DrogeMiester's Billboard Analysis - June 1, 2019

The new Billboard charts have arrived and so it's time again for me to give you my thoughts! This is a weekly post where I cover three main sections of the charts: the Billboard Hot 100 top 10, the songs rising on the Hot 100, and the new arrivals. As pertaining to the rising songs, in order to be included, a song has to rise at least two spots between Nos. 11 and 20, five spots spots between Nos. 21 and 50, or 10 spots between Nos. 51 and 100. As pertaining to new arrivals, I used to dedicate myself to covering every single song that debuted, but that started to burn me out, especially with the high number of album bombs, so I've been a lot more selective recently and so far I've received no complaints. However, if I skip a song that you want to hear my thoughts on, feel free to let me know. I'll occasionally mix things up depending on the week, like throwing in a notable re-entry into the rising songs section, but generally this is what I go with. Most of the data I give you comes from Billboard.com, usually Gary Trust's weekly article. If I pull from elsewhere, I'll generally let you know. With all of that out of the way, let's dive in and see what this week has to offer!

Billboard Hot 100 Top 10:

1- "Old Town Road" - Lil Nas X featuring Billy Ray Cyrus (=) -- I think this song has officially hit its peak. It soared up 27 percent to 130.7 million U.S. streams thanks to the boost it had this week from the official music video. It was also up 9 percent in sales to 76,000 downloads sold and doesn't have a whole lot more momentum on the radio, up just 4 percent to 87.5 million audience impressions. From here on out, I think it's going to start declining in all categories. The problem is that it now has three official versions of the song and six different music videos as well as steady numbers across all streaming platforms, so said decline is going to be really slow. It's now had eight weeks at No. 1, with seven of those weeks getting 100+ million U.S. streams. I don't really understand why this is becoming the most streamed song in the history of, like, ever, but I'm ready for a change. It just might be another month or two before we get there because none of the songs below it right now are anywhere close.

2- "I Don't Care" - Ed Sheeran & Justin Bieber (=) -- After debuting at No. 2 last week, Ed and Justin celebrate a second week at No. 2. The song nosedived 62 percent in sales to 29,000 downloads sold, but only fell 10 percent in streaming to 30.5 million U.S. streams. One reason for the streaming holding a bit more steady is that the first full week of tracking for the song's official music video counts towards this week. Outside that, the radio continues to climb as the song is now at No. 10 on the radio charts with 58.2 million audience impressions, up 19 percent from last week. But as some of these other songs in the top 10 will witness, radio play only takes you so far, so if this song is going to stick around, it'll have to have maintain more stability in sales and streaming.

3- "bad guy" - Billie Eilish (+1) -- Challenging to overtake Ed and Justin for that No. 2 spot is Billie Eilish. She's only down 4 percent in streaming when compared to last week with 38.5 million U.S. streams. Sales increased 16 percent to 18,000 downloads sold and the song continues to charge up the radio charts, up 24 percent to 29.8 million audience impressions. So yeah, that radio still has a long way to go, but the fact that it's getting a good radio push makes me happy because, until a week or two ago, said radio numbers were close to zero. Billie was hanging around with pretty much streaming alone. Now that she's gaining traction in all categories while also maintaining good streaming, this song is going stick around for a while, which makes me super happy. If it wasn't for "Old Town Road" being 100 million U.S. streams ahead of her right now, I'd even say she has a chance at that No. 1 spot. But all things considered, with Billie set to hang out in the top five for a good portion of the summer, I think this is a huge will for the charts.

4- "Sucker" - Jonas Brothers (-1) -- Jonas Brothers get knocked down a bit this week thanks to Billie charging forward, but this song is still getting a ton of radio play right now as it returns to No. 1 on the radio charts this week, momentarily dethroning "Dancing with a Stranger," for a fourth week on top of the radio as it essentially remains even with last week, falling less than 1 percent to 105.7 million audience impressions. So I don't envision this will be leaving the top 10 anytime soon. Although it does have a solid chance to knocked down again thanks to our next song on the list.

5- "Talk" - Khalid (+4) -- In addition to Billie charging forward, Khalid is also looking very strong right now as he gets his first top five hit as a lead artist. He was previously in the top five as a featured act on Logic's "1-800-273-8255." Helping him out the most is his radio traction as he rises 8 percent to 75.7 million audience impressions while also getting good boosts in sales and streaming, although those latter numbers aren't too high yet. But still, that means there's plenty more room for this song to grow. If it wasn't for "Old Town Road" still being miles ahead of everyone, I'd say this song also has a chance for the No. 1 spot. But let's see where things are in a month from now. At the least, I now think this song is going to remain steady in the top five.

6- "Wow." - Post Malone (-1) -- Outside our No. 1 song this week, I like our current top five. I'm glad that Post Malone again got kicked out of the region. Let's keep it that way.

7- "Sunflower (Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse)" - Post Malone & Swae Lee (-1) -- With "Without Me" having fallen out of the top 10 this week, the race for the No. 1 spot for 2019 on my personal Excel charts is over for now. "Sunflower" will hang onto that lead. Although in fairness, "Without Me" spent eight weeks last year in the top 10, with six of those weeks being in the top five, while "Sunflower" only had three weeks last year in the top 10, only one of those weeks being in the top five. So if we're looking at the decades chart, "Without Me" is still significantly ahead of "Sunflower" and will probably remain ahead since I don't give many points for being in the bottom half of the top 10. But looking strictly at 2019, "Sunflower" is the most popular song. And even if it falls off next week, which I don't see it doing, it would take "Old Town Road" nine weeks of being No. 1 to pass it. That might eventually happen, but check in with me in two months from now. Also, I certainly hope "Old Town Road" doesn't get nine more weeks at No. 1. That would put it at 17 weeks on top, breaking the all-time record that is currently a tie with "One Sweet Day" and "Despacito" getting 16 weeks each. "Old Town Road" is not the song that deserves to pass that.

8- "Dancing with a Stranger" - Sam Smith & Normani (-1) -- "Dancing with a Stranger" still has strong radio, even though it gave up the No. 1 spot to "Sucker" this week. However, it appears that radio is all this song is getting at the moment, which means it's probably not going to get much higher. Although it might remain steady towards the bottom here. It only fell one spot because Khalid shot up super high with "Talk."

9- "ME!" - Taylor Swift & Brendon Urie (-1) -- The news isn't too good for Taylor Swift and Brendan Urie, either. Although not a complete failure by any means, this is holding worse than "Look What You Made Me Do" did when it was the lead-off single for "reputation." There's still some hope for the song, though, if it can manage to stabilize enough. But being at the No. 9 spot, it's officially in danger of slipping out of the top 10.

10- "Sweet but Psycho" - Ava Max (+2) -- FINALLY!!! It's about time that Ava Max made it into the top 10. Now I don't know if there's any of you that only read my top 10 thoughts. If so, that's totally fine. Otherwise you'll know that I've been cheering on this song for quite some time now. I've loved it ever since I listened to it in late December. It was one of those experiences where, after you listen to it for the first time, you have to then listen to it another 10 times because it's that awesome. Given that this Ava Max's first hit on the Hot 100, it's not something that grabbed people's attention right away, which is why it took 23 weeks for it to crack the top 10. Said 23 weeks is the longest journey to the top 10 for a solo female artist since Anna Kendrick's "Cups" took 28 weeks in 2013. Although since the U.K. charts are much better than the U.S. charts, the song already ruled those charts for four weeks back in January. This also has done quite well in many countries in Europe. We're just slow here in the U.S. But hey, I'm glad that it finally got here. My hope is that this song will continue to slowly climb, but we'll take things one week at a time. For now we just celebrate its arrival in the top 10!  

Rising on the Hot 100:

14- "Suge" - DaBaby (+2) -- Only two songs on the rising songs section this week thanks to the double album bomb from Tyler, the Creator and DJ Khaled. Unfortunately out of all songs, this is one of the two songs that rose. That's gross. But hey, a slow week this week for the rising songs means that half of the chart might be here next week.

