Billboard Hot 100 Top 10:
1- "Shallow" - Lady Gaga & Bradley Cooper (+20) -- I knew this was going to get a boost this week after that magical performance from these two at the Oscars that now has the whole internet shipping them as a couple. No, that's not going to happen. Bradley Cooper is very much committed to his girlfriend of whom he has a child with. But you know you absolutely owned the performance when you trick the whole world into thinking you're in love after performing a love song on stage. Yeah, I'm among the millions whose heart was completely melted after watching that. I've since contributed a good percentage of the video's now 33 million views that was uploaded to Lady Gaga's channel the next day. I was also nearly in tears when Gaga gave her acceptance speech later in the show after "Shallow" won her the Oscar for best original song. What an amazing journey she's had throughout her career. I am still a bit bitter that Bradley Cooper didn't win anything. I mean, Rami Malek won an Oscar for lip-syncing Queen, but Lady Gaga has emphasized countless times that Bradley Cooper sang everything himself live on set. And he's not a musician by trade. It's a travesty. But whatever. I'm glad "A Star is Born" was able to be recognized in some form.
What I wasn't expecting was for "Shallow" to vault up to No. 1 this week. I was thinking high teens or maybe a top 10 appearance if it was lucky. I was ready to talk about it in the next section. But then I saw the sales estimates mid-week and I was stunned. It came in at 115,000 downloads sold, the first week that any song has had over 100,000 in sales since Drake back in July. That last stat is kinda depressing. From February 2007 to September 2015, the top selling song had at least 100,000. Now you see how much streaming has taken over the industry, making sales nearly irrelevant. But back to "Shallow," after seeing those sales estimates, I suddenly thought, "Can it do it? Can this dethrone Ariana?" And, well, here we are! For statistical purposes, "Shallow" is the 17th best song winner at the Oscar to also claim the No. 1 spot on the Hot 100, but the first since Eminem's "Lose Yourself" in 2002-2003. So it used to happen a lot more, but it's a lot more rare nowadays. Despite not winning anything at the Oscars for himself, Bradley Cooper now gets the last laugh as he gets to add chart-topping musician to his impressive resume. This is Lady Gaga's fourth No. 1 on the Hot 100 and first since "Born this Way" in 2011. "Just Dance" and "Poker Face" were her other two. Granted, this isn't going to stay at No. 1 next week, but I can enjoy this while it lasts, right?
2- "7 rings" - Ariana Grande (-1) -- Ariana gets bumped down to No. 2 this week, but she'll regain her top spot after the Oscar boost for "Shallow" disappears, which is what I'm expecting to happen next week. While "Shallow" is No. 1 on sales, "7 rings" still maintains the top streaming spot as she only falls 1 percent to 43.9 million U.S. streams. The song also gains 13 percent on the radio, up to 80.8 million audience impressions, good for No. 4 on the radio charts. So this song isn't going anywhere anytime soon, even though Ariana's other songs have all continued to fade away. Even though I'm not a fan of this song, or most of the new album, I hope that Ariana's success paves the way for other female pop stars. I'm specifically holding out hope for Billie Eilish and Ellie Goulding, both of whom have new albums coming up.
3- "Without Me" - Halsey (-1) -- We have three ladies occupying the top three spots, with Bradley Cooper joining the party, of course. And all three ladies are sharing the love. "Shallow" is No. 1 on sales, "7 rings" is No. 1 on streaming and "Without Me" is now No. 1 on the radio, ending the 14-week run of Panic! At the Disco's "High Hopes," which also sadly falls out of the top 10 altogether this week. This means that Halsey is well positioned to stay here in the top five for quite a bit longer.
4- "Sunflower (Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse)" - Post Malone & Swae Lee (-1) -- I was wondering of "Spider-Verse" winning best animated feature, as well as the movie being released on digital, was going to help "Sunflower" sneak past "Without Me," but that ended up not being the case. Which is alright. I'm not madly in love with one song over the other. Both are perfectly tolerable and I'm glad their holding their own in the top five right now because things could be a whole lot worse.
5- "Middle Child" - J. Cole (+6) -- J. Cole rides the wave of his new music video release to get back into the top five. That means he might fall back down next week unless he can manage to cling onto that streaming momentum to stick around. The radio still isn't doing much with this song and the sales aren't all that impressive, either. So streaming is all J. Cole has at the moment. And, yeah, I'll be rooting for this song. Despite how the rest of our Hot 100 looks at the moment, our top five is pretty solid at the moment as "Middle Child" is one of the more tolerable rap songs around.
6- "Happier" - Marshmello & Bastille (=) -- "High Hopes" fell. "thank u, next" fell. "SICKO MODE" fell. But "Happier" stayed put, which surprises me because I thought this would fall a lot faster than those other three. I guess its still holding onto a lot of the momentum following its "Fortnite" boost a few weeks ago.
7- "thank u, next" - Ariana Grande (-3) -- Ariana is down to two songs in the top 10 right now and its soon to be only one. Perhaps "thank u, next" can sneak in a few more weeks in the bottom half of the top 10, but there's now nothing holding it up as "7 rings" has started to completely take over on radio.
