Billboard Hot 100 Top 10:
1- "Old Town Road" - Lil Nas X featuring Billy Ray Cyrus (=) -- I believe we will all look back on the summer of 2019, not as a historical one, but an embarrassing one for music history. BECAUSE THIS IS STILL HERE!!!! It's almost literally been No. 1 for the entire summer. 19 weeks. MAKE IT GO AWAY!!!
2- "bad guy" - Billie Eilish (=) -- Now that Lil Nas X has the record in the bag and there won't be any more new videos or remixes (hopefully), "Old Town Road" is tanking in chart points, down 13 percent in streaming, down 28 percent in sales and down 11 percent in radio. The reason why "bad guy" isn't topping it yet is because "bad guy" is also tanking, at least in streaming and sales as it's down 22 percent in streaming and down 11 percent in sales. Although where "bad guy" has the advantage is radio, where it is up 4 percent. Apparently that math somehow works out to make it so the two songs essentially lost the same amount of chart points this week as there's still a 1.2-to-1 lead for "Old Town Road," with "Old Town Road" having fallen slightly more. Will next week be the week where "bad guy" FINALLY jumps ahead of it? I hope so. But if not, "bad guy" will tie the record for most weeks at No. 2 without having gone No. 1. Said record is 10 weeks. "bad guy" has now been No. 2 for nine weeks.
3- "Señorita" - Shawn Mendes & Camila Cabello (=) -- While Billboard is doing a great job keeping track of the margin between "Old Town Road" and "bad guy," they're not helping me out very much with "Señorita." Thus I have to look at the individual charts and see that "Señorita" is No. 5 on streaming ("Old Town Road" is No. 1 and "bad guy" is No. 4), No. 5 in sales ("Old Town Road" is No. 1 and "bad guy" is No. 7) and No. 7 in radio ("Old Town Road" is No. 21 and "bad guy" is No. 3). So in comparing "Señorita" to "bad guy," the only advantage "Señorita" has is a slight margin in sales, whereas "bad guy" is ahead in streaming and radio, thus keeping ahead. I imagine it will continue to be a close race between these two songs over the next month or so.
4- "Truth Hurts" - Lizzo (=) -- Referring you to the recent comment about where the other three songs on the charts are, I'll add "Truth Hurts" to the mix and report that it's No. 6 on streaming, No. 4 on sales, No. 6 on radio. So it has both "bad guy" and "Señorita" on sales, but is behind both in streaming and radio.
5- "Talk" - Khalid (=) -- "Talk" is No. 1 on radio for a ninth week, maintaining a pretty healthy margin between its competition as it only fell 2 percent to 127.2 million audience impressions, but it is nearly MIA in the other two categories, coming in at No. 24 on sales and No. 13 on streaming. So yeah, eventually that radio is going to evaporate and cause this song to fall.
6- "No Guidance" - Chris Brown featuring Drake (=) -- Unfortunately the song ready to replace "Talk" in the top five is "No Guidance" as it now jumps up to No. 2 on streaming, while playing decent at No. 11 on radio, but lacking the most on sales at No. 22. Sales and radio margins are thankfully going to keep this back from being too strong of a competition for the top four songs, but this is one of those times where I get mad at streaming for making this song a thing.
7- "I Don't Care" - Ed Sheeran & Justin Bieber (=) -- No need to report numbers for "I Don't Care" as it's going to eventually start sliding down if ever there becomes competition in the top 10. It mostly is only holding this spot because it's No. 2 on radio, which makes sense for an Ed Sheeran and Justin Bieber collaboration.
8- "Boyfriend" - Ariana Grande & Social House (new) -- This totally caught me by surprise. A new Ariana Grande song wasn't even on my radar. I guess that shows how little I care about her at the moment because she's just been mostly trash as of late, which continues with this worthless song. More on that below. But I suppose this could be seen as a disappointing debut considering her recent history with the likes of "thank u, next" and "7 rings" both doing extremely well. But in her game of quantity over quality, she adds another top 10 hit to her resume, so I'm sure she's not complaining. Although I wouldn't be surprised at all if this is the song's only week ever in the top 10.