45- "Rumor" - Lee Brice (+8) -- The only other song to crack this section is Lee Brice hitting the top 50. That's not very good news, either. Not all that surprising, though.

New Arrivals:

13- "Earfquake" - Tyler, The Creator -- I honestly thought this was going to debut in the top 10 this week. I'm a bit surprised that it didn't. But given that it didn't, I feel no obligation to cover it. Or any of Tyler, The Creator's eight songs that debuted this week. I don't do album bombs anymore unless it's an album that I really like. That said, I'm not that familiar with Tyler, The Creator. If you are and you would like my thoughts on any of his songs, let me know what the best of his eight songs are that debuted this week and I'll give it a chance. If I somehow like it, I might explore more. If I think it's crap, like most rap these days, I'll officially be done with Tyler, The Creator. So the ball is in your court. The thing is, I don't think any of my friends reading this post care that much, so I highly doubt I'll get anyone to take me up on this, which is why I don't feel bad skipping this, especially since he spelled earthquake like that. That just screams incompetency. I don't think it's cool or hip to misspell words like that. I think it's stupid. 

15- "Nightmare" - Halsey -- This is good timing for Halsey. On the week where "Without Me" falls out of the top 10, "Nightmare" debuts on the Hot 100. Given our recent string of top 10 debuts, I'm a bit surprised that Halsey couldn't make it on. But maybe people were too busy streaming the other two albums for this to have a huge debut. But either way, other pop stars should take note that this is how you manage your singles releases. Let one single run its course, then once it starts falling, release the next. I'm specifically looking at Ariana Grande's team. Notice how Ariana is now M.I.A. from charts because of too many releases crammed too close together? Yeah, no coincidences there. Halsey's team did things right. Onto the song now. She starts this off by quoting a children's Christian bedtime prayer from 1750, which provides an interesting touch to a song that is fairly poignant and emotional. This feels like Halsey is speaking from her heart as she recounts that she doesn't care if she's someone's nightmare. In talking about the inspiration behind the song, she says that she used to smile when people asked her to and felt bad when they said awful things when she didn't. Thus she spent a lot of time acting fake and treating people nice when they didn't deserve it so that she wouldn't make herself look bad. Now she says she doesn't care and that is related in this song. I often get bored with Halsey's music because she often doesn't seem to care that much about writing good music. But this song has enough emotion and heart behind it for me to support it. I also think her vocals are pretty good as she gets to the chorus and that's certainly a plus.

19- "Wish Wish" - DJ Khaled featuring Cardi B & 21 Savage -- I have no interest in touching a DJ Khaled album bomb.

21- "Higher" - DJ Khaled featuring Nipsey Hussle & John Legend -- I have no interest in touching a DJ Khaled album bomb.

43- "Just Us" - DJ Khaled featuring SZA -- I have no interest in touching a DJ Khaled album bomb.

44- "You Stay" - DJ Khaled featuring Meek Mill, J Balvin, Lil Baby & Jeremih -- I have no interest in touching a DJ Khaled album bomb.

51- "I Think" - Tyler, The Creator -- See my note on No. 13 about Tyler, The Creator.

52- "Celebrate" - DJ Khaled featuring Travis Scott & Post Malone -- I have no interest in touching a DJ Khaled album bomb.

57- "Jealous" - DJ Khaled featuring Chris Brown, Lil Wayne & Big Sean -- I have no interest in touching a DJ Khaled album bomb.

65- "Running Out of Time" - Tyler, The Creator -- See my note on No. 13 about Tyler, The Creator.

67- "Igor's Theme" - Tyler, The Creator -- See my note on No. 13 about Tyler, The Creator.

70- "New Magic Wand" - Tyler, The Creator -- See my note on No. 13 about Tyler, The Creator.

74- "A Boy is a Gun" - Tyler, The Creator -- See my note on No. 13 about Tyler, The Creator.

85- "What's Good" - Tyler, The Creator -- See my note on No. 13 about Tyler, The Creator.

86- "What If I Never Get Over You"- Lady Antebellum -- Hidden towards the bottom of all this Tyler, The Creator and DJ Khaled stuff is randomly a new song from Lady Antebellum. My biggest issue with Lady Antebellum is that this is an awful name for a country group. It would be a great name for an individual female singer, but I've always thought it was a weird name for a group. That said, I've typically enjoyed their music, although it's been a while since they've been here. They showed up briefly in 2017 with "You Look Good," which peaked at No. 59 on the Hot 100 in 2017. Prior to that, the previous time they showed up was in 2014 with "Bartender," a song that I don't know if I've ever listened to. So I don't know if I can call myself a fan. But I love their big top 10 hits from 8-10 years ago, that being "Need You Now" in 2009 and "Just a Kiss" in 2011. So I was definitely fine with seeing them again. And while "What If I Never Get Over You" is not necessarily the most original song ever in terms of the lyrics, it's a very relatable song as they're singing about not being able to get over this person, while having the thought in the back of their mind that what if they never get over said person? The element of relatability combined with a solid effort vocally is what makes this song work, in my opinion. Charles Kelly and Hillary Scott play off each other quite well, as if they've been doing this for a while. Their chemistry and balance is what's made me always like Lady Antebellum and they bring it here. I don't know how the rest of the country is going to take this, but I think this is nice country-pop crossover, thus I'd be happy if it could at least manage to get higher than their previous effort.     

88- "Puppet" - Tyler, The Creator -- See my note on No. 13 about Tyler, The Creator.

91- "Weather the Storm" - DJ Khaled featuring Meek Mill & Lil Baby -- I have no interest in touching a DJ Khaled album bomb.

DrogeMiester's Billboard Analysis - May 25, 2019

The new Billboard charts have arrived and so it's time again for me to give you my thoughts! This is a weekly post where I cover three main sections of the charts: the Billboard Hot 100 top 10, the songs rising on the Hot 100, and the new arrivals. As pertaining to the rising songs, in order to be included, a song has to rise at least two spots between Nos. 11 and 20, five spots spots between Nos. 21 and 50, or 10 spots between Nos. 51 and 100. As pertaining to new arrivals, I used to dedicate myself to covering every single song that debuted, but that started to burn me out, especially with the high number of album bombs, so I've been a lot more selective recently and so far I've received no complaints. However, if I skip a song that you want to hear my thoughts on, feel free to let me know. I'll occasionally mix things up depending on the week, like throwing in a notable re-entry into the rising songs section, but generally this is what I go with. Most of the data I give you comes from Billboard.com, usually Gary Trust's weekly article. If I pull from elsewhere, I'll generally let you know. With all of that out of the way, let's dive in and see what this week has to offer!

Billboard Hot 100 Top 10:

1- "Old Town Road" - Lil Nas X featuring Billy Ray Cyrus (=) -- I beginning to be really confused as to WHY and HOW this song continues to maintain its high level of streaming. When it rocketed to its record number of 143 million U.S. streams in a single week, that was surprising. But it's almost more surprising that it's maintained at least 100 million U.S. streams for six weeks straight now. It's only down 1 percent from last week to 103.1 million U.S. streams. And it's going to skyrocket again next week now that they released the official music video on Friday, which will impact the charts next week. And perhaps that's one of the reasons. They've now released six different videos. Three of them are official audios of the three different versions of the song (the original mix, the Billy Ray Cyrus mix and the Diplo mix). Then they had the original video game thing that they called the visualizer. Then they had that Animoji video they released two weeks ago. And now they have the official music video, that they're calling the "official movie," a trend that I personally think is stupid. There's a lot of music videos that are calling themselves films or movies. They're not. They're music videos. Most of them, this one included, don't have a narrative. It's just him riding around on a horse. But anyways, with that insane amount of streaming, solid sales (down 12 percent to 69,000 downloads sold) and increasing radio (up 8 percent to 83.8 million audience impressions), this is still not going to budge anytime soon.

