Billboard Hot 100 Top 10:
1- "Old Town Road" - Lil Nas X featuring Billy Ray Cyrus (=) -- Taylor Swift and Drake were the latest challengers to "Old Town Road" this week, yet neither artist were quite strong enough in their debuts, giving "Old Town Road" its 12th week at No. 1. Four more weeks to tie the 16-week record for most weeks at No. 1, currently a tie between "One Sweet Day" and "Despacito." Five more weeks to dethrone the two songs. Taylor Swift actually presented the biggest challenge for "Old Town Road" this week as Billboard reports that it was a 1.8 to 1 margin between the two songs in terms of chart points. The last eight weeks have seen "Old Town Road" lead by at least a two-to-one margin over the No. 2 song. Taylor Swift managed to get the closest because "Old Town Road" fell 8 percent in streaming to 91.6 million U.S. streams, fell 16 percent in sales to 59,000 downloads sold, and fell 3 percent in radio to 95.8 million audience impressions. Meanwhile, Taylor debuts at No. 3 on streaming with 39 million U.S. streams, No. 1 on sales with 79,000 downloads sold (her record-extending 17th No. 1 on the sales charts) and No. 50 on radio with 24.2 million audience impressions. Yeah, strong sales for Taylor and decent streaming, helped greatly by her music video, while starting off solid on radio. But a good sales week isn't good enough on its own to dethrone "Old Town Road," which is still strong across the board. Next up to challenge "Old Town Road" is "Señorita" by Shawn Menes and Camila Cabello, which has already built up 83 million YouTube views on its official video in four days. But with Lil Nas X's album having been released and set to give "Old Town Road" yet another boost next week, there is no chance that "Señorita" pulls off the upset.
2- "You Need to Calm Down" - Taylor Swift (new) -- If "Old Town Road" had not existed, we'd have quite the array of No. 1 hits these past 12 weeks, which would've included "Wow." by Post Malone, "ME!" by Taylor Swift featuring Brendon Urie, "If I Can't Have You" by Shawn Mendes, "I Don't Care" by Ed Sheeran and Justin Bieber, "bad guy" by Billie Eilish and now "You Need to Calm Down" by Taylor Swift. If the latter two songs never end up at No. 1, that will break the record for the most No. 2 songs that a No. 1 hit has prevented from getting to No. 1. Previously, "(Everything I Do) I Do It for You" by Bryan Adams in 1991 and "Theme from 'A Summer Place'" by Percy Faith and His Orchestra in 1960 held off five No. 2 hits each. And yeah, poor Taylor Swift would now have two No. 1 hits in 2019 had it not been for "Old Town Road." Oh well. She'll get over it. I think her biggest concern at the moment shouldn't be with how high she debuts, but her ability to maintain traction. "ME!" is already long gone from the top 10 and I'm not currently convinced that "You Need to Calm Down" is going to do much better.
3- "bad guy" - Billie Eilish (-1) -- Billie gets knocked down to No. 3 this week thanks to Taylor, but her numbers for "bad guy" are actually going up. The song remains No. 2 on streaming, up 13 percent to 43.8 million U.S. streams, remains stable at No. 4 on sales, up 1 percent to 21,000 downloads sold, and continues its charge on radio, up 16 percent to 58.6 million audience impressions, good enough for Billie's first top 10 on radio at No. 9. So yeah, with Taylor destined to plummet after the debut, I think Billie is going to rise back up to No. 2. Eventually. "Señorita" is probably going to take No. 2 next week, but Billie will probably have more long-term traction than both songs.
4- "Talk" - Khalid (-1) -- The same story for Billie is true for Khalid. He's not doing quite as well on sales and streaming, but he tops the radio for his second straight week, up 8 percent to 114.7 million audience impressions. Again, his chart positioning might waver a bit with whatever happens to Taylor Swift next week as well as the debut of "Señorita," but Khalid is going to be around for a while.
5- "I Don't Care" - Ed Sheeran & Justin Bieber (=) -- It's probably not the journey that these two expected when they collaborated, but at least they've been able to maintain some stability on the charts, which is something that Taylor Swift and Shawn Mendes have not been able to do with their respective debuts, so overall this is not a bad run for this song so far. I'm not 100 percent certain how this song will fare going forward, but it's impressively managed to hang on to its spot in the top five.
6- "Sucker" - Jonas Brothers (-2) -- The brothers got a boost last week thanks to their album, but now they fall back down to Earth this week, but still maintain a respectable spot on the charts at No. 6. I don't know how much longer this song has since its radio is slowly starting to decline, but its been a great run for the Jonas Brothers in their comeback single. Now the trick for them is to get a second single to actually stick.
7- "Money in the Grave" - Drake featuring Rick Ross (new) -- If this were last year or the year before, a debut from Drake would've done a lot better than No. 7. Alas, this debuts at No. 4 on streaming with 31.4 million U.S. streams, a decent sales week with 17,000 downloads sold, and, well, not much of anything on radio. So not bad for an average rap song these days, but well below Drake standards. Perhaps he's starting to suffer a bit from over-exposure? If so, good. Drake was never that talented to begin with and the fact that he became such a superstar has been baffling to me.