9- "Goodbyes" - Post Malone featuring Young Thug (-1) -- I'm continued to be surprised at this song's inability to establish traction. Is this actually going to fall out soon?
10- "Ran$om" - Lil Tecca (=) -- Still completely MIA on sales and radio charts, "Ran$om" is riding solely on streaming at this point. That gives me hope that this will be one of those annoying songs that stays in the top 10 for a bit, then falls out like "Suge" or "Thotiana" due to its inability to get anything in the other two metrics.
Rising on the Hot 100:
32- "Knockin' Boots" - Luke Bryan (+5) -- This is not a good week for the rising songs section. All that's here is a bunch of country risers, most of which rose just barely enough to qualify for this list.
33- "All to Myself" - Dan + Shay (+10) -- Country.
40- "Rearview Town" - Jason Aldean (+6) -- Country.
46- "The Ones That Didn't Make It Back Home" - Justin Moore (+5) -- More country.
48- "Worth It" - YK Osiris (+5) -- Oh hey! It's NOT a country song! But it's a worthless rap song that barely scratched its way into the top 50 in its 25th week on the charts. Kudos to it for sticking around for this long, I suppose, but this isn't much of a contender to actually make a whole lot of noise.
72- "Living" - Dierks Bentley (+10) -- Country again.
86- "Tip of My Tongue" - Kenny Chesney (+12) -- And we finish with country.
New Arrivals:
8- "Boyfriend" - Ariana Grande & Social House -- Ariana sings one true line in this song and it's the very first line. "I'm a train wreck." That's edited, of course, because apparently Ariana is also now a foul-mouthed pop singer dropping f-bombs whenever she feels like it, even though they don't fit the song at all. Back to the point, though, I have no idea what Ariana is doing. Not only did she release two albums within months of each other then cannibalize her charting potential by releasing too many singles too close to each other, but now six months after all of that, she's completely abandoned everything and is releasing worthless singles like this piece of trash that makes it seem like she's not even trying? If you listen to "thank u, next," "break up with your girlfriend, i'm bored" and now "Boyfriend" all back to back, you can tell that these songs mean absolutely nothing to her. She's just writing random relationship nonsense to see what sticks. But ignoring all of that, this song doesn't even make a whole lot of sense. I can't even tell if she's mad at this guy or if she desperately wants him. Granted, complex relationships happen all the time where you both love and hate someone, but this song doesn't even seem like it's going for the complex relationship element. It just seems like Ariana couldn't decide what worthless song to write next or what generic subject matter that she didn't actually care about that she should put lyrics to and thus decided to lazily throw something together and throw it out because she's all about quantity over quality right now and thus I'm completely done with her. I really just want her to take a break for two or three years and figure out what she wants to do with her musical career, then come back with something thoughtful that takes full advantage of her musical talent. But she's not going to. Because she had her biggest success in 2018 and 2019 by this quantity over quality game, so she's going to continue this until it stops working. Knowing music in 2019, it'll probably keep working.
58- "Trust Issues" - Drake -- Six new Drake songs this week from his recent 17-track compilation called "Care Package." I saw this blowing up on my Apple Music last week and it had me nervous that Drake had a new album out that was going to take over the world, so I checked it. Apparently this is not a new album with new songs. He just took a whole bunch of songs that he had never released before and threw them together into one thing. In other words, these were the rejects from previous albums, which is just gross if I think about it because Drake's albums usually have like 10,000 tracks on them each. So Drake is literally digging at the bottom of the barrel to find all of the songs he didn't release instead of trying to come up with something new. That feels like a new low to me. So of course I'm not going to give it the time of day. I'm glad that only six of these songs showed up and that none of them broke the top 50. That means there's a good chance that they'll all be gone within a few weeks.
60- "How About Now" - Drake -- See previous comment about Drake.
61- "The Motion" - Drake -- See previous comment about Drake.