2- "I Don't Care" - Ed Sheeran & Justin Bieber (new) -- The list of songs that "Old Town Road" has prevented from getting to No. 1 is growing quite large. You can now add Ed Sheeran and Justin Bieber to that list with "I Don't Care." The song opens with 77,000 downloads sold (No. 1 on sales) and 34.1 million U.S. streams (No. 3 on streaming), while jumping up 33-13 on radio with 49.1 million audience impressions. So yeah, solid numbers. And the official music video dropped on Friday, meaning it should get an additional boost on next week's charts. But it's not going to get anywhere close to "Old Town Road" anytime soon. And fun fact. Justin Bieber currently holds the record for most No. 2 debuts with this being his fourth. Previously debuting at No. 2 for him was "Boyfriend," "Sorry" and "Cold Water." I'll have my opinion of the song down below but the short version is that I think it's fine, even if both artists have done much better. And I do think this has the ability to stick around on the charts longer, which wasn't the case with Shawn Mendes and Logic this week, both of whom dropped hard this week.

3- "Sucker" - Jonas Brothers (+1) -- As you'll quickly notice, there was a lot of movement within the top 10 this week. It's like someone took a snow globe and shook it hard. Among all the winners with the dust settling this week is the Jonas Brothers, who unsurprisingly move up to No. 3 this week as "Sucker" remains solidly consistent on the charts, thanks mostly to it's powerful radio.

4- "bad guy" - Billie Eilish (+5) -- This was a pleasant surprise. I was beginning to be rather amused that Billie was able to stay consistent at No. 9 for several weeks despite all the movement around her. But that's a very dangerous spot to be in and I was worried that she was going to get knocked out. I was hoping that she would stick around in the top 10, but I did not see her soaring up to No. 5. Helping her out is continued strong streaming as she's up 4 percent to 39.9 million U.S. streams, which is actually good for No. 2 on streaming this week. But most importantly, this is FINALLY getting a radio push. I don't know why it took them so long, but this debuts at No. 43 on the radio charts with 24.1 million audience impressions, up 42 percent from last week. Let's hope that continues to soar up because that'll keep this song around for even longer as there's only so much that streaming can do to hold up a song on its own. But on that note of streaming, I'm really impressed that Billie Eilish has managed to become a streaming powerhouse when normally streaming is dominated by rap and hip-hop in today's age. More pop artists getting huge streaming numbers would really please me.

5- "Wow." - Post Malone (+1) -- Also not a shock here, but "Wow." returns to the top five after Shawn Mendes, Logic AND Taylor Swift fall out of the top five. The win here is that, despite the three songs falling out of the top five, "Wow." only rises one spot.

6- "Sunflower" - Post Malone & Swae Lee (+1) -- Also rising just one spot is "Sunflower," which did surprise me a bit, especially since Halsey still managed to take a tumble despite all the movement. I thought this would be down to No. 9 this week, not rising up to No. 6. But hey, I'm fine with this. In fact, if we're going to keep a Post Malone song around, I'd much rather it be "Sunflower" than "Wow." But given that this song has been here forever, it's only a matter of time before it finally runs out of steam.

7- "Dancing with a Stranger" - Sam Smith & Normani (+4) -- I'm really glad to see this song back in the top 10. I was rather upset that it got dragged down with all the others in the whirlwind of all the top 10 debuts in the last few weeks. But being No. 1 on radio will help you remain consistent on the charts amidst all the craziness. However, No. 7 has thus far been this song's peak. Let's get this higher. I'd love to see this get cemented into the top five. Given that I don't think either Post Malone song is super stable at the moment, I don't think that's out of the realm of possibilities.

8- "ME!" - Taylor Swift featuring Brendon Urie (-5) -- This surprised me a bit. I thought Taylor would have enough consistency to at least stick around in the top five for longer due to the radio seeming to love this song. But I suppose she's now at the moment of truth. Is she going to be able to gain traction with this single and stick around or is this song going to follow in the footsteps of her most recent album lead-off single in "Look What You Made Me Do" by fizzling out rather quickly a few weeks after its huge debut? I'm not a huge fan of the song, but I'm having a hard time getting a pulse on what the rest of the country thinks about this. I'll guess we'll have to wait and see. If this drops out of the top 10 next week, that might tell us a lot.

9- "Talk" - Khalid (+3) -- OK, I'm fine with this song returning to the top 10. It doesn't have any depth to it lyrically. But thanks to the uncredited help of Disclosure, it has a catchy enough groove to it for me to find enjoyment in it. However, I would've much rather seen "Sweet but Psycho" show up instead. She got bumped down to No. 13 last week thanks to the influx of debuts. While "Dancing with a Stranger" and "Talk," which sat at No. 11 and No. 12 last week, managed to jump into the top 10 this week, "Sweet but Psycho" only jumped up to No. 12. I still am clinging onto hope because the songs between "Talk" and "Sweet but Psycho" are Halsey's "Without Me" at No. 10 and Ariana Grande's "7 rings," which thankfully falls out of the top 10 to No. 11. And both of those songs are on the downward trend. As long as we don't get something crazy next week from the likes of Tyler the Creator or DJ Khaled, both of whom are dominating Apple Music at the moment, maybe "Sweet but Psycho" can finally get in? 

10- "Without Me" - Halsey (-2) -- After a marvelous run in the top 10, it looks like Halsey is finally about to bow out. Even though this means she'll remain behind "Sunflower" on the yearly chart, she's now logged 29 weeks in the top 10 with this song, which ties with "Party Rock Anthem" for the eighth longest top 10 run in the history of the Hot 100. If she can manage just one more week, she'll be one of the few that have made it into the 30 week club. Although as I just mentioned, I'd rather kick her out in favor of "Sweet but Psycho." That song is much better anyways.

Rising on the Hot 100:

16- "Suge" - DaBaby (+6) -- I swear if this song ends up getting into the top 10 instead of "Sweet but Psycho," I'm going to throw a huge fit. At least I can gain solace in the fact that this annoying hit at best will be more like that Blueface song "Thotiana," which was a huge viral hit for a moment, but then immediately disappeared back into oblivion. No one will ever remember that song was a thing, just like no one will ever remember this song was a thing. In a year from now, I'll ask my friends if they remember the song "Suge" by DaBaby and they'll all be like, "What?"

24- "God's Country" - Blake Shelton (+9) -- A solid week for a handful of country songs. Morgan Wallen's "Whiskey" is also right behind this, although it didn't rise enough spots this week for me to include it, which is nice. But threatening to jump into the top 20 is "God's Country" and I'm kinda fine with this. If you ignore the lyrics, which I think most people listening to country radio do, this is quite enjoyable.

29- "Beer Never Broke My Heart" - Luke Combs (+39) -- On the other hand, I am NOT fine with this song soaring up this high. And yeah, I ignored this song last week because of the extremely incompetent title. But I gave in and gave it a listen. And yeah, it sucks. What did you expect from a country song about beer? If beer hasn't broken your heart yet, Luke, you just wait. Having a bad drinking problem is the root cause of a lot of awful things in life. Also, I'm far from being a beer expert, but if he's never had a bad-tasting beer or drank a beer that didn't immediately solve all of his problems, then he's just lying to himself. That's why this song is extremely stupid. Plus, it's the most generically country that you can get, so no points there.

34- "Pop Out" - Polo G featuring Lil Tjay (+5) -- Well, I'm lucky that this only rose five spots this week. But if we can slow this one down, that would be great.

41- "Hey Look Ma, I Made It" - Panic! At the Disco (+18) -- Welcome back to the top 50, Panic! Having this song around doesn't necessarily excite me that much. But I'm also not upset. Compared to a lot of other songs in this region, I'll certainly take an average Panic! song at this song over a lot of other things.

42- "Truth Hurts" - Lizzo (+8) -- If people gravitate towards this and make it a huge, I won't be complaining, even if it's not my cup of tea.

48- "Look What God Gave Her" - Thomas Rhett (+7) -- It wouldn't be the Hot 100 without Thomas Rhett roaming around here somewhere. He's the definition of hit and miss for me. This time around he's a miss. But country radio worships him for some reason.

