 7, 8, 9, 10 or 14. But I'm still kinda happy to have seen this song stall out a bit in the teens. We'll see what the future has in store for it.
16- "Sunflower (Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse)" - Post Malone & Swae Lee (+6) -- Initial reviews for "Into the Spider-Verse" are in and people are singing the movie's praises. That makes me excited. I'm still struggling to see what this song has anything to do with the movie outside being a random, useless Post Malone and Swae Lee song to be used as background noise. But it's whatever. It's not the worst thing.
17- "Eastside" - Benny Blanco, Halsey & Khalid (+4) -- Halsey looks like she's comfortably camped out in the top five right now. And I'm fine with that. But then I see this song slowly rising in the teens and I'm reminded that I would rather see this song in the top five that Halsey's current one. Let's make it happen, America!
28- "Leave Me Alone" - Flipp Dinero (+9) -- Sigh. Why do I have to keep dealing with this song? Make it stop and make it go away!
29- "All I Want for Christmas is You" - Mariah Carey (re-entry) -- Mariah's annual return to the charts! That means Christmas season has officially begun and we can all start blasting our Christmas music, right? Last Christmas season we finally got this song to crack the top 10 as it peaked at No. 9. Think we can get it higher this season? I'd be totally down. I'm also curious to see what other Christmas songs make their way to the charts this holiday season. Anything beyond the regulars? I'll list them all here in the rising songs charts as they re-enter in the coming weeks!
33- "Speechless" - Dan + Shay (+5) -- It's nice to see the proper Dan + Shay song rising on the charts. Last week I was a bit nervous when "Tequila" made another gain. I thought we were done with the song. It's good to see that we might actually be. I'm still not madly in love with this song, but it's a much nicer Dan + Shay song.
43- "Better" - Khalid (+8) -- It's definitely been a great year for Khalid as he's shown up everywhere. Thus with all the songs of his to choose from, I'm disappointed to see this song doing well because it's one of his more forgettable showings.
49- "Arms Around You" - XXXTENTACION & Lil Pump featuring Maluma & Swae Lee (+11) -- BOYCOTT THIS.
80- "lovely" - Billie Eilish & Khalid (re-entry) -- I reserve the right to pick and choose which re-entries I include in this list. There's no rhyme or reason there. This song I'm including because I absolutely love this song. It's still one of my favorites of the year. I have no idea why it's back, but it gave me a lot of joy seeing it this week, so I had to include it because this deserves to be a huge hit.
New Arrivals:
81- "Take One" - Kodak Black -- I don't feel like listening to a Kodak Black song today. All his songs are trash. Why should I expect this one to be any different?
92- "Twerk" - City Girls featuring Cardi B -- If you're wondering who City Girls are, they're the duo who should have a No. 1 hit attached to their name as they were featured on Drake's "In My Feelings," but Drake decided not to list them as featured artist on the track, so they got screwed over. But now they turn to Cardi B to give them their first official Hot 100 hit. And I will admit that that the girls do have a decent sense of flow and they mix well with Cardi B. I can see this catching with the general public as a huge dance hit. The problem, though, is that I don't give them any credit for the beat in the song because they sampled the song "Choppa Style" by Choppa featuring Master P. Go listen to that song and you'll realize this whole song is simply that song regurgitated with City Girls and Cardi B adding their own lyrics. And said lyrics are all super trashy and awful, so I can't get behind this, nor can I give City Girls any credit. And of course Cardi is Cardi. She'll add a lazy verse or two onto any song that's requested of her. And they're all the same, so I don't know why people aren't tired of her yet.
97- "Ocean Eyes" - Billie Eilish -- In addition to being pleasantly surprised that "lovely" re-entering the charts this week, I was also surprised to see "Ocean Eyes" debut on the charts for Billie Eilish. I know her songs well enough at this point to know that this was one of the first singles she released two years ago, a month or so before she turned 15. So yeah, when you listen to this song, you have to keep in mind that it's performed by a 14-year-old Billie Eilish. And with that context, this is a dang good song for a 14-year-old. Yes, the lyrics are pretty simplistic, but as a simple pop song, it's rather soothing and effective. I'm sure if Billie performs it today, you'd be able to hear a bit more maturity in her sound, but as is she's still pretty good. I mean, how many young teenagers do you see that are writing and singing this effectively. She's a girl who has talent well beyond her years, so I'm excited to see where she goes with her career as she gets older.
