Billboard Hot 100 Top 10:
1- "Old Town Road" - Lil Nas X featuring Billy Ray Cyrus (=) -- It did it. "Old Town Road" broke one of Billboard's most prestigious records, that of most weeks spent at No. 1 on the Hot 100. "One Sweet Day" by Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men set the record back in 1996 with 16 weeks. That record impressively lasted 23 years. About two years ago, "Despacito" by Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee featuring Justin Bieber tied the record. But now "Old Town Road" stands on its own at No. 1, while "One Sweet Day" and "Despacito" now have to settle for runner-up. How did "Old Town Road" pull this off?
- First, streaming. In my eyes, this was bound to happen eventually. We live in a day where streaming dominates the music industry. One of the consequences of this is that streaming causes songs to last longer on the charts. The average amount of time that a song spends in the top 10 is significantly larger than it even was 10 years ago. Thus it makes sense that when songs last longer on the charts, records like this are going to be broken. It's very similar to box office records being broken in part due to the increasingly rising price of movie tickets. Honestly, I'm surprised that it took this long for Mariah and Boyz II Men's record to get broken. "Old Town Road" just happened to be the song to hit the sweet spot with streaming. But mark my words, this new record by "Old Town Road" won't last 23 years. Not in today's music world.
- Second, Billy Ray Cyrus. Lil Nas X's original was doing just fine on its own, but it was when the remix with Billy Ray Cyrus got released that the song skyrocketed to 143 million U.S. streams in a single week. Had Lil Nas X never released any remixes of this song, it would've faded away fairly quickly, just like your typical internet meme that explodes for five seconds then disappears. Honestly, Lil Nas X's song isn't very good, but Billy Ray Cyrus brings the perfect amount of energy and flare to make it really infectious. So yeah, Billy Ray Cyrus is huge part of why this song is so big.
- Third, the other remixes and music videos. It's no secret that Lil Nas X completely played the system here. After the Billy Ray Cyrus remix, there was a remix that added Diplo. Then two weeks ago, there was a remix with Young Thug and Mason Ramsey that was released to counteract the "bad guy" remix. And again this past week, there was yet another remix with one of the boys from BTS that will impact the charts next week. That's five versions of the song all counting towards one set of numbers. Plus, on Lil Nas X's YouTube channel alone, there are eight different music videos for the song, and that's not even counting a couple before the Billy Ray Cyrus remix that I know existed at one point that no longer seem to exist. He even uploaded a "Week 17 Version" music video last week that I'm using on this post, and an "Area 51 Video" the week before. All eight videos on his channel account for a total of 685 million views, albeit most of them come from two videos, the official Billy Ray Cyrus remix audio and the "Official Movie." Is it fair that Lil Nas X purposely and continually boosted his weekly numbers with new videos and new versions of the song? Well, that can be debated. He didn't do anything against the rules. But it's certainly not as impressive as one version of one song with one video exploding on its own for 14-16 weeks at No. 1. Without all the remixes and videos, "Old Town Road" would've been dethroned weeks ago.
- Fourth, cross genre appeal. Although I personally contend that "Old Town Road" is mostly just a hip-hop song disguised as a country song with Lil Nas X doing a country twang and making country references, the country/hip-hop crossover is certainly unique enough to expand the audience beyond your typical hip-hop song. If you can bring multiple fan bases who like different genres of music together to listen to one song, that's certainly helpful. This has certainly also crossed over to more than just the country and hip-hop worlds. Mainstream pop has also jumped on board.
- Fifth, Nine Inch Nails. Because, remember, this song samples "34 Ghosts IV" by Nine Inch Nails, an instrumental piece from their 2008 project "Ghosts I-IV." Go listen to that song and you'll realize that the whole backbone of "Old Town Road" hinges on that instrumental created Nine Inch Nails. They practically took that song and put lyrics to it. So of course I have to credit Nine Inch Nails.