8- "Wow." - Post Malone (+2) -- While not gaining the traction I thought it would, Post Malone has still positioned himself fairly well with "Wow." as its not completely ready to disappear. It has a lot more traction than a lot of the songs around it, which is unfortunate because I would love to see this song get taken out in the landslide of songs that are about to fall out of the top 10.
9- "Thotiana" - Blueface (+4) -- This is not surprising at all. This song has a ton of momentum and I'm not sure why. The only thing that explains this is that everyone who listens to rap music is completely desensitized towards their genre and will listen to whatever Spotify and the other streaming services throw into their playlists. Streaming is all this song has and I'm not convinced that much of it is coming from people being naturally gravitated towards this song and searching it out on their own. Call me a conspiracy theorist when it comes to streaming if you want, but I'm convinced that the record labels paid a bunch of money to the streaming services for this song to be artificially thrown onto every rap playlist. I mean, have you listened to this song? Not only is there nothing redeemable about it, but there's also nothing that separates it from the rest of the hip-hop music that floods the industry today. And it's not like anyone had any idea who this Blueface dude was before this song showed up. And in case you were wondering, his real name is Johnathan Porter. Why didn't he just use that? Why Blueface? And why does every new rapper have to come up with an awful rap name to make themselves sound stupid and cheesy? And what in the world does "Thotiana" mean anyways? Sounds like gibberish to me.
10- "SICKO MODE" - Travis Scott (-3) -- How about this for good news? We might only have one more week left of "SICKO MODE" in the top 10! How this song managed to now get a 30-week run in the top 10 is something that I'll never understand. Just because it has a semi-decent beat when compared to other rap songs means it gets arguably the best run ever for a rap song in the top 10? It makes no sense.
Rising on the Hot 100:
24- "Sweet but Psycho" - Ava Max (+5) -- I'm glad that I again get to bring this song up. It's not rising as fast as I would like it to, but I'm at least happy that it's holding steady on the charts because that means more and more people are slowly discovering this song and loving it enough to help keep it around. That means this is the type of song that has the potential to last in pop culture a lot longer than when it disappears from the charts. Speaking of Lady Gaga, Ava Max reminds me a bit of younger Gaga from back in her "Poker Face" days, mixed in with a few other pop artists.
38- "Taki Taki" - DJ Snake featuring Selena Gomez, Ozuna & Cardi B (+6) -- The only Taki Taki I care about is BYU's former linebacker Sione Takitaki, who had an excellent showing at the NFL combine this past weekend, meaning he has a solid chance at being a day two selection at the upcoming NFL Draft next month. Don't care much about BYU football or the NFL Draft? Well, I don't really care much for this song, so we're even. Sure, it's catchy enough to be tolerable, but it's also mostly forgettable.
45- "Twerk" - City Girls featuring Cardi B (+7) -- These girls released their music video for this song fairly recently, which is what I'm guessing helped them regain traction for the song. It probably doesn't take a whole lot of thought to predict the type of music video this is. In fact, they sent out a challenge to find the world's greatest twerker, which makes me feel like they're about five years too late with that movement.
46- "Take It from Me" - Jordan Davis (+13) -- Jordan Davis is not a talented country song, so why are we giving him this much exposure on country radio? I mean, we could be pushing Kacey Musgraves, but instead we get things like this. I don't understand.
53- "Close Friends" - Lil Baby (+20) -- Did this somehow get a boost this week because of Gunna's album bomb? I hope that's the case, because that means it'll fall back down.
59- "Con Calma" - Daddy Yankee featuring Snow (+33) -- I didn't expect this song to jump 30+ spots this week. I was unsuccessful in figuring out why it happened. It wasn't a music video release as that was back in January, before the songs charted. But whatever the case, I'm totally fine with this. It's another fun Latino dance song.
66- "Who Do You Love" - The Chainsmokers featuring 5 Seconds of Summer (+19) -- A nice recovery from The Chainsmokers this week after tanking last week following the debut two weeks ago. I'm not upset if this becomes big, but both parties have done much better, so I'm also not going to be upset if it manages to not gain traction.
69- "Burn Out" - Midland (+14) -- Again, we only gave Kacey Musgraves one week on the charts, but we're pushing these guys up the charts instead? And you wonder why country gets a bad name. All the good country music rarely gets much recognition.
73- "Worth It" - YK Osiris (+14) -- I fully expect this to become a big hit and I'll kinda understand why. This is not awful at all when compared to a lot of the other trash. But for me personally, this gets more annoying the more I listen to it.
New Arrivals:
49- "Legacy" - Offset featuring Travis Scott & 21 Savage -- Don't care.