50- "Love Ain't" - Eli Young Band (+10) -- This song still ain't. And I ain't excited that we made it a top 50 hit.

62- "Put a Date on It" - Yo Gotti featuring Lil Baby (+8) -- Don't care.

78- "Love Someone" - Brett Eldredge (+11) --  I keep forgetting this song exists. And so will the rest of the world whenever it goes away.

New Arrivals:

2- "I Don't Care" - Ed Sheeran & Justin Bieber -- Surprised to see Ed Sheeran and Justin Bieber team up on a song? Don't be. Ed Sheeran helped co-write a few of Bieber's big hits, so this is not the first time they've worked together. It's just the first time they are co-billed on a song. Thus this happening makes total sense. However, the thing that surprises me the most is how well they don't fit together. Or maybe I should say that they fit together a little too well. What I mean by that is when I listen to a song with two different singer, what I generally like is there to be a balance. You get singer No. 1 for a while, then singer No. 2 comes on and takes the song in a completely different direction, giving the listener a change of pace, causing the song to remain fresh. Then they often come together to provide some good harmonies with their different sounding voices. I learned in this song that Ed Sheeran and Justin Bieber actually sound very similar and have very similar styles. When the songs transitions from Sheeran to Bieber, you might not realize that the transition takes place unless your paying close attention. Thus there's not enough contrast between the two of them to justify them both being there. And the lyrics of the song are really written for one voice, not two. Thus I think the only reason to have them both here is for name recognition alone to boost sales. That aside, the title of the song implies a feeling of nonchalance. The two of them really don't care about the world around around them. They just want to be with their girls and they don't care about what everyone says. They can also easily forget about the bad parts of life as long as they still have their girl with them. And like the lyrics, the song is very relaxing and chill. I think it's a great summer song and if the radio helps it blow up, I'll be fine with that. Sure, it's not the Ed Sheeran song I'll turn to if I'm in the mood for Ed Sheeran, but it's still perfectly acceptable.

51- "Triggered" - Jhene Aiko -- Jhene Aiko is a name I feel I should know a lot better than I do. I mean, you say that name and she sounds super familiar, but I couldn't name a song she sings if you asked me to. So I look up her discography and I still feel like I'm in the dark. So whatever. I'll just judge this song on its own. And it's more of a mellow R&B song. I like her voice. But she curses a lot in this song and I don't think it provides for a very good flow. Even when I listen to the clean version of the song, there's too many blank spots where her endless stream of f-bombs are censored out. Sure, cursing doesn't always bother me. I can often tolerate it in various forms of media. But I'm a little more sensitive to it in music. And when my only two options are to listen to her spout off tons of f-bombs in a song where said cursing feels completely out of place or to listen to a censored version of the song where just about every other word is edited out, I'll just write it off as being a song that's not for me.

73- "Soltera" - Lunay, Daddy Yankee & Bad Bunny -- In using my very untrustworthy way of translating the word "soltera," Google Translate tells me that it means "single." In searching "Soltera" on my Apple Music, I discovered there's a new Maluma song featuring Madonna titled "Soltera" from his album released this Friday. And that reminds me that there was another collaboration with Maluma and Madonna from a few weeks ago titled "Medellin." Thus I'm begging the charts to let me cover Madonna. But instead we get this thing by Lunay. This is initially a song from two months ago featured Chris Jeday and Gaby Music. But, you know, when you can't get your song to chart in the U.S., just add Daddy Yankee and/or Bad Bunny and that should do the trick, right? So I listened to the original and was expecting three voices and was surprised to only hear Lunay. Well, turns out Chris Jeday and Gaby Music are just producers, so everything suddenly makes sense. And I guess I'm fine with adding more voices here, even though the motivations are strictly based on getting more sales, because Lunay on his own is boring. The problem here is that for half of the song it goes from boring to worse because Bad Bunny is awful. We get one verse from Daddy Yankee and that one is exciting because he actually knows how to get his audience interested in his music. But there wasn't enough of him in this song. And based on my translation of the title, I'm assuming this has something to do with him or them being single. But I don't really care to translate this because the song itself isn't very good.

85- "Someone Loved You" - Lewis Capaldi -- Like Jhene Aiko, I looked at the name Lewis Capaldi and felt like it's a name I should know. However, in this case looking up his name taught me that this song is his first ever entry on the U.S. Hot 100. Maybe I just recognize this because it's already been a top 10 hit in many places across Europe, going No. 1 on the U.K., Ireland and Scotland charts. Given that dude is from Scotland, his Scottish accent definitely comes out in the song, which means me as a dumb American can't always understand everything he says, but I really like how stripped down the song is, as well as how passionate Lewis sings. It's a simple piano ballad that's rather beautiful. Lewis also has a bit of a gruffness to his voice that gives the song a good energy when he belts out his lyrics, but then pulls us back in when he goes back to being softer. It makes for a nice balance. Lyrically this is also a fairly simple song. In that case, though, it hurts the song a bit because there's not a ton of depth to this. But there's enough passion in the delivery to make up for the lack of lyrical content. So I'll sweep that under the rug and enjoy this song.

95- "Te Robare" - Nicky Jam & Ozuna -- I threw this title into Google Translate and "te robare" came back with "I will steal you." That was a bit concerning. So I had to throw in some of the lyrics and I came back with all sorts of troubling things, but we're just going to pretend that this was all meant in a very innocent way. Like they're trying to steal this girl's heart and make her love them rather than stealing... her. At least in this case Nicky Jam and Ozuna are much better than Lunay and Bad Bunny at giving me a solid beat with good vocals for me to get attached to. I can certainly play the ignorant card because I don't speak Spanish and say that this is a fun song to dance to. But I'm still concerned at what I read from my translation. I might have to get one of my Spanish-speaking friends to come help me out with a real translation because I have a feeling this is a situation like a lot of our thug rappers where their lyrics are pure garbage, mostly because they're careless in their writing. They don't mean harm, but their lyrics can be taken in awful ways, which in consequence makes me not like the song.

100- "Juice" - Lizzo -- We finish this week off with more Lizzo. I mentioned last week that this girl really isn't my style, but I appreciate her a lot more than the likes of a Cardi B or Megan Thee Stallion. I think her best trait is her vibrant personality that makes her shine in her songs because she knows how to properly harness it instead of letting herself go all over the place. And I actually like the confidence in this song as she's saying how awesome she is. It gives the song more energy when compared to your typical flexing song. That said, that's all this song is. While I wouldn't call this rap, she does use a lot of rap cliches and phrases that make me roll my eyes. I don't envision myself ever purposely listening to this song for my own enjoyment, but if others gravitate towards this as a strong anthem, I'm not going to be upset.

DrogeMiester's Billboard Analysis - May 18, 2019

The new Billboard charts have arrived and so it's time again for me to give you my thoughts! This is a weekly post where I cover three main sections of the charts: the Billboard Hot 100 top 10, the songs rising on the Hot 100, and the new arrivals. As pertaining to the rising songs, in order to be included, a song has to rise at least two spots between Nos. 11 and 20, five spots spots between Nos. 21 and 50, or 10 spots between Nos. 51 and 100. As pertaining to new arrivals, I used to dedicate myself to covering every single song that debuted, but that started to burn me out, especially with the high number of album bombs, so I've been a lot more selective recently and so far I've received no complaints. However, if I skip a song that you want to hear my thoughts on, feel free to let me know. I'll occasionally mix things up depending on the week, like throwing in a notable re-entry into the rising songs section, but generally this is what I go with. Most of the data I give you comes from Billboard.com, usually Gary Trust's weekly article. If I pull from elsewhere, I'll generally let you know. With all of that out of the way, let's dive in and see what this week has to offer!