8- "Wow." - Post Malone (-2) -- Due to debuts from Drake and Taylor Swift, "Sunflower" has been pushed out of the top 10 this week, leaving just "Wow." as the only Post Malone song. "Sunflower" leaves that top 10 currently still standing as the top song of 2019, which is impressive for a song that only managed one week at No. 1. "Old Town Road" seems destined to eventually top "Sunflower," but "Sunflower" has at least six more weeks. As far as "Wow." goes, let's hope that it's on its way out, too.
9- "Suge" - DaBaby (-1) -- I'm encouraged that this song didn't rise at all. I'm upset by the fact that it's still here.
10- "No Guidance" - Chris Brown featuring Drake (-1) -- I'm also upset that the Chris Brown and Drake team-up only dropped one spot after its debut last week. Hopefully it will go away next week.
Rising on the Hot 100:
14- "Truth Hurts" - Lizzo (+3) -- Even though I'm not the biggest fan of this song, I understand the appeal behind it. And if it can manage to knock anything currently between No. 7 and No. 10 out of the top 10, I will consider that a win.
24- "Hey Look Ma, I Made It" - Panic! At the Disco (+7) -- Crazy enough, this still isn't the highest charting Panic! song on the Hot 100 right now. "High Hopes" is camped at No. 23. But perhaps next week that will change as this song continues its slow rise up the charts. I can see this getting into the top 20 sooner rather than later, but I don't know if it will get any higher than the teens. In other words, I don't see this ever becoming a top 10 hit. But hey, I've been wrong before. And we certainly have much worse.
25- "Rumor" - Lee Brice (+11) -- I forget this song exists. Lee Brice has impressed me in the past. But not with this song.
51- "The Git Up" - Blanco Brown (+15) -- As I stated last week when this debuted, I can see this quickly becoming the huge dance craze of 2019. If I'm correct, it won't be too long before everyone knows how to do "The Get Up." And I'm fine with that. This is a fun, harmless dance song.
52- "Ran$om" - Lil Tecca (+13) -- This needs to go away.
67- "Shotta Flow" - NLE Choppa (+14) -- This also needs to go away.
81- "Otro Trago" - Sech featuring Darell (+19) -- Out of all the Latino songs to debut recently, this is not the one I want to see gaining traction. Please, anything else.
New Arrivals:
2- "You Need to Calm Down" - Taylor Swift -- I take no credit for this next thought, but when this song debuted, one of my friends pointed out that it sounds a lot like "Sunflower." Since that, I've not been able to get that idea out of my head. Now of course lyrically the two songs are nothing alike, but if you sing "Sunflower" in your head while listening to "You Need to Calm Down," the two connect perfectly. Someone could do a mashup of these two songs and it would work rather perfectly. After laughing about this, my next thought was that "Sunflower" is a much better song. Musically, I still stand by that. "Sunflower" is a much catchier song that will get stuck in my head for weeks. And again, I give credit to Swae Lee for that. Post Malone's section is as boring as tar and he gets way too much credit for the song while people actually forget that it's Swae Lee's singing that they're all jamming out to. Meanwhile, "You Need to Calm Down" is a song that just kinda exists for Taylor Swift. I look back at her discography and this is not a song that I don't think I'll remember that much.
However, when the music video premiered a few days after the song debuted, it added a little more complexity to the song. Yes, I caught the line "'Cause shade never made anybody less gay" when I first listened to it, but it was the music video that helped me fully connect to the idea that this song is targeted at all the people not a part of the LGBT+ movement. Specifically Taylor is throwing shade at all the people throwing out negative energy to the LGBT+ community, telling them that they need to calm down and shut up. This is a nice sentiment, I suppose. But I don't think Taylor really sticks the landing. It's a much better music video than it is a song. Without said music video, I don't think the song makes much of an impact. Instead of being super specific and direct, she just finds various ways to kindly and vaguely tell people to calm down, despite trying to sound like she has attitude with her vocal delivery. Thus this doesn't cut deep at all. And before I heard said line about shade never making anybody less gay, it almost sounded like she was attacking people who were harassing her personally as opposed to taking a stance against LGBT+ hate crimes. So she's trying to make a statement with the song, yet neither the song nor the statement really jumps off the page. We could also probably get into the idea of Taylor Swift, a straight woman as far as I know (unless she's coming out as bisexual with this song's release), singing an LGBT+ anthem, but given that I don't feel qualified to comment on that as a straight male, I'm going to side step that and let other people discuss. Though I would be curious to know what my friends from the LGBT+ community think about this.
7- "Money in the Grave" - Drake featuring Rick Ross -- Two weeks ago I said that Drake should release a celebratory anthem if the Raptors win the NBA title in hopes that a song like that might get enough traction to dethrone "Old Town Road." Well, Drake released a double single following the Raptors' victory with an NBA Finals trophy as the artwork, but the song has nothing to do with the Raptors, basketball, or Drake being excited about the win. In fact, Drake sounded quite bored as he lazily sang about money and riches. That was disappointing. I listened to about half of this song on the day it was released and that was enough for me.