98- "Close to Me" - Ellie Goulding & Diplo featuring Swae Lee -- I was wondering when this was going to chart. A quick summary on my history with Ellie Goulding. I liked her breakout hit "Lights" back in the day. Like, a lot. But it was shortly after that on her second album that I completely fell in love. Both "Halcyon" and the deluxe edition "Halcyon Days" are incredible. In fact, I'd call that album one of my favorites of the 2010's. But then she released her third album "Delirium," which I found extremely underwhelming. Maybe I was a bit too harsh on it at the time, but I just had so high expectations for her music that it was super disappointing to listen to her dip down to generic pop that sounded more desperate than anything. But because I loved her so much before that, she became one of the few singers in which I actually subscribed to her YouTube channel. I don't do that these days with musicians. But I just never unsubscribed from Ellie, so I always see her new music right when it comes. The audio for "Close to Me" was released back on October 24th, with the music video getting released on November 14th. So this feels like old news to me.
That said, I think this is totally passable. And that was my initial reaction when I listened to it a month ago. Now perhaps I'm more tolerant of this than her music from her third album because of expectations. I accepted the fact that she's not going to replicate "Halcyon" again, so I didn't expect that when I listened to this song, whereas I probably did expect that when I listened to "Delirium." Now I did feel like teaming up with Diplo and Swae Lee was a bit desperate for attention, but Diplo provides a nice beat to the song and if we have to add a rapper to the song, Swae Lee is one of the more tolerable ones. Even though his lyrics aren't that great, he mixes well with Ellie. And Ellie's lyrics aren't all that wonderful, either, but their passable and the song has enough bounce to it to be a fun one to listen to. Now the question will be if this will catch on with the public because female pop stars haven't had the best luck as of late, with the exception of Ariana and Halsey. But hey, maybe 2019 will be nicer to pop. We do have several of them in the top 10 right now, so we shall see.
99- "Girl Like You" - Jason Aldean -- Really, Jason? "Girl Like You"? Can't you come up with a song title that's slightly more creative? I've had to deal with Maroon 5's "Girls Like You" for the last 25 weeks and now there's a "Girl Like You" on the charts. I think this song might be successful just because people still searching for the Maroon 5 song might click this one by accident. That said, this song is a lot more upbeat and exciting than "Girls Like You," not that that's a super high bar, but still. This has a strong enough groove to it that I can see country fans falling in love with it. And if you like Jason Aldean, I'm willing to bet that you'll love this song. Doesn't mean I'm necessarily a huge fan of it. I think most of the lyrics are your basic country lyrics developed straight out of the factory rather than being genuine and unique to what Jason Aldean is feeling. And I find a lot of said lyrics fairly cheesy. But it has a strong enough groove for it to be acceptable in books, so take that for what it's worth.
100- "Burn the House Down" - AJR -- I've spent the last few minutes scrambling to figure out where I know this song from. Did it show up on another chart that I looked at or covered somewhere? Did I listen to this album last year and forget? This doesn't seem like it's brand new, but I can't place it, so I suppose it might be. I can't find it on any of my Excel charts. I don't think I listened to the album, but if I did this comes from the deluxe version of the album that was released in September. So I'm at a loss. But I really enjoy the song. AJR is a band composed of three brothers who have a unique and creative style. I haven't dove too deep into their discography, but their songs are usually pretty different and fun. Speaking of groove, this song has a ton of groove with a lot of clever instrumentation. And it gets better once you know the song has some actual meaning to it. This could work just fine as an empty dance beat and I would still probably enjoy it. But the message here is actually pretty political. It's not specific enough to name names or dive into issues, but there's a section that says "Should I hang my head low? Should I bite my tongue? Or should I march with every stranger from Twitter to get stuff done?" That's the theme here. There's a strong sense of distaste in the lyrics the dive into the conflicting messages in one's head as you try to figure out if you should remain quiet or march forward and make some noise. Granted, you might argue that this song is a call for action, but doesn't provide action because it doesn't dive into specifics. But I feel that's more of a nitpick. I still think it's a fun, strong anthem with enough depth to make it solid effort from AJR.
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