Billboard Hot 100 Top 10:

1- "Old Town Road" - Lil Nas X featuring Billy Ray Cyrus (=) -- I wasn't following this week super closely, thus it completely caught me off guard in learning that we have two new top five debuts. I think I had heard whispers of a new Shawn Mendes song, but I didn't think it was heading for a top debut. And I also did not anticipate Logic and Eminem coming. But I guess now that the summer season is upon us, it makes sense for artists to be releasing their big summer singles and they have great timing with how weak the top 10 as a whole has been recently. Halsey and Post Malone have been able to just hang out for the whole year so far despite releasing their songs last year because there's been no competition. But now it looks like there is. But yet despite how weak the top 10 as a whole is, "Old Town Road" is the one song that's still incredibly dominant. And it's shown no signs of slowing down. In fact, it even got a slight boost in both streaming and sales, going over 100 million U.S. streams for five weeks straight, helping it get now six weeks at No. 1. And while both steaming and sales boosts were fairly small, it got a huge 16 percent boost on the radio, rising up to No. 4 on the radio charts. Taylor Swift made a strong push to dethrone it last week, but came up short due to streaming. Shawn Mendes was nowhere close with his numbers, but he still got the runner-up spot anyways with solid numbers across the board. And now next week will see the power duo of Ed Sheeran and Justin Bieber take their shot with their new song "I Don't Care." Can they do it? We'll see, but my early gut instincts say no. 

2- "If I Can't Have You" - Shawn Mendes (new) -- Yeah, as I just said, I heard whispers of a new Shawn Mendes song, but I wasn't paying super close attention to it, especially since his singles from last year didn't do particularly well in compared to his early songs, which is a shame. Thus I was surprised to see Mendes soaring in at No. 2, which gives him a new career high on the Hot 100 after "Stitches" had previously peaked at No. 4. Due to "Old Town Road" remaining dominant as well as Ed Sheeran and Justin Bieber coming next week, Mendes will get held back from getting his first ever No. 1 hit on the Hot 100, but with solid first week numbers across the board (68,000 sales, 24 million U.S. streams and 35.7 in radio audience), I can see this sticking around. I think pop radio especially is running out of songs to play, so this will easily fit into their rotation. The song will take dip next week, as is typical for big debuts like this, but I think the song is catchy enough to hang around. My full opinion of it is down below.

3- "ME!" - Taylor Swift featuring Brendon Urie (-1) -- To demonstrate how weak the top 10 is right now, Taylor Swift and Brendon Urie took a huge nosedive with their second week numbers, falling 85 percent in sales and 47 percent in streaming, but yet they only fell one spot on the charts. Luckily for them, the radio seems to be picking this up as this rose 15 percent in radio audience, cracking the radio top 10 in just its second full week on the charts. Taylor Swift better hope that said radio numbers helps her have more success than her previous album lead-off single. "Look What You Made Me Do" had huge initial numbers, but fell off rather fast as the song didn't stick. I think "ME!" is more generically Taylor Swift for people to be more accepting, or at least less annoyed with her antics, so I can see this hanging around. Although it's going to have to stop the bleeding in sales and streaming at least a little bit.

4- "Sucker" - Jonas Brothers (=) -- I'd call this week a win for the Jonas Brothers. While you'll notice everything else got pushed down due to our two top five debuts, it was "Sucker" than held strong, leapfrogging Post Malone while holding off Logic and Eminem. Shawn Mendes' debut is what kept it from rising any. With Swift and Mendes likely to take another hit next week, this could realistically rise up to No. 3 next week after "Old Town Road" and "I Don't Care" battle it out for the top spot.

5- "Homicide" - Logic featuring Eminem (new) -- While Logic and Emimen weren't able to be the biggest debut of the week, a No. 5 debut still is pretty solid and is boosted mainly by strong streaming numbers (36.3 million U.S. streams). However, this one I have less hope for in its ability to stick around. It makes sense that radio falls in love with Swift and Mendes, as well as Ed Sheeran and Justin Bieber next week, but I don't think radio is going to touch this song and I'm also not confident that streaming is going to do that well. It the moment of me typing this, it's No. 46 on the Apple Music charts. And while that's only one of many different streaming platforms contributing to its total, usually the songs that maintain great streaming week to week are consistently high when I look at my Apple Music, so that doesn't seem like a great sign for them. But all is well, because this is just an empty, emotionless diss track towards the rap industry as a whole. It's boring. I have more thoughts on that below if you want more details.

6- "Wow." - Post Malone (-3) -- I had accepted the fact that this song was going to stick around for a long time. Thus I was a bit surprised when it got knocked out of the top five altogether. But hey, that's what you call a pleasant surprise.

7- "Sunflower (Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse)" - Post Malone & Swae Lee (-2) -- When all is said and done, it wasn't a bad week for "Sunflower." It fell two spots and there were two new debuts. Without those two new songs, this essentially stays even in compared to last week. However, this has been here for quite some time, so if we're going to continue to get new songs, this isn't going to have the strength to last.

8- "Without Me" - Halsey (-1) -- An even better week for Halsey, I'd say. There were two new debuts above her, yet she only fell one spot. But again, the same as with "Sunflower," this isn't going to stick around for a whole lot longer as we continue to get new songs showing up. As a reminder, the current month is May and this song debuted in 2018. As such, "Sunflower" and "Without Me" currently remain the top songs of 2019 based on my own personal charts. And both will probably at least remain close to the top when all is said and done due to how well they've performed.

9- "bad guy" - Billie Eilish (=) -- While I would love to see Billie Eilish actually get higher, I remain amused that she is yet again at No. 9. Songs around her are coming and going at various rates, yet she stays put. That means without all of these new debuts in the last couple of weeks, this song would be knocking on the door to the top five. But hey, I remain pleased at how well this song has held up.

10- "7 rings" - Ariana Grande (-4) -- While "Sunflower" and "Without Me" had decent weeks, all things considered, "7 rings" is the song that took the biggest punishment this week, crashing down four spots to No. 10. There's likely going to be a lot of fluctuation in the charts in the next few weeks as new debuts crash down while other new songs show up, but I'm willing to bet that Ariana is going to get knocked out rather soon and be completely gone when the dust settles. And that's good. Because this song has always sucked, so it's good to see it going away.

Rising on the Hot 100:

22- "Suge" - DaBaby (+5) -- Nothing between No. 11 and 20 rose high enough to be included here. In fact, most songs took a hit of at least a spot or two thanks to our two new debuts and an overall weakness surrounding the Hot 100 in general. In fact, it wasn't a very strong week for the charts as a whole as only four songs managed to show up in this rising songs section, which surprised me. And they're led by this song, which is annoyingly continuing to gain traction. Although I was happy to see that it only rose five spots this week. Hopefully it will be one of those rap songs that fizzles out once it gets too high, but unfortunately I imagine that I'm going to be forced to keep bringing it up for the next few weeks at least.

28- "Whiskey Glasses" - Morgan Wallen (+5) -- Why this song continues to gain traction in the country realm is beyond me.

39- "Pop Out" - Polo G featuring Lil Tjay (+12) -- "Suge" and "Pop Out" are our two trendy rap songs at the moment. And I'm extremely confused in both regards, although I shouldn't be super surprised. It wouldn't be a week on the Hot 100 without some awful rap song doing well. We do live in 2019, after all.

84- "Knockin' Boots" - Luke Bryan (+10) -- Two rap songs and two country songs. That's all this week was able to provide in this section. And just like both rap songs are awful, both these country songs are also quite dull. Ouch. Let's do better next week, please?