35- "Omerta" - Drake -- I listened to half of "Money in the Grave." After being disappointed with that, I didn't bother with "Omerta."
75- "Down Bad" - Dreamville featuring JID, Bas, J. Cole, EARTHGANG & Young Nudy -- Oh man. I know none of this guys except for J. Cole. But with names like that, I'm going to just skip this song and move onto the next one.
80- "Sanctuary" - Joji -- Remember this guy? I didn't. I thought it was a new artist. But no, it's the guy who got "Slow Dancing in the Dark" to chart earlier this year. I had forgotten about that song. And Joji is the guy that used to be Filthy Frank or Pink Guy on YouTube. He started the "Harlem Shake" craze. Oh yeah. That guy. With that context in mind, how is his second charting song "Sanctuary"? Well, like "Slow Dancing in the Dark," it's slow and melodic, with a slight electric groove to it. I also don't know how memorable the song is going to be moving forward. There's nothing really special to it, both musically and lyrically. But it's also perfectly harmless. If this were to gain traction, I'd be fine with it. I'm curious to see if Joji can actually manage to get a breakout single and vault himself into musical stardom. That would be a cool story.
92- "Rescue Me" - Marshmello featuring A Day to Remember -- Marshello has had some interesting collaboration choices recently. He's gone back and forth from featuring mainstream artists to then teaming up with less mainstream acts. On the latter side of things, he most recently got CHVRCHES to get their first Hot 100 debut and now he does the same thing with A Day to Remember, a metalcore/pop punk band that have had six studio albums and have shown up plenty on the alternative charts and rock charts, but not on the U.S. Hot 100. And I know very little about them, so I'm not going to try to sound all fancy with this one, but Marshmello also has a habit of taking bands or artists like these and watering them down with his typical bland EDM stuff. I often enjoy the music as harmless fun, but I'm not sure what ADTR fans are actually going to think of this, but Marshmello did appear to bring the whole band on board this time instead of just recruiting the lead singer for the vocals an already-produced Marshmello beat. We get lead singer Jeremy McKinnon starting things off what actually sounds like real guitars and drums mixed in with Marhsmello's EDM mix. The lyrics aren't anything special. Jeremy is singing about how finding this person helped rescue him. We've heard stuff like that a thousand times and this doesn't bring anything new to the table. But musically it is an interesting rock/EDM mix that I think is enjoyable enough. Again, I have no idea how this compares to ADTR's other stuff. Maybe it ends up being offensive and blasphemous. But I'm going to play the ignorant card here because I don't feel like lying and saying I've known this band my whole life. Perhaps I'll check them out later, though.
97- "It's You" - Ali Gatie -- I'm not sure where this guy came from. But yeah, when I saw this charting, I thought it was a new female singer on the charts. But no, it's Ali as in Prince Ali from "Aladdin," not Ali is in short for Alexandra. I'm guessing he has some sort of Middle Eastern heritage based on the artwork for this single including some Arabic lettering and the fact that he looks like he's from there, but he's actually from Toronto and has started to become popular via places like SoundCloud, TikTok and Spotify. Now he breaks out onto the Hot 100 for the first time. And this song is certainly acceptable. It's a simple pop love song that's fairly stripped down. He's singing about falling in love with this person while begging said person to not break his heart. So yeah, that's nothing special. I probably won't rave over this guy as being my new favorite singer, but I'm certainly always accepting of new people being brought onto the Hot 100 if they have talent and this guy certainly does. I like his voice. I like his style. And this is song that I would put on in the car in order to introduce people to a new artist. If the radio wants to pick up on this and make this guy a breakout star, I think that would be cool. He reminds me a bit of Khalid and I say that as a compliment.
100- "The Ones That Didn't Make It Back Home" - Justin Moore -- All these country singers often blend together for me. I see a name like Justin Moore and I'm not sure if it's a guy who charted something last month or a guy who hasn't charted anything in three years. Turns out Justin Moore is the later. He made it onto the country charts in 2017, but hasn't crossed over to the Hot 100 since 2016. In 2015 he released the song "You Look Like I Need a Drink." That was my "Ah ha!" moment with this song. Because that line confuses me. Anyways, the title "The Ones That Didn't Make It Back Home" did sound like it had potential. It could be a military tribute of sorts. And that's exactly what this is. It's a tribute to soldiers who didn't make it home... done in very generic country style, making me conflicted over the song. Justin Moore brings his heavy twang and cowboy hat to a song with a strong southern rock beat that sounds like every other country song I've ever heard. If this had more of a toned back, mellow beat to it that fit more of a somber tribute, I think I could get behind this one. But as such, it has nice lyrics, but that's about it. But even then, mixed in with the tribute to lost soldiers is a lot of generically country stuff. So I'm not going to ever gravitate towards this song, though I don't think I'll be angry if it sticks around.
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