Billboard Hot 100 Top 10:
1- "Sucker" - Jonas Brothers (new) -- This is how much I know and care about the Jonas Brothers. I had no idea there was three of them. I just thought it was Nick and Joe since those are the two that have actually found success on their own. Now I could pretend that I know all about them by going and listening to all of their previous songs, then comparing this new song to all of them. But if I know fans of boy bands well enough, I know that they don't care about my opinion, so I'm just going to be me. What I do know is that Nick's solo stuff has not impressed me and neither has Joe Jonas with that extremely annoying "Cake by the Ocean" song with his attempted band DNCE. But are the Jonas Brothers as a group better than the sum of their parts? For that, read my opinion down below. For now, I'll just talk about my surprise that this debuted No. 1. I knew this was coming. I think the whole world has figured out that the Jonas Brothers are back, even if you don't care about music. But I didn't know this was going to debut at No. 1. But it do with 88,000 first week sales, 43.7 million first week streaming and a decent radio debut with 22.6 million audience impressions. So they definitely figured out a secret to getting their first No. 1 hit. Disappear for several years, then make a loud re-entrance. But can this last? Well, possibly. Most boy band songs are extremely frontloaded. One Direction would always have huge debuts, then fall off the face of the Earth afterwards. But if "Sucker" can manage to catch on with the general public by getting some real radio traction while holding steady enough on streaming and sales, I could see this staying in the top 10. It's been a great year for pop songs so far. We've had six different No. 1 songs in 2019, five that exclusively rose to No. 1 during the year, and they've all been pop. So that's a positive sign, I think.
2- "7 rings" - Ariana Grande (=) -- Ariana has now been held back from No. 1 for two straight weeks, despite consistently good numbers, thanks to "Shallow" last week and "Sucker" this week. If the Jonas Brothers end up being frontloaded, Ariana could go back to No. 1 next week and that wouldn't surprise me. But we'll see how much traction the Jonas Brothers really have. I think the next few weeks will say a lot.
3- "Please Me" - Cardi B & Bruno Mars (+11) -- I have no idea what this song is going to do moving forward. It debuted at No. 5 two weeks ago, but last week it fell down to No. 14 after a typical second week drop. But now it shot back up because of the music video's release. Songs also have a habit of falling the week after a music video release, so this in theory could be heading right back down, but we'll see if it can gain traction moving forward. For the sake of everyone's sanity, or maybe just my own, I kinda hope it sputters out. We don't need this gross sex song hanging around. But what does my opinion mean here? Bruno won best album at the Grammy's for writing nothing but empty sex songs. That's kinda his thing and I guess the girls love it.
4- "Sunflower (Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse)" - Post Malone & Swae Lee (=) -- It was a good week for "Sunflower" as this song managed to jump ahead of Halsey's "Without You." But it stays put at No. 4 because of rises from "Sucker" and "Please Me." But this is a positive sign moving forward for the song as its now showing that it might have better legs than Halsey's song and even survive beyond the reign of its movie.
5- "Without Me" - Halsey (-2) -- Not as a great of a week for Halsey, but she's still in good position. Despite only having two non-consecutive weeks at No. 1 this year, "Without Me" is still the top song of the year according to my numbers, which speaks volumes to the song's staying power. I imagine its not quite done yet.
6- "Shallow" - Lady Gaga & Bradley Cooper (-5) -- It was a great week with "Shallow" at No. 1. I thoroughly enjoyed it while it lasted. But alas I knew it wasn't going to stay for longer than a week. The fact that it only fell to No. 6 instead of falling out of the top 10 altogether is a good win. Despite falling off in streaming and sales, it actually rose on the radio charts a bit, which makes me happy. The song is apparently all over the radio in other parts of the world. I'm not sure why it's taking us so long to get on board.
7- "Wow." - Post Malone (+1) -- Another small win for Post Malone as "Wow." also had a decent week, rising up a spot to No. 7. But this is not really a win for me as I would rather see it fall out of the top 10 altogether. But at least it's not getting top five. No if you'll excuse me, I have to go find some wood to knock on.
8- "Happier" - Marshmello & Bastille (-2) -- I was surprised at how long this song stuck around at No. 6. I expected it to fall a lot faster after it's "Fortnite" boost, but it stuck around. And it's still not falling out of the top 10 quite yet.
9- "Middle Child" - J. Cole (-4) -- The music video boosted J. Cole last week. And now he'll have to rely on the song itself catching on for this to stick around. Personally if we have to have a rap song in the top 10, I'd rather it be this one.