- Sixth, the song is infectious. All of these elements combine to create a song that easily sticks in your head and never leaves. The other week I was at a campout with family and I learned that a lot of my young nephews (the oldest being 12 years old at this specific campout) love this song. Granted, none of them really know exactly what they're singing (perhaps that's a good thing -- it's not a clean song), but the fact that the music itself is catchy enough to even have young kids singing and dancing to it is telling. But is the song going to stand the test of time or is it going to be a song where we look back in 10 years and wonder what the heck everyone was thinking? I predict that it's the latter. But hey, I dare you to sing "One Sweet Day" off the top of your head. That's a song that exploded due to the collaboration of Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men, two of the most popular acts at the time. But it also kinda faded into existence. It's not a song you think of when you are recalling all of the impactful 90's tunes, nor is it a song that you think of when looking back on Mariah Carey's personal discography. In fact, look at the list of songs that made it to 12+ weeks at No. 1. There's a lot of songs there that no one really remembers or would like to try to forget existed. So perhaps being No. 1 for a long time isn't everything. I mean, "Hallelujah" by Leonard Cohen didn't even chart on the Hot 100 until he passed away in 2016. So how much does all of these really mean anyways?
2- "bad guy" - Billie Eilish (=) -- Oh, there's other songs on the charts this week? I guess I'll get to them, too. Looking at the specific numbers this week, both "Old Town Road" and "bad guy" expectedly came crashing down a bit following their respective remixes from last week. "Old Town Road" fell 13 percent in overall chart points while "bad guy" fell 9 percent. That narrows the lead for "Old Town Road" from 1.3-to-1 last week to 1.2-to-1 this week. With the BTS remix "Seoul Town Road" set to impact next week, an 18th week for "Old Town Road" seems guaranteed. But keep in mind, it's only U.S. sales and streaming that counts for the U.S. charts. If everyone in Korea swarms to the song, that will ultimately mean nothing for it's U.S. Hot 100 numbers. However, once "Seoul Town Road" fades away, the reign of "Old Town Road" will be over by either "bad guy" or perhaps the song coming next in the top 10.
3- "Señorita" - Shawn Mendes & Camila Cabello (+1) -- "Señorita" is certainly positioned rather well, which is great news for Shawn and Camila as they've both had recent struggles getting their respective songs to stick. "Señorita" has appeared to have stuck and could even challenge for No. 1 fairly soon if it can catch up to "bad guy."
4- "Talk" - Khalid (+1) -- Khalid, on the other hand, is on his way down. He pretty much only has radio at this point. Granted, that radio is still huge. But it's peaked. And the only reason why this song rose is because "I Don't Care" came crashing down.
5- "Truth Hurts" - Lizzo (+1) -- A few weeks ago when this leaped into the top 10, I thought it was immediately going to jump into the top five. However, it got stuck a bit for a weeks, but now it's here. I don't know exactly how high this is going to get, but I do think it'll stick around for some time.
6- "I Don't Care" - Ed Sheeran & Justin Bieber (-3) -- This song got a boost last week from the arrival of Ed Sheeran's collaboration album. Thus it expectedly came crashing back down this week. It's still had a decent run, though, so Ed and Justin should be happy.
7- "Goodbyes" - Post Malone featuring Young Thug (=) -- Good news for Post Malone that the bleeding on this song stopped this week after falling harder than I expected last week. Now will this song start to gain positive momentum and stick around? As much as I would love for Post Malone to FINALLY disappear from the top 10, this song I don't mind. So I'd be fine with it staying.
8- "Sucker" - Jonas Brothers (=) -- This is still here because the contenders below the top 10 aren't very strong at the moment.
9- "Sunflower (Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse)" - Post Malone & Swae Lee (=) -- "Old Town Road" is rightfully getting all the attention right now. But "Sunflower" is also on record watch. It has now earned its 32nd week in the top 10. The all-time record is a tie between "Shape of You" and "Girls Like You" with 33 weeks. One more week in the top 10 and that record is tied. Two weeks and "Sunflower" gets the record. It's vulnerable right now, but it's quite possible.
10- "If I Can't Have You" - Shawn Mendes (+3) -- This is great news! I mean, not that I care too much about this specific song, but our entire trio of awful rap songs ("No Guidance," "Suge" and "Money in the Grave") are all gone this week thanks to Shawn Mendes leapfrogging all three. This also marks the first week that this song is back in the top 10 after debuting at No. 2 about three months ago. And Shawn now joins the club of artists who have had at least two songs in the top 10 at the same time.
Rising on the Hot 100:
14- "The Git Up" - Blanco Brown (+4) -- I thought this song would be a lot bigger after it initially was surging up the charts. But it got stuck in the teens and now is trying to claw its way into the top 10. I still expect it to get there, especially since plenty of songs in the top 10 right now aren't super strong, but it'll end up being a longer journey.