New Arrivals:

2- "If I Can't Have You" - Shawn Mendes -- It's been a bit of an interesting career for Shawn Mendes, at least in terms of my reaction towards his songs. His first two albums, "Handwritten" in 2015 and "Illuminate" in 2016 skyrocketed him into pop stardom, yet with singles such as "Stitches" and "Treat You Better," I rather hated the kid's music and was annoyed that he wouldn't go away. Then he released his third self-titled album last year that had "In My Blood" and "Lost in Japan," which were a whole heck of a lot better. I guess people are allowed to mature and grow. And now we have this new single "If I Can't Have You," which I assume comes from an upcoming fourth studio album, although at the moment Mendes claims it doesn't. But we'll see. Apparently he wrote it with the idea of sending it to Dua Lipa, but never got in touch with her. In regards to the quality of the song, Mendes has never been a master lyricist and this kinda falls into the category of being an overly generic pop love song. But there's nothing in here that particularly annoys me like in his early singles. Kinda like with his singles from last year, this is a much more enjoyable pop song that makes Mendes continually more likable as a pop star. It has a decent groove to it and Mendes' vocals are pretty decent. I mean, one day this guy will learn how to write songs that actually mean something, but until then at least we have singles from him that the radio can play and not cause me to scramble to change the station, so that's a positive, right?

5- "Homicide" - Logic featuring Eminem -- And now for our second of our top five debuts, we have Logic and Eminem teaming up with each other. Now I'm not going to do a deep dive into everything these two say in this song. I'll leave it to others who actually care. But the song is split in half. The first half is logic and the second half is Eminem. Logic starts his part by saying that no one in the rap industry impresses him at the moment. He admits that maybe that's a little bit of an exaggeration, but he's so full of innovation that he's destroying everyone. Now listen, if you haven't noticed, there's not many rappers that have impressed me either. In fact, the flood of awful rap music into the Billboard charts completely broke me and thus I've been completely ignoring it all. So I get Logic there. But the thing is that Logic is also one of the more uninteresting people as well. I'm ignoring him too because he has no innovation. Yeah, sure, he can actually rap, but I can't help but feeling his whole section is completely hollow and meaningless. The only reason I'm even covering this song is because it debuted in the top five and Eminem is on. Speaking of Eminem, when he came out with his own album trashing the rap industry after his previous album failed, I found all of his angry rants rather amusing, especially because I agreed with him. But he brings nothing to the table with this song. He's just bragging about how great he is. And he probably only did it because Logic asked him if he wanted jump on the song. This is not an emotionally fueled track from Eminem. It also feels quite empty on his part. Yeah, the two of them have good flow and good rhyming schemes, but that's it here.

50- "Truth Hurts" - Lizzo -- First order of business, congrats to Lizzo for getting her first every Hot 100 hit! Second order of business, who in the frack is Lizzo? Well, she's a 31-year-old singer and rapper who has released three studio albums, the third one having been released last month. Her given name is Melissa Viviane Jefferson, which surprised me because I assumed Liz or Elizabeth was going to be part of that name. I haven't heard of Melissa being shorted to Liz very often, if at all. But I suppose that works. As I always say, it's great to have more female representation on the charts. Popular music is very male dominant, despite there being plenty of talented females. Even in 2019 with the likes of Ariana, Billie Eilish and Halsey doing well, males have still accounted for 70.2 percent of the artists who have shown up in the top 10 this year. That's an improvement so far from the 79.1 percent in 2018, but still. And yes, I did start keeping track of that last year. The most important question, though, is this Lizzo girl any good? Or is she like Megan Thee Stallion, who just feels like Card B 2.0 to me? Well, based solely on this one song, I don't know if I would call this a song I would turn to in the future. It's not really my thing. But she does seem to have more of her own personality as she raps/sings about all of her dating and boy problems. But even though she seems upset at certain guys in this song, she certainly doesn't make herself vulnerable or weak. She's kinda shoving it in their face in a way that feels earned. So even though this isn't quite my cup of tea, I can certainly see the appeal of this.

68- "Beer Never Broke My Heart" - Luke Combs -- I haven't yet skipped a country song on this Billboard Analysis section. Usually they're at least inoffensive enough for me to give them a listen. But I looked at this title and facepalmed so hard that I decided there's a first for everything. I'm not touching this one.

71- "Go Loko" - YG, Tyga & Jon Z -- Nope.

91- "Middle Child" - PnB Rock & XXXTENTACION -- Gross. We're still taking advantage of the death of XXTENTACION? Give it up, already.

96- "All to Myself" - Dan + Shay -- OK, I won't making skipping country songs a new trend. I just couldn't do that Luke Combs song. But I suppose I'll submit to Dan + Shay, even though I've never been a huge fan of theirs, either. But hey, out of their two songs from last year "Speechless" was alright, so that's one of two. "Tequila" was the other I didn't like. So there's hope, maybe? And yeah, this is not bad. It's no country masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination, but the song is very descriptive in an interesting way. Even though he's singing about wanting this girl, which can easily get very boring in the country realm, saying things like "I'm jealous of the moon that keeps on starin'" makes me feel like a bit more thought was put into these lyrics than your typical country song. The overall outcome is a country song that is still not super interesting as a whole. Not a ton of depth to it. And certainly nothing unique. But the details of the individual lines makes me give this song a pass.

98- "Paradise" - Bazzi -- I've tried really hard to like Bazzi. Or at least understand the appeal. But with all of the songs that he's released, he's just never managed to grab me. When he first exploded onto the scene, I thought he was nothing more than a meme that would quickly die out since his first song didn't even feel like a completed song to me. But he's stuck around and now he has a new song and maybe this was going to be the Bazzi song that works for me? But no. The first line was "I see your body, I'm grabbin your a--." He sings about love and girls in his song, but he never seems like he has the element of respect down. His songs seem more lustful and carnal. Girls are there as objects for his enjoyment so that he can satisfy his sexual desires rather than them being there to be loved and respected. And that opening line told me that this song is no different. He tries to sing about paradise with a girl, but he just doesn't get it. I feel that's what it comes down to, which is why I can't connect to any of his lyrics. On top of that, this song feels super choppy and out of whack, which is also a theme with Bazzi. I don't like the messy flow that his songs have and "Paradise" is no different there, either. I guess Bazzi fans might enjoy this, but I just don't get him.

99- "Die Young" - Roddy Ricch -- Kesha's "Die Young" probably earns a reward for the most unfortunately timed releases in the history of music. The song was released on September 25, 2012. It reached its No. 2 peak on the Hot 100 on the week of December 8, 2012. On December 14, 2012, the horrific Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting took place. Yeah, you don't play a song called "Die Young" after a tragedy like that. Due to that awful coincidence, as well as the extremely sketchy music video, I'm pretty sure the me of 2012 hated this song. Evil, satanic and inappropriate were probably words I would've used. But, well, opinions change over time. While perhaps a bit lyrically careless, the actual message of the song is about living life to the fullest. Take advantage of today while not waiting for tomorrow. That's what Kesha was going for here. On the expanded edition of that album ("Warrior"), there is a deconstructed version of the song that takes the exact same lyrics, but turns it into a ballad. And it's surprisingly romantic. It remind me of the song "Everytime We Touch" by Cascada. The original dance version of the song is one of the best dance songs in my opinion. But there's a candlelight mix of the song on the same album and that's one of the prettiest romance ballads I've heard. I vow to have it played at my wedding one day. So yeah, to the surprise of many people, especially those who knew me in 2012, I've come to love Kesha's "Die Young." It's a riot. But this is also coming from the same person who will unashamedly listen to "Tik Tok" on repeat, sometimes for hours. Kesha is great!

Oh... you wanted me to talk about this current song "Die Young" by Roddy Ricch? No chance. Maybe if Roddy Ricch starts spelling his name with the appropriate number of C's (no, Ricch isn't part of his given name -- that would be Rodrick Wayne Moore, Jr.), we can talk about me listening to his garbage we call music. But I couldn't help myself here. I saw this song title and had to talk about Kesha.

