Billboard Hot 100 Top 10:
1- "Truth Hurts" - Lizzo (=) -- After three weeks and three new No. 1 songs, we finally have a repeat at the top as "Truth Hurts" by Lizzo gets its second week at No. 1. While the carousel of new No. 1s was a fun thing, I'm actually glad we didn't have a fourth new No. 1 since said song would've been "Ran$om" by Lil Tecca. That song is already way too high as is. It would've be a travesty for it to go No. 1. So I'm content with "Truth Hurts" at the top. Last week it soared to the top for various reasons, the biggest being Lizzo's performance of the song at the VMAs. She also performed it as a part of a four set song on NBC's "Today" and there were two new remixes released. So that's why it doubled in sales. Naturally after a week like that, the song plummeted in sales, down 28 percent to 38,000 downloads sold. Yet despite that, it still managed to stay ahead of the rest of the pack as the second song on sales was Post Malone's new song "Circles" with 29,000 downloads sold. "Señorita" was somewhere behind that at No. 3. As far as the other categories, "Truth Hurts" and "Señorita" are about neck and neck on streaming, with "Truth Hurts" having a slight edge, but only gaining 1 percent to 34.7 million U.S. streams. "Señorita" leads on radio with 109.5 million in audience compared to "Truth Hurts" having 103.9 million. So yeah, the margins are pretty close here and "Truth Hurts" isn't exactly experiencing a lot of forward momentum. But rather, consistency across the board is what's helping the song. If the sales numbers stay high enough, this might have a solid run at No. 1 since "Señorita" isn't gaining much, either. Although next week it's not "Señorita" that "Truth Hurts" will have to worry about. Post Malone's album dropped recently and will be impacting next week's charts. So it's "Circles" or "Goodbyes" that have the best chance of skyrocketing to the top next week.
2- "Señorita" - Shawn Mendes & Camila Cabello (=) -- Even though "Señorita" remains camped out at No. 2 this week after only getting one week at No. 1, there is some positive news for Shawn and Camila. "Señorita" is now the No. 1 song on the radio. "Talk" by Khalid had that title for a while, then last week "I Don't Care" took it for a week. "Señorita" finally leapfrogged both of them, even though the song was up just 2 percent compared to last week. So really the title is because of "Talk" and "I Don't Care" finally starting their downward spiral on the radio, which is the only reason why both songs are still in the top 10 right now. Lizzo actually gained 6 percent in radio with "Truth Hurts" and the margins aren't super big, as previously mentioned, so that'll also be a story worth following. Can "Señorita" keep its radio lead?
3- "bad guy" - Billie Eilish (=) -- At this point, "bad guy" is solidly behind both "Truth Hurts" and "Señorita" with no chance of that changing. But it's also been around for a lot longer, so that makes sense. But still, the song has consistent enough numbers for it still to hang out for longer in the top five. In fact, even though it only celebrated one week at No. 1, its consistency in the top five has resulted it being one of the top songs of 2019. In my personal tracking, it's currently at No. 3, behind only "Old Town Road" and "Sunflower." As long as it stays here in the top five, it should end up passing "Sunflower" before too long to be the No. 2 song of the year. It's also way ahead of "Truth Hurts" and "Señorita" on the list, so as long as it remains in close proximity to those two songs, it'll be hard for those two songs to catch up to it, especially since we're quickly running out of months in the year.
4- "Ran$om" - Lil Tecca (+2) -- I was a bit nervous at what this song would do this week. I knew it would jump ahead of Taylor Swift and "Old Town Road" to get to No. 4. But would it break up our top three? The song is barely on the radar for the radio charts, debuting at No. 50 this week and is only No. 37 on sales. The thing that had me worried, though, is that Lil Tecca had an album dropped that impacted the charts this week. And with the song already having super high streaming numbers, around 50 million U.S. streams last week, would an album release boost it even higher, causing it to break top three? As you can see, the answer was no. But what kinda surprised me is the song didn't actually increase at all in streaming. It fell 1 percent to 49.4 million U.S. streams, which means it probably would've fallen a bit further if not for the album. So I'm breathing a sigh of relief that it appears the streaming for the song has finally peaked, which will hopefully get the song to start dropping on the charts.
