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.
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