67- "Queen of Mean" - Sarah Jeffery -- In trying to figure out who Sarah Jeffery was, I did a quick Google search and suddenly all sorts of "Descendants 3" results came up. I suddenly became quite amused. I knew that was coming at some point. But I don't follow "Descendants" news closely enough to know that it had already been released. August 2 was the date. In previous "Descendants" movies, or at least with "Descendants 2" in 2017, we had multiple songs chart. This time around we just have one, and its sung by Sarah Jeffery, who plays Princess Audrey, daughter of Princess Aurora and Prince Phillip. Because, yeah, "Descendants" is all about the... descendants of all the classic Disney characters. Don't ask me about the plot of all of this, but for the sake of context with this song I learned that Princess Audrey gets jealous and goes rogue. Hence "Queen of Mean." I don't know exactly where this fits into the movie, but based on the descriptive lyrics, I'm guessing this is towards the beginning when Ben, son of Belle and Beast, proposes to Mal, daughter of Maleficent, causing Audrey, Ben's ex-girlfriend to completely lose it. Because, yeah, this is all about her deciding to stop pretending to be good and embracing the darkness within her after the inciting incident of when "he called her name." Now you can take this "Descendants" music as seriously as you want, but I might look at you funny if you do. This is a Disney Channel musical fantasy about the descendants of Disney characters. It's not meant to be a serious thing. It's a silly, fun musical. As such, I've found myself rather entertained by the songs that have charted in the past and I think this fits well into that catalogue of music. Sarah Jeffery has an excellent voice and the song does a solid job of slowly building to a villainous climax with a pretty good key change towards the end. My only real complaint is that Sarah is better when she's singing on the chorus rather than doing her rap (if you want to call it that) on the verses. But still. It's a "Descendants" song from "Descendants 3."
68- "Dreams Money Can Buy" - Drake -- See previous comment about Drake.
82- "Uno" - Ambjaay -- What in the world is this? I looked it up because I had no idea who Ambjaay is, but based on that spelling, I was rather worried. And I had great reason to be because this is just as trashy and dirty as most rap songs that debut these days. The only thing that makes it unique is that it tries to have a Spanish influence with its beat and lyrics, but it feels as about authentically Spanish as Taco Bell is. It feels like he's trying to be cool by singing about nachos, counting to three in Spanish, and using a few other occasional Spanish words while rapping about the typical rap sleaze and cursing every other word. I didn't turn it off because I was in a bit of a dumbfounded state while listening. When I decided I'd had enough, the song ended. Yeah, it's less than two minutes long, so it's barely even a song. Sadly, I can see this being a song that sticks around because it's catchy and dumb enough to feel like a hit in today's rap world.
85- "Club Paradise" - Drake -- See previous comment about Drake.
90- "We Were" - Keith Urban -- Earlier this year I was nervous and disappointed when they announced Keith Urban as the headline act for Stadium of Fire here in Provo, Utah. I was hoping for someone that would get more excited than just another country act. As it turns out, though, Keith Urban put on quite the show. It was far from the best Stadium of Fire performance I've heard (that might go to Journey), but it was a pleasant surprise. The guy can rock out and make songs that probably aren't that special sound quite epic. But that's what happens in the musical world sometimes. You have musicians that only write average songs, but are excellent live. You also have musicians that have excellent music, but don't really know how to put on a show. The best musicians know how to do both great, but I don't really think Keith Urban is one of them. I'd put him in the first category. Thus if I were listening to this song live in concert, I'd imagine it would be really good as a change of pace song in between his more upbeat, exciting numbers. As is, listening to it via my earbuds on my tablet isn't all that wonderful. The lyrics are fairly generic. He misses who he was when he was with her. Typical country stuff. Keith does have more of a likable charisma to sell it better than most of his country colleagues, so I'd say this is fine. I'm not going to be upset if this does well. It's just that I listened to a lot of Keith Urban songs live last month and this song doesn't seem good enough to ever be a highlight at one of his shows.
