Thursday, January 17, 2019

DrogeMiester's Billboard Analysis - January 19, 2019

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- "Sunflower (Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse)" - Post Malone & Swae Lee (+2) -- Well here's a bit of a surprise. I was anticipating "Sunflower" eventually getting to No. 1, but I didn't think it would happen this quick. But hey, I'm totally fine with this. The lyrics are still nothing special, but Swae Lee's vocals are totally killer, making this a pretty catch song. And I'm guessing it's going to stick around for quite some time. On streaming, it jumped up to 47.8 million U.S. streams, up 17 percent, while also jumping 19 percent in sales to 48,000 downloads sold. That's No. 1 on both of those charts, which is why it vaulted past Halsey and Ariana to the top. Helping "Sunflower" out was a new music video, as well as "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse" winning best animated feature at the Golden Globes. It's only No. 10 on the radio charts, but it has a lot of radio momentum as pop radio is especially catching on fast with this one. The timing of all of this could lead to a rather lengthy run at No. 1 given that by the time the sales and streaming slow down, the radio will be on fire.

2- "Without Me" - Halsey (-1) -- Well, it was a short reign for Halsey as she could only manage to capture one week at No. 1. Although that was nothing of her own fault as "Without Me" increased significantly on streaming and radio, while remaining steady on sales. It's just that "Sunflower" got an even bigger spike this week. But both songs doing well most likely means "Sunflower" and "Without Me" could monopolize the top two spots for a while, which I'm fine with.

3- "thank u, next" - Ariana Grande (-1) -- "Sunflower" and "Without Me" doing so well ends up leaving Ariana's "thank u, next" in the dust a bit. But that's OK. Ariana ruled for seven weeks, so she had her time. She'll still be around, though.

4- "SICKO MODE" - Travis Scott (=) -- Can we please get rid of this?

5- "High Hopes"- Panic! At the Disco (=) -- I played the radio while at work today and I think I heard this song like five times over the course of the day. And I enjoyed it thoroughly every single time. It's one of those anthems that never gets old. The song is still No. 1 on radio, which explains why I heard it so much.

6- "Happier" - Marshmello & Bastille (=) -- I still think "Happier" is sliding down in points. It's just that there's not a whole lot of competition rising super fast at the moment, so the duo here will enjoy hanging around for a while longer until there is.

7- "Girls Like You" - Maroon 5 featuring Cardi B (=) -- WHY?

8- "Drip Too Hard" - Lil Baby & Gunna (=) -- WHY??

9- "Eastside" - Benny Blanco, Halsey & Khalid (+2) - For our first new entry to the top 10, we welcome Halsey and Khalid. And I'm totally happy with this song being here. When it comes to Halsey songs in the top 10, I actually prefer this one over "Without Me," although I consider both songs acceptable entries. It's Halsey's fourth trip to the top 10, following "Closer," "Without Me" and "Bad at Love," while Khalid gets his third top 10 following his featured turn on Logic's "1-800-273-8255" and his duet with Normani last year in "Love Lies." I'm calling this a duet song between Halsey and Khalid. On that note, it works really well. And I do have to give credit to Benny Blanco for producing the song, but I'm still annoyed that he listed himself as a billed artist. This is his 27th trip to the top 10 as a writer, beginning with Kesha's "Tik Tok." So why is he starting to throw himself as a billed artist now? Did DJ Khaled urge him or inspire him to do this?

10- "ZEZE" - Kodak Black featuring Travis Scott & Offset (-1) -- WHY???


Rising on the Hot 100:





11- "Wow." - Post Malone (+2) -- This is song has been catching on like wildfire and I have no idea why. If we absolutely have to have our Post Malone fix, can't we just call it good with "Sunflower"?

18- "Going Bad" - Meek Mill featuring Drake (+3) -- Meek Mill and Drake sneak back into the top 20 after this song initially debuted in the top 10. That makes me nervous.

23- "Shallow" - Lady Gaga & Bradley Cooper (+6) -- This makes me happy. Now when I did my list of my top 10 favorite songs of 2018, I made the tough decision that "Remember Us This Way" was my favorite song from "A Star is Born." But "Shallow" and "I'll Never Love Again" also made my top 10 along with "Remember Us This Way," so I'm ecstatic at any song from "A Star is Born" doing well. In a perfect world, this would continue to catch on, but realistically it got a boost this week because it won best original song at the Golden Globes.

24- "Better" - Khalid (+6) -- We now have Khalid in our top 10 this week. One of his songs will be sufficient, right? I'm really not a huge fan of this one.

41- "Beautiful Crazy" - Luke Combs (+7) -- I have a hard time remember this song. Whenever I remind myself, I'm reminded that it's another boring country song.

43- "Nothing Breaks Like a Heart" - Mark Ronson featuring Miley Cyrus (+6) -- I've been hearing this quite a bit on the radio. I hope that means it's going to continue to catch on and become a huge hit in 2019. That and "Sweet but Psycho," which is a few notches above this song (but only rose four spots, thus not qualifying for the list this week), are songs from the end of last year that I really enjoyed and almost made my end of year list. So let's please make them a thing!

49- "Look Back at It" - A Boogie wit da Hoodie (+5) -- Don't care.

76- "Ruin My Life" - Zara Larsson (+10) -- I'm sensing that this song is going to catch on for Zara. And that makes me happy in the sense that I really want her to be hugely successful in the states. I just wish I liked this specific song a bit more because I love several of her previous songs that were a lot better than this one. But hey, the radio edit of this isn't bad at all. Just not the best for her.


New Arrivals:



35- "Undecided" - Chris Brown -- Chris Brown is a punk. I don't care about him.

46- "Crushed Up" - Future -- I also don't care about the mumble rap king.

81- "Butterfly Doors" - Lil Pump -- We need to stop making Lil Pump a thing.

87- "Valuable Pain" - YoungBoy Never Broke Again" -- And we also need to reject YoungBoy. Oh, this is awkward. Only four new songs and I'm not listening to any of them? Whoops! I guess we'll try again next week. Maybe the Hot 100 will have new songs for me to cover that are worth covering.

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