DrogeMiester's Billboard Analysis - May 11, 2019

The new Billboard charts have arrived and so it's time again for me to give you my thoughts! This is a weekly post where I cover three main sections of the charts: the Billboard Hot 100 top 10, the songs rising on the Hot 100, and the new arrivals. As pertaining to the rising songs, in order to be included, a song has to rise at least two spots between Nos. 11 and 20, five spots spots between Nos. 21 and 50, or 10 spots between Nos. 51 and 100. As pertaining to new arrivals, I used to dedicate myself to covering every single song that debuted, but that started to burn me out, especially with the high number of album bombs, so I've been a lot more selective recently and so far I've received no complaints. However, if I skip a song that you want to hear my thoughts on, feel free to let me know. I'll occasionally mix things up depending on the week, like throwing in a notable re-entry into the rising songs section, but generally this is what I go with. Most of the data I give you comes from Billboard.com, usually Gary Trust's weekly article. If I pull from elsewhere, I'll generally let you know. With all of that out of the way, let's dive in and see what this week has to offer!

Billboard Hot 100 Top 10:

1- "Old Town Road" - Lil Nas X featuring Billy Ray Cyrus (=) -- Fending off a powerful surge from Taylor Swift this week is "Old Town Road" as the song tallies a fifth week at No. 1. Helping the song keep Taylor Swift at bay is consistently strong numbers across the board with 104 million U.S. streams (down 9 percent), 78,000 downloads sold (down 12 percent) and 67.7 million audience impressions on the radio (up 22 percent). I'll give you Taylor Swift's numbers in the next comment, but the quick version is that she had a whole ton of first week sales, but was significantly behind "Old Town Road" in streaming and radio. Helping "Old Town Road" at least a little bit was a second remake, this one adding Diplo to the mix, making the song country, rap and EDM as they studios behind this try to milk everything they can out of this. Diplo wasn't given featured credit this week probably because his remix didn't add a ton to the overall total. I don't see that version very high on many charts when it comes to streaming and what not. But it is the version that amuses me the most and is probably the version that will be played at dance parties. Again, the remix doesn't change the awful lyrics and the idea of yet another remix makes me roll my eyes, but adding an EDM dance beat makes it super catchy, which could be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on your point of view.

2- "ME!" - Taylor Swift featuring Brendon Urie (+98) -- I'm kinda disappointed that this wasn't No. 1 this week because I wanted to see a song rise from the very bottom slot to the very top slot. That would've permanently given Taylor the record for the highest rise on the Hot 100. The best someone could do is tie it. That said, a 98-spot jump on the Hot 100 is the new record. The previous mark was set by Kelly Clarkson's "My Life Would Suck Without You," which rose 96 spots (97-1) in February 2009. Again, Taylor Swift charted last week because she released the song on a Friday. The sales and streaming charts run Friday to Thursday while the radio charts run Monday to Sunday, which means Taylor got three days of radio play that counted to last week's charts. Across her first full week of tracking for all metrics, her sales led the way as she scored 193,000 downloads sold, the highest weekly sales total since her own 2017 single "Look What You Made Me Do" got 353,000 downloads sold in its first week. Holding Taylor back was her 50.7 million U.S. streams and 54.1 million in first week audience impressions on the radio. Any other week in 2019, numbers like that would be good enough for No. 1. But not when "Old Town Road" is still putting up crazy numbers. And finally, if you missed my opinion on this song last week, I don't really like it. It reminds me too much of her singles from her album "Red."

3- "Wow." - Post Malone (-1) -- I suppose it's good seeing this song drop a spot, but that's only because of Taylor Swift rising to No. 2. With Taylor likely to take the usual second week dip, this could go back to No. 2 next week, so it's not yet showing signs of letting up, which is really annoying for me. I want it to go away.

4- "Sucker" - Jonas Brothers (+1) -- Continuing to be boosted by its No. 1 spot on the radio charts, with the numbers there only increasing at the moment, "Sucker" is positioned rather well at the moment. I could see this eventually rising to No. 2 because it looks like the consistent radio is going to keep this song around for a while.

5- "Sunflower (Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse)" - Post Malone & Swae Lee (-2) -- Taking a bit of a tumble this week is "Sunflower." Its still maintaining decent enough numbers to stick around for a bit longer as I don't see this dropping out of the top 10 anytime soon, but this drop does signify that its numbers are starting to disappear. The song has outlived its movie by quite a bit, which is an impressive feat and still maintains the top song on my personal tracking of the top songs of 2019.

6- "7 rings" - Ariana Grande (-2) -- Also taking a tumble this week is Ariana. Personally I would love to see this fall even faster. If this could drop out of the top 10 within a few weeks that would be excellent. And I do think the song is declining faster than both "Sunflower" and "Without Me," but it falling out super fast would require other songs below it to be a bit stronger, which isn't quite happening at the moment.  

7- "Without Me" - Halsey (-1) -- Compared to "Sunflower" and "7 rings," Halsey's song didn't have as bad of a week, only dropping one spot because of Taylor Swift shooting up to No. 2. Thus I think it'll be interesting to see which of these three songs ends up departing earliest. Halsey still seems to be the most vulnerable being here at No. 7.

8- "Dancing with a Stranger" - Sam Smith & Normani (-1) -- Contrary to the three previous songs, I don't think "Dancing with a Stranger" is on its way out. I think it has consistent enough numbers to eventually sneak higher than "Sunflower," "7 rings" and "Without Me." It just wasn't strong enough this week to overtake either of them just yet. I just hope that as the three other songs depart the top 10 they don't accidentally take Sam Smith with them because this deserves to stick around for quite a bit longer.

9- "bad guy" - Billie Eilish (=) -- It really makes me happy to see Billie continue to hang here at No. 9 thanks to her consistently strong streaming numbers. But the song really needs to start getting traction on the radio if its going to stick around for much longer. Streaming can't hold it for too much longer. Although I really hope that it does. This is easily the best song in the top 10 right now.

10- "Talk" - Khalid (-2) -- I have no idea what this song is going to do in future weeks. Last week it randomly shot up to No. 8. But instead of continuing that momentum upwards, it drops two spots this week, getting pushed down by Taylor Swift and Billie Eilish. So who knows what this is going to do. I mean, I wouldn't mind keeping this song around. Thanks to the uncredited help from Disclosure, very weak lyrics and not much effort from Khalid gets swept under the rug due to a sweet groove and a catchy beat that matches perfectly with Khalid's vocals. But if it means getting "Sweet but Psycho" into the top 10, which is again stuck at No. 11 this week, I will gladly sacrifice this song.

Rising on the Hot 100:

18- "High Hopes" - Panic! At the Disco (+2) -- Not a whole lot of movement between No. 11 and 20 this week, which means our rising songs section gets topped by "High Hopes," which rises two spots thanks to it holding on better than some of the other songs that are on a downward spiral. I don't expect to cover this song very much in future weeks, but I happily added it this week because I still think it's a great song. Much better than the newer Panic! song that also shows up in this section this week.

27- "Suge" - DaBaby (+19) -- This is gross. Why are we making DaBaby a thing? The positive things about dumb new artists like this is that this dude will be a trendy name for a little bit, but will disappear back into obscurity before too long because he certainly proves with this song that he has no talent.

31- "Here with Me" - Marshmello featuring CHVRCHES (+6) -- I can certainly get behind this song. With not a lot of strong movement in the teens and 20's, I can see this song slowly sliding higher as other songs above it continue to fall. And I'm fine with that. It's a pretty good Marshmello song. For CHVRCHES standards it's not very good, but if it gives them mainstream recognition then I think that's a positive thing.

33- "Whiskey Glasses" - Morgan Wallen (+15) -- A generic country song shooting up the charts for some reason. I'll take a pass on this.

34- "God's Country" - Blake Country (+9) -- Don't tell anyone, but this song is quite the head banger. This came on the radio when I was in a car this week and said car had a great stereo system. So, OK, fine, I can tolerate this. I usually resist when it comes to dumb country songs with no substance, but this has a strong enough beat behind it to make it quite exciting in the right situations. So I'll get behind it.

38- "Eyes on You" - Chase Rice (+6) -- I can also get behind this. Although for opposite reasons than "God's Country." This is sweet and toned back. When country songs have a good romantic feel to them, and sound like they genuinely come from the heart, that's the type of country songs that I get behind.