93- "Fear Inoculum" - TOOL -- When I was looking at the sales charts this week, I noticed a lot of songs on their from whoever TOOL was, so I assumed it was a new album release wherein we got one song from. Turns out that TOOL is a them as they are a metal band. But no, they don't have a new album that impacted sales this week. They have a new album that gets released on August 30 and "Fear Inoculum" is the lead-off single for that album. I suppose that, in releasing "Fear Inoculum," it caused a chain reaction that caused a lot of their old singles to sell well since this will be the band's first album released in 13 years. I'm not going to pretend that I know anything about TOOL, because I don't, but this is a very welcome song for me on the Hot 100. I would love it if more rock or metal songs charted, or whatever it is that you officially call this song. Wikipedia calls it progressive metal, which is close to what I was going to say. I was going to say progressive rock because this is a 10 minute song. When is the last time a 10 minute song debuted on the charts? I don't know. Now I'm not super familiar with progressive rock, but it's a genre that my brother-in-law has introduced me to and I really enjoy it. A lot of people don't have the patience for a song that long, but I love the experience of listening to a song slowly build and transform as the song goes on. This doesn't have a whole to say in terms of lyrics, but that's almost not the point. It's a very hypnotic, mesmerizing song that plays around with the instrumentation quite a bit in a rather fascinating way. It makes me really excited to go listen to this full album later this month, as well as check out TOOL's other stuff. And now I know why their songs are all selling well. People hear this and they want to hear more. Due to the song's length, I don't imagine it will have much of a chart life, but I can only hope it does because this is one of the most unique and refreshing songs to chart in recent memory. I want more songs like this to do well and am thus happy that it charted at all.
94- "Love You Too Late" - Cole Swindell -- It's really tough to go from TOOL to Cole Swindell. "Love You Too Late" comes from his 2018 album "All of It," which did have the song "Break Up in the End," which I really enjoyed, but "Love You Too Late" is not even close to as interesting. This is more like your typical boring country song. He opens the song by talking about whiskey and I almost turned the song off right there because that's a sign of a useless country song. But I continued and listened to Cole spend just under two and a half minutes singing about how he loved this girl too late, which is more generic country lyrics that doesn't even have the charisma of a Keith Urban to make it somewhat interesting. It'll probably get big because, you know, country. But I certainly won't remember this song ever existed a year from now.
95- "Days in the East" - Drake -- See previous comment about Drake.
97- "What Happens in a Small Town" - Brantley Gilbert & Lindsay Ell -- Speaking of more boring country, we now have Brantley Gilbert to discuss. This song is the lead-off single from his upcoming album "Fire & Brimstone," due this October. I had a little bit of home for it because he featured a female country singer on it and typically I find myself liking female country singers a lot more than male country singers. But yet Brantley spends the song singing about what happens in a small town, yet the song is very loud and big, so the tone of the song feels disconnected from the lyrics. If you're going to talk about a small town, it would make more sense to have it be a quieter, more mellow song. But in singing those lyrics, the two of them don't bring anything new to the table. A lot of country singers sing about life back home, but this song doesn't even seem personal. It feels very generic. Unsurprisingly, I do like Lindsay's parts better than Brantley's. At the beginning of the song I was worried that she was just going to be relegated to backing vocals, but was pleased that she had a bigger role in the song. I just wish she was given more to sing about. Also, Brantley's vocals aren't that bad. He does fine. It's just that there's nothing interesting about either the lyrics or the music. A song can only carry me so far on good vocals alone. It has to have something around it.
99- "Prayed for You" - Matt Stell -- In a very country-heavy week, we end with one more country song. This time from newcomer Matt Stell. I say newcomer because this is Matt's first appearance on the Hot 100, although he's released a few albums independently and been around the block a bit in the country scene, being active in a small way since 2010. But this is his big breakout hit and has been slowly building since it was released last year. As one who doesn't follow country, this is new to me, but if you are a country aficionado, you may have heard of this one. Honestly I can see why this has gained popularity. I'm not going to say it's super unique or even one I'll listen to on my own, but Matt has an excellent voice that doesn't feel contrived or forced. He's not doing some southern twangy accent just to fit in. He's just singing and he has a great voice. The lyrics also feel honest and genuine. It sounds like he's singing about something that means something to him, even if the lyrics aren't any more unique than our other new country songs this week. When push comes to shove, this is a love song. He's admitting that he's not much of a religious person, but he's prayed for this person, anyways. Why is he praying for her? Part of me was hoping it was some sort of tribute to someone having a difficult time or a song that fits well for a tragedy. But no, he's just praying for someone to fall in love with him. In that light, it is a sweet, romantic song, but I would've also liked a bit more detail. He repeats his chorus three times, has one small intro and one small verse and that's it. So there ends up being not much too this song, but it's still nice enough for me to accept it.
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