19- "Ran$om" - Lil Tecca (+4) -- I'm upset that this song is in the top 20.
20- "Someone You Loved" - Lewis Capaldi (+6) -- I'm happy for this song, though.
23- "The London" - Young Thug, J. Cole & Travis Scott (+5) -- I still don't think I've listened to this song. And I've had no reason to.
37- "My Type" - Saweetie (+10) -- Cardi B 3.0 is doing pretty well.
41- "All to Myself" - Dan + Shay (+10) -- OK, I'm not too upset at this. This is alright.
44- "GIRL" - Maren Morris (+8) -- I don't think I've been able to talk about this one too much as it's climbed up the charts at a snail's pace, but it finally cracks the top 50.
51- "Cash S---" - Megan Thee Stallion featuring DaBaby (+10) -- Cardi B 2.0 also doing well.
55- "Callaita" - Bad Bunny & Tainy (+12) -- Gross.
60- "One Thing Right" - Marshmello & Kane Brown (+22) -- Eh. OK, I guess.
New Arrivals:
29- "How Do You Sleep?" - Sam Smith -- That's an excellent question. Most days I just have so much to do that I just don't have any time to sleep. Like typing up this post this week. I mostly want to just sleep right now, but I need to get this done. OK, the actual song now. When I saw the title, the other thing I thought of was that this was probably going to be a breakup song of sorts where Sam Smith asks his lover or former lover how they sleep when they've done something wrong to Sam. And that's exactly what this is. Thus it's a fairly generic song, but I'm always a sucker for Sam Smith's music. He just has such a good voice and he puts a lot of passion into it. Thus he takes a song that's fairly generic lyrically and manages to turn it into a song that feels like it actually means something to him as opposed to coming off an assembly line from the pop music factory. What threw me off, though, were the weird electronic sounds that happened throughout. They didn't fit into the song very well. I had to go look up who was the responsible party and the answer was ILYA, a Sweedish songwriter and producer whom I've never heard of before. But apparently he's written and produced a lot of hit songs over the years. This one was just a strange mix. But even so, Sam Smith still sells it to the point where it's certainly listenable.
42- "Baby" - Lil Baby & DaBaby -- This is amusing. Of course Lil Baby and DaBaby would collaborate to create a song called... "Baby." When I saw that I straight up laughed. Of course I'm not going to listen to it, though. Why would I?
52- "China" - Anuel AA, Daddy Yankee, Karol G, Ozuna & J Balvin -- I almost skipped this one on principle. These Latinx singers just have no shame. It seems like every week we have a new song with like 10 of them on it just so they can sell more copies of the song. There's no reason to have this many. But since I looked over this list and none of the names really bother me, and there's no Bad Bunny (had I seen his name, I would've skipped this), I gave it a listen. And then I was reminded that I actually don't like Anuel AA, who does most of the singing on this and thus this got on my nerves real fast. Anuel AA was really annoying and the song itself was way too long, thus the overly repetitive nature of these Latinx songs started to get on my nerves and none of the other acts did enough to save this. So no, I don't plan on purposely ever returning to this song.
69- "The Archer" - Taylor Swift -- It's not looking good for Taylor Swift right now. Not only did her first two promotional singles, "ME!" and "You Need to Calm Down" both nosedive after their debuts, but her third promotional single debuts all the way down at No. 69. Granted, this was released on July 23, a Tuesday, meaning it hasn't had a full week of tracking yet. But still, a Taylor Swift song with three days of release should be doing a bit better than this. People just aren't gravitating towards her songs right now. The lower quality of them certainly doesn't help with that. As someone who defended "reputation," I haven't been able to do the same thing here with these three songs. Now this is certainly the best of the three songs here. It's a slower song that's a lot more mellow than the other two. These are the types of songs that Taylor excels best at. Instead of trying to be loud and in your face or making some sort of statement, she's able to take a step back and focus on the emotions in the song while using her voice to make it work. The biggest problem here, though, is that the song doesn't really build to anything. It starts off soft and thus had me intrigued, but I ended up fairly bored at the end of the song as it slowly puts you to sleep instead of giving you the feels. And some of her word choice is a bit off. Like I don't know if the Humpty Dumpty stuff at the end really fit at all. And I don't know if the concept behind the song is all that unique, either. Taylor doesn't do quite enough to make it stand out. But still, out of the three current Taylor songs from this new album, this is the one I'd accept the most.