10- "SICKO MODE" - Travis Scott (=)-- WHY IS THIS STILL HERE? It's now set a record for the longest top 10 stay EVER for a rap song at 31 weeks. That 31 week mark is tied with "Uptown Funk," only one week behind LeAnn Rimes' "How Do I Live," which held the all-time record for nearly 20 years until "Closer" tied it in 2017, and two weeks behind joining a tie with "Girls Like You" and "Shape of You" for the current all-time record. Even for those who like this song, is this really deserving of being called the most popular rap song in history? Because now you can make that argument.
Rising on the Hot 100:
20- "Dancing with a Stranger" - Sam Smith & Normani (+2) -- Not much is happening directly below the top 10 in turns of movement, but we do have Sam Smith and Normani sneaking into the top 20. I don't have much confidence at this point that the song will get a whole lot higher. But I hope it can benefit enough from songs ahead of it falling down. This deserves a spot in the top 10.
37- "Girls Need Love" - Summer Walker & Drake (+50) -- Are we really going to turn this song into a hit? Drake lazily jumping on an average song is still causing his fans to salivate? I don't get it. The world needs to be done with Drake.
49- "Talk" - Khalid (+6) -- Khalid's collaboration with Disclosure now moves into the top 50. I'm good with this. Now if Khalid could just list Disclosure as a featured act, maybe I'll do better at remembering this song because otherwise "Talk" is a pretty generic title. About as generic as the lyrics of the song themselves.
50- "Mixed Personalities" - YNW Melly & Kanye West (+6) -- Make this go away. I suppose I can be happy that this is only at No. 50, but this was really close to dropping out altogether, so I'm upset that it's now sticking around. The less Kanye West, the better.
68- "Shot Clock" - Ella Mai (+13) -- I'm a bit surprised that this hasn't gained much momentum, given how much the country fell in love with Ella Mai last year. But hey, I've only found her average at best, so maybe if she stalls out it will force her to come up with better music or else risk being forgotten about.
69- "Down to the Honkeytonk" - Jake Owen (+11) -- And now we have a handful of country songs on the rise, starting with this song from Jake Owen, which I'm honestly surprised hasn't climbed faster. This seems like the type of country song that would catch on like wildfire. It's infectious enough for me not to be bothered if it did, but I'm also not going to lose any sleep if it falls.
70- "Eyes on You" - Chase Rice (+18) -- This is a country song that I can get behind. Chase seems like he was actually trying to write a nice song instead of creating generic country. Granted, it's nothing unique in terms of content, but sometimes the delivery can make a big difference, which is definitely the case here.
76- "Make It Sweet" - Old Dominion (+13) -- This song debuted back in January and I already forgot it existed. I've never really cared for Old Dominion and this song does nothing to help their case. But hey, what do I know?
78- "Good as You" - Kane Brown (+17) -- I also don't care for Kane Brown and he's never done anything to make me feel otherwise. But the country crowds love him for some strange reason, so I'm not surprised at all to see this gain a boost after its debut.
87- "Faucet Failure" - Ski Mask the Slump God (+13) -- Don't care for this.
New Arrivals:
1- "Sucker" - Jonas Brothers -- The reason I'm not usually a fan of boy bands, especially modern ones, is twofold. First, the content of the songs are usually just generic love songs pandering specifically towards teenage girls. Second, a lot of them just take turns singing the lyrics instead of trying to harmonize and create something interesting musically. If you have any sort of band or song with multiple people doing vocals, I think you should take advantage and have each member contribute something rather than take turns singing a song that is essentially written for one voice. So with this song, I was wondering if the Jonas Brothers would rise above that. Surprisingly they do. At least on some levels. Content-wise, this isn't anything special. "I'm a sucker for you" are the main lyrics and you can guess exactly where that's going. But musically Nick and Joe on vocals actually feed off of each other quite well. They don't just take turns singing the main melody. They bounce off each other throughout the song as if they're having fun singing together and they also spend a lot of time harmonizing. I was impressed. The song also has a really catchy groove to it that I can see being quite infectious for the masses. Personally I'm looking at the credits for the song on Genius and I'm seeing Ryan Tedder's name everywhere as writer, producer, programmer as well as doing backing vocals and guitar. So that would make a lot of sense as to why the song itself as well written. Ryan Tedder knows how to please a crowd with an upbeat tune. For the life of me I can't figure out what Kevin Jonas contributed to this song, though. Maybe in live performances he's doing backing vocals and guitar, but he's only listed as one of the six writers for the song and literally nothing else. But regardless of that, consider me impressed here. I guess that the Jonas Brothers as a group are much better than the sum of their parts. At least that's the case on this song.