46- "Good as You" - Kane Brown (+6) -- We got two positive country songs in a row, but we couldn't quite get to three. I've never been able to get behind Kane Brown. I just don't find him very interesting.

49- "Walk Me Home" - P!nk (+13) -- I don't know if this is a boost solely from P!nk's album release or a sign that this song has real traction behind it, but I'm glad to see this hit top 50. I love myself some P!nk and this song is quite enjoyable. Although if I'm being perfectly honest, I listened to most of her recent album, and although her vocals are great as always, I think the album as a whole has some serious problems in the writing realm as I kinda got bored of it. If the songs chart individually, I can probably get behind them, but together as a whole it didn't feel like a cohesive album. It just felt like a collection of potential P!nk singles and they were all too similar to each other to be interesting to be played all in a row. But there were some songs that stood out. The one with Chris Stapleton charted this week, so we'll get to it down below.

65- "Before I Let Go" - Beyonce (+10) -- Last week I said that I would let Beyonce fans enjoy this one. Personally I didn't like the idea of Beyonce writing and directing a documentary about herself, which is where this comes from. It sounded extremely egotistical and the only people that seemed to enjoy it are the hardcore Beyonce fans. Everyone else trashed it, so I stayed away. But since it stuck around for another week, I gave it a listen. This is a live track from a live album. I actually don't like listening to live albums. It's fun being in the live audience during a concert, but hearing all the cheering and screaming in my ear buds is not appealing to me. As far as the rest of the song goes, her vocals are way too over the top and the lyrics are about her partying and having a good time with something about her not wanting to let this boy go, so nothing about this connects with me. Are you surprised? It kinda confirms that I would not enjoy her self-made documentary that this comes from.

66- "Hey Look Ma, I Made It" - Panic! At the Disco (+14) -- Sure. Let's push this higher. I'll take an average Panic! song over most other songs that chart these days. At least it's a sign that they might be getting staying power on the charts rather than simply having one song explode and that's a positive sign for future singles.

86- "Shotta Flow" - NLE Choppa (+10) -- With a song title and artist name like this, I'm gladly ignoring. It only barely managed to qualify for this section and it's all the way down at No. 86, so I'm not going to panic yet.

New Arrivals:

67- "Floating" - ScHoolboy Q featuring 21 Savage -- Why does ScHoolboy Q capitalize the H in his name? Does he think that makes him cool? Or lit? Is it fire? I don't know, what else can I ignorantly say to make fun of stupid rappers?

69- "Baila Baila Baila" - Ozuna, Daddy Yankee, J Balvin, Farruko & Anuel AA -- Well this is a headache. I can handle some of these guys on their own. I've even liked some of the stuff they've done. But all together it's just too much and anything with Farruko and Anuel AA just makes things worse. Google Translate claims that "Baila" means "Dance." I try not to go too far in my usage of Google Translate, but translating that title seems to be a safe bet. So if they want to make a simple dance song, then fine. But still, too crowded. As it turns out, there is an original version of this that is just Ozuna. That one is fine. Ozuna and Daddy Yankee would also be fine if it was just them two. J Balvin joining the game is a little too much and Farruko and Anuel AA completely send this song crashing into the ground. While I don't know exactly what they're saying, I'm guessing it's something to do with dancing, but yet it doesn't feel upbeat enough to be a good Latin dance song. In exploring this slightly in more depth, I learned it samples "Once Dance" by Drake, which is the problem. By Drake standards, that song isn't too bad. But by dance music standards, it's certainly not up to par, so that's a bad song to base your dance song off of if you want to make it successfully upbeat and catchy.

85- "CHopstix" - ScHoolboy Q & Travis Scott -- Another song from ScHoolboy Q? Did he release a new album or something? Ask me how much I care about that if he did. Also, does this dude capitalize every H in all of his song titles? What's with that?

90- "Light It Up" - Marshmello, Tyga & Chris Brown -- I'm fine with Marshmello. He's not my favorite DJ, but listening to him is the music equivalent of watching a brainless action film. There's often no substance, but it can be fun with the right mindset. That said, key to Marshmello is who he collaborates with. Joining up with Tyga and Chris Brown is a bad idea. Tyga is singing monotone the whole time, which I'm not sure appeals to anyone. It doesn't fit well in an upbeat dance song. And I'm not sure this is rappy enough for Tyga fans to like this. All it accomplishes is making Chris Brown actually sound like he's trying because he's at least singing different notes in his verses. But yet don't get me started about what he's saying in those verses because that completely negates everything else positive. Also, for a Marshmello song, there's not a lot of Marshmelloing going in, if you know what I mean. He puts together a light beat in the background that's barely noticeable. If you had played this song for me without ever telling me that it's a Marshmello song, I may not have ever known.

92- "Power is Power" - SZA, The Weeknd & Travis Scott -- I wasn't sure what to think of this one. I generally like SZA and The Weeknd CAN be good if he's trying hard enough, but Travis Scott is a dumpster fire, so what's going to win out here? Turns out I pressed play on my Apple Music and a "Game of Thrones" logo came out, which means I'm completely out of my league here. I watched half of one episode of "Game of Thrones" and quit because there was too much sexuality and nudity and I didn't want to pay VidAngel the money to watch an edited version. So I have no idea how this fits in context, nor would I understand if someone tried to explain. I can feel that there's a lot of "Game of Thrones" references in the lyrics, but I don't know what those mean. Just a lot of generic references to power and war that don't connect with me on its own. Musically its fine, although it reminds me of a combination of "Pray for Me" and "All the Stars" from the "Black Panther" soundtrack because, you know, SZA and The Weeknd do those. Except those two songs are both better than "Power is Power" and Travis Scott isn't even in the same universe as Kendrick Lamar in terms of talent. So I guess this is fine, but context would help and that context I don't have. All I know is that fans online are rallying against "Game of Thrones" season 8, especially the most recent two episodes, for reasons that also wouldn't make sense to me.

94- "Knockin' Boots" - Luke Bryan -- I almost forgot about this one. Luckily I caught it before I shared this to my Facbook and Twitter, even though I'm typing this after I published it. My stats say that three people have read this post, so whoever those three are missed my thoughts on this song. Luckily there's not much of note here, so said three people didn't miss anything. Just Luke Bryan twanging his way through a generic country song where Luke is singing about him driving to his girl's house to experience the birds and the bees with his girl. If it sounds cheesy to put it that way instead of bluntly stating this is a country sex song, well, that's the words he used. Even, in theory, if I'm looking too far into that, a country song about him wanting to spend time with his girl is also boring, especially when there's no heart and emotion put into it. He's just writing cliche country lyrics that he knows country radio is going to eat up. And musically the song isn't very interesting, either.

96- "Love Me Anyway" - P!nk featuring Chris Stapleton -- I mentioned above that I listened to P!nk's new album recently. That's not completely true. I listened to about 70 percent of it before I got bored. I didn't quite get to this one initially, but I have now. And, well, this is another example of the vocal talent from both P!nk and Christ Stapleton elevating a song higher than it has any right to be based on the writing. There's two short verses that have P!nk generically asking this guy if he could love her despite all of her flaws. The second verse finishes at the 1:20 minute mark in the song, leaving us with the remaining 1:58 of the song being repeating the chorus which mostly consists of the two words, "Could you?" Chris Stapleton doesn't even get his own verse. He's just there to harmonize with P!nk and give the echoes on the choruses. So he feels underutilized in the song, which feels incomplete to begin with. But he does a great job in the smaller than he deserved role that he got. I suppose they were going for simple with this song, but I thought it could've used a bit more substance. But still, the vocal talent here is fantastic and the two of them do a great job at harmonizing. Because of that, this is not a bad song. But "Walk Me Home" is much better. I also liked the song "Happy." That was really good. But "Love Me Anyway" feels like background noise.

98- "Stop Snitching" - YG -- I didn't remember much about YG heading into this song, so I figured I'd press play. Five seconds in he had already sworn 15 times, so that's as long as I lasted. And that's the end of that story.