76- "Brown Skin Girl" - Beyoncé, SAINt JHN & Wizkid featuring Blue Ivy Carter -- Beyoncé pulled off a Kendrick Lamar just recently. She wrote/recorded music for a Disney released movie and also wrote an album inspired by said movie. Kendrick Lamar did this for "Black Panther" and Beyoncé, of course, for "The Lion King." In both instances, Kendrick and Beyoncé's music for the movie was mostly ignored while their albums inspired by the movie have little to do with the actual movie. In Beyoncé's case, I think she did great with "Can You Feel the Love Tonight," but was shocked when her new song "Spirit" was background noise for 20 seconds instead of a featured new song. Now I suppose I can't judge her whole new album, but this song that's on this "Lion King" inspired album has absolutely nothing to do with "The Lion King" outside the African undertones in the music. The lyrics and vocal style don't fit at all. But it's whatever. I didn't like the new "Lion King" anyways, so I'm not offended. I do think it's cool that Beyoncé let her nine-year-old daughter do the intro to this song, although it would've been better with just her and not her and SAINt JHN, whose stylized name there drives me crazy. And that's the only part SAINt JHN has here, so why add him to the song? Outside that intro, almost the first half of the song is all Wizkid. He's alright, but not great. I was wondering when Beyoncé was going to decide to show up in her own song. When she does, she slays it. She brings a lot of passion to these lyrics she's singing about. And it feels very personal. I just wanted more of her and less of Wizkid.
82- "Hate Me" - Ellie Goulding & Juice WRLD -- OK, we need to have a talk about this one. Given that I'm subscribed to Ellie's YouTube channel (she's one of the only musicians that I'm subscribed to), I've been closely following her single releases that I'm assuming is building towards a fourth album. So far she's had four songs. Two of them have been really good and the other two have been acceptable, but not great. In an annoying turn of luck, the two really good ones, "Flux" and "Sixteen," have NOT charted on the U.S. Hot 100 (they did chart in the U.K.), but it's the other two that have charted. "Close to Me" with Diplo and Swae Lee ended up performing quite well, peaking at No. 24. And now we have "Hate Me" with Juice WRLD debuting at No. 82. But still no "Sixteen" and still no "Flux." And we probably never will get them, which is unfortunate because I was ready to put them on my list of favorite charting songs from this year. But nope. Instead I have to deal with this Juice WRLD collaboration, which is a team up that just sounds awful on paper. Luckily Juice WRLD does a decent enough job. His part is poppy and upbeat enough to fit in with Ellie, but it's still not the best collaboration and the song doesn't have a lot of energy or emotion, which is unfortunate because Ellie has such a good voice that she often does a great job of using to her advantage to kick in the emotion, but she's just doing nothing on this song, like she's trying to come down to Juice WRLD's level so that his fan base will enjoy the song and get it to chart. It worked. But for crying out loud, "Sixteen" and "Flux" are so much better. She actually does use her voice and emotion in those two songs. Why can't we get those songs to chart?
90- "Mood 4 Eva" - Beyoncé, JAY-Z & Childish Gambino featuring Oumou Sangare -- Our other "Lion King" inspired song from Beyoncé. And it also has almost nothing to do with "The Lion King" outside sounding like an African beat. This time around, Beyoncé organized the song better. She features herself on the song and combines with her husband JAY-Z, which makes total sense. However, the problem this time around is that both Beyoncé and JAY-Z overdo it. They don't connect very well as a couple on the song and they feel very loud and annoying rather than soulful and energetic. It was also nice of Beyoncé to bring her "Lion King" co-star Donald Glover, aka Childish Gambino, onto the song. But she doesn't bring him in until the 3:30 mark in the song when there's only a minute left. He sings a quick bridge and is done. I felt cheated. So no, I'm going to pass on this one. Sorry. "Brown Skin Girl" is a good song that's poorly organized. "Mood 4 Eva" is just underwhelming. On that note, I'm not really that interested in listening to this new album from Beyoncé, but if you have listened to it and there's songs you like, point me to them and I'll give those a chance.
94- "Ballin'" - Mustard featuring Roddy Ricch -- Nope.
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