39- "I" - Lil Skies -- Don't care.
52- "Look What God Gave Her" - Thomas Rhett -- I never know what to think going into a new Thomas Rhett song. I mostly find myself unimpressed, but every once in a while he throws out a surprise. In this case, he's got another miss on his hands. The song is catchy enough as a country pop song, that leans very heavily on the pop side of things as this is about as far away from country as it gets. Not that that bothers me personally. I can enjoy a simple pop song. But Thomas Rhett just has nothing to offer here outside going on and on about how attractive she is. This is nothing about who she is as a person or how good it is to be with her. It's all about how hot she is. Thus the song feels a bit shallow in conception, but also boring in execution as Thomas Rhett doesn't sound like he cares at all about this song. Just churning out another factory-produced country song that could've been sang by anyone, but Thomas Rhett takes it and turns it into a boring pop song with no life or flavor to it.
56- "Hear Me Calling" - Juice WRLD -- Don't care.
74- "wish you were gay" - Billie Eilish -- Another sneak peak into Billie's album coming out later this month. And you've gotta at least give the girl credit for being creative and unique. About the album, she said that if you had 14 people in a room all listening to it, she wants every one of them to enjoy at least one song from the album. And she appears to be determined to not being generic and boring in this approach, which I love. This song is a bit curious as I'm not sure quite what to think of it. And I also have no idea what the internet is going to think of it. The message here is that she's singing this to a guy and she says she wishes he were gay. This is not a gay love song. It's a song where Billie is a bit upset at the fact that a guy she loves doesn't love her back. And thus to help her pride, she says she wishes he were gay because that means he has a legit excuse to not love her. It means she did absolutely nothing wrong if he is not attracted to women at all as opposed to him not liking her because she's not pretty enough or doesn't have a good enough personality. Thus when it comes to songs about unrequited love, kudos to Billie for thinking outside the box instead of creating a generic song about not feeling loved. It makes the song sound honest. There's also a fun thing with numbers going on in the song. She subtly counts down from six to one, then from twelve to six, a number on each line. That's something I didn't catch until I watched her video about the song on her channel. The tone of the song is also mellow and depressed, which fits the message. I just, well, I don't know. It's just different and maybe I need more time to ponder on it. That's all.
75- "Whip" - 2 Chainz featuring Travis Scott -- Don't care.
77- "Act Up" - City Girls -- Don't care.
83- "Old Town Road" - Lil Nas X -- Don't care.
85- "Whiskey Glasses" - Morgan Wallen -- Skipping over a bunch of these other songs, we now land on a song that I also almost skipped. Nothing like a country singer singing about drinking whiskey to turn me off. But eh, I'm not to the point where I feel like skipping country songs. So I gave this a listen anyways. And I didn't last to long before the song became exactly what I feared. He's so upset that his girl broke his heart that he's going to drink all the whiskey he can. And the song is about as twangy, annoying, and grating as it gets. So yeah, this is trash. Let's move onto our final song that I'll bother talking about. Because I ain't touching 2 Chainz.
93- "I Can't Get Enough" - benny blanco, Tainy, Selena Gomez & J Balvin -- I saw this song and I immediately got "Just Can't Get Enough" by The Black Eyed Peas. Even though that song has plenty of your typical Black Eyed Peas garbage in it, it's extremely effective in terms of being catchy. Maybe one of their better ones on that level. This song did catch my attention because I've had this strong thing for Selena's music recently. Although all the names around her didn't give me a ton of encouragement as she herself couldn't fix that "Taki Taki" song, either. But still, I was interested enough to go into this with an open mind. And unfortunately, the big problem here is that I decided to listen to "Just Can't Get Enough" right before listening to this one and I don't know who to blame, but this song is extremely flat and boring in compared to that one. Selena sounds great with her vocals, but she wasn't given much content to work with and the song itself is way too slow. Then when J Balvin comes in, he sounds completely uninterested in everything. The song is supposed to be about the two of them loving each other so much that they can't get enough of each other. Yet the strong lack of chemistry between the two of them makes it more realistically sound like they don't even have a desire to go on a date, which makes the song all that more depressing. When you are singing a love song, the chemistry is the most important thing and they have none. And if you're confused as to why there are four credited artists here, benny blanco and Tainy are producers. Vocally, this is a Selena Gomez and J Balvin song.
94- "Rule the World" - 2 Chainz featuring Ariana Grande -- Don't care.
100- "Momma I Hit a Lick" - 2 Chainz featuring Kendrick Lamar -- Don't care.
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