54- "Walk Me Home" - P!nk -- I'm always down for a new P!nk song. Looking this song up also helped me learn that P!nk has a new album coming out in April titled "Hurts 2B Human" and now I'm pumped. P!nk is the unique type of singer who can sing about anything and cause me to love it just by her voice and her presence. She even covered a "Greatest Showman" song last year and caused me to love it. So yeah, of course I'm going to enjoy this song. I'm trying to pinpoint exactly the type of song it reminds me of and it's not coming to me. Someone in the comments of the YouTube video brought up "Nancy Mulligan" by Ed Sheeran. I can see that. That one is a bit of an Irish, folky song, which is kinda the vibe I'm thinking. A slower folk beat is the first thing that initially came to me. P!nk pulls that style off perfectly, as she does with everything. The lyrics are simple. She's reflecting on a time where things were much better in her life, but is still glad she has the one constant with this person in her life. But she brings enough passion and emotion to sell the lyrics as something she cares about. How is the rest of the world going to respond to this? I don't know. But I hope it catches on. We could all use a bit more P!nk in our lives.
64- "Clout" - Offset featuring Cardi B -- Don't care.
65- "How Did I Get Here" - Offset featuring J. Cole -- Don't care.
70- "Outstanding" - Gunna -- Did you hear that the scarecrow got promoted? They told him he was outstanding in his field!
72- "Be Like Me" - Lil Pump featuring Lil Wayne -- Don't care.
74- "3 Headed Snake" - Gunna featuring Young Thug -- Don't care.
75- "Wit It" - Gunna -- Don't care.
86- "Lick" - Offset -- Don't care. But also amused that Offset only got four songs to chart from his album out of a possible 16.
87- "Girls Need Love" - Summer Walker & Drake -- I almost jumped over this one because I saw Drake's name and I'm tired of Drake being everywhere. But I decided to give a shot because I had no idea who Summer Walker is and I wanted to give her a chance. Turns out this is a song from last year that is just now charting because of this remix that adds Drake. In regards to the original, I will see that Summer Walker has a great voice with plenty of emotion, but the song itself doesn't do her many favors as its a really slow R&B song that'll do a great job of putting me to sleep if I listen to it too much. Adding Drake to it doesn't do anything to fix it or hurt it. He's just kinda there. Although he does try to match her style by going R&B rather than flying though on autopilot like he does with every other feature he's given. So I give him points for trying. But I still think the song is boring and the lyrics themselves feel pretty basic, so this is a song that I can see myself having a hard time remembering in the future.
91- "Speed It Up" - Gunna -- Don't care.
94- "I Guess I Just Feel Like" - John Mayer -- Here's a lesser known fact. I've often got annoyed at John Mayer's song titles. In my opinion, a song title is supposed to represent what your song is all about. But I have no idea what I'm getting myself into when John Mayer turns his song titles into cliffhangers like this. "I Guess I Just Feel Like" ... WHAT? Finish your sentence! Or maybe he's just done that once with "Say," which should really be titled "Say What You Need to Say." Either way, that was my first thought when I saw this song on the charts. My second thought was that it feels like it's been a long time since we've seen John Mayer on the charts, so seeing him was a nice surprise. After looking it up, I learned that the last time John Mayer really had success on the charts was his 2009 album "Battle Studies," which produced "Who Says," "Heartbreak Warfare" and "Half of My Heart," the latter of which hit No. 25 in 2010 and was also the last time he got that high. He's had scattered success between 2012 and 2016, but nothing huge, and hasn't had anything chart since 2016. So I don't know if that bodes well for his future. The world might be done with John Mayer, unfortunately.
Personally I think this song is nice enough, though. I've never been completely enamored with John Mayer, but I've also had a hard time disliking anything he's done. And this song fits into that range. It has a sweet electric guitar solo at the end and a nice instrumental break in the middle. The song has a somber tone to it that has John Mayer mostly losing hope in the future. It's a song about reminiscing on the past and how great things were back then, but how the present is grim and the future doesn't look bright. It doesn't quite connect with me, but I also have no real problems with it. In other words, it's a lot like most of John Mayer's stuff, which means his die-hard fans will probably be happy with this.
95- "Good as You" - Kane Brown -- We'll end this week with a super popular country singer who I've never been able to understand. Kane Brown has never struck me as a guy who's that great of a singer and he never really has anything interesting to say. I'll give him credit in this song for having restrain. This could've been another one of those generic, twangy, country rock songs where the music doesn't match the tone of the lyrics, but he keeps this is a simple song about a girl. But at the same time, though, it's just a song about a girl. It doesn't feel like there's any passion or emotion behind the song. He loves a girl and he wishes that he could be as good as her, so he's going to do his best to try. And that's it. I feel like these are lyrics that we've seen a thousand times before with country music and Kane Brown doesn't make much of an effort to help this song stand out. It's just another factory-produced country song that checks every box in order to be accepted on country radio so Kane Brown can some money from it.
97- "Same Yung N----" - Gunna featuring Playboi Carti -- Don't care. But can I complain again at the fact that rappers are allowed to freely use the n-word without anyone blinking an eye? And it's not just black rappers. I see these punk white rappers throwing around the word, too, and still no one gets mad at them.
100- "Faucet Failure" - Ski Mask the Slump God -- Everything about this title and artist name screams bottom of the barrel trash. Let's hope No. 100 is as high as it gets.
No comments:
Post a Comment