5- "Old Town Road" - Lil Nas X featuring Billy Ray Cyrus (=) -- This needs to fall faster.
6- "No Guidance" - Chris Brown featuring Drake (+1) -- Again, we're saved from this song not getting into the top five. But actually, if it means pushing Lil Nas X and/or "Ran$om" out of the top five, maybe I'd be fine with that? Although it's not going to happen next week as I'm certain that Post Malone's new album will cause "Circles" and "Goodbyes" to get a huge boost next week.
7- "Circles" - Post Malone (new) -- I'll get to my opinion of this song down below, but I'm a bit surprised that it only debuted at No. 7. I wasn't expecting a top three debut, but given that the song was released just a week ahead of the new album, I thought that would give it enough streaming power to debut ahead of "Ran$om," "Old Town Road" and "No Guidance." But nope. However, as I've said a few times now, it's going to get a solid boost next week. How high can it go? I have no idea. My plan is just to wait and see. But I'm thinking it should at least get somewhere in the top five, right?
8- "I Don't Care" - Ed Sheeran & Justin Bieber (+1) -- After celebrating one week on top of the radio charts, "I Don't Care" quickly gets its crown taken away by "Señorita." It also swaps spots with "Talk" in the top 10, but I don't think either song is going to last.
9- "Talk" - Khalid (-1) -- This song's weeks in the top 10 are numbers. I wouldn't be surprised if this week is its last week. But it still has a good radio presence, even if that is falling, so if it sticks around for a few more weeks, that'll be why.
10- "Goodbyes" - Post Malone featuring Young Thug (+2) -- Again, I'm surprised that this song hasn't been able to get enough momentum to get bigger than it has, given how popular Post Malone is right now. It only gets back into the top 10 this week because all of Taylor's songs came crashing back down to Earth following her album bomb week. And it should get a good boost with Post Malone's album impacting the charts next week. But after that? Yeah, I'm not sure how much longer this is going to last in the top 10. If it weren't for the album release, I'd say the song right behind it at No. 11 is in a good position to jump over it on the charts.
Rising on the Hot 100:
11- "Someone You Loved" - Lewis Capaldi (+2) -- It's been a while since we've had an album bomb as big as Taylor Swift's last week. Thus, naturally, the week following an album bomb is where we deal with all the fallout, which results in a good portion of the charts ending up in the rising songs section. So let's go through this quickly. We start with Lewis Capaldi going back up to his No. 11 spot. I'd say this song is in a good position to finally break the top 10, but it might have to wait an additional week with Post Malone's album impacting the charts next week.
13- "Sucker" - Jonas Brothers (+2) -- This song had a good run. It only jumped up this week because Taylor fell.
14- "Sunflower (Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse" - Post Malone & Swae Lee (+3) -- Same story here as the previous comment. Momentary rise this week. It'll probably continue to hang out in the teens and slowly slide down until it hits its year mark, which is in six weeks from now. As a reminder, Billboard's current rules are that after a song hits 52 weeks, it gets booted from the charts, unless it's still rising in the top 25 or something like that. Billboard created those rules shortly after "Radioactive" and "Sail" both spent somewhere around 80 weeks on the charts. I think that's fair. Make room for more songs to be on the charts. But still, it's impressive that "Sunflower" is still at No. 14 after 46 weeks on the charts. Given how Billboard tracks things, I wouldn't be too surprised if this is their top song of 2019 on their year end list. It'll at least be No. 2 if "Old Town Road" takes that title. It might end up being No. 3 on my list since I only keep track of the top 10. Keeping points for the entire Hot 100 each week is just too much.
17- "Beautiful People" - Ed Sheeran featuring Khalid (+3) -- Slowly rising up in the top 20 is Ed Sheeran and Khalid. Given that both of them are about to fall out of the top 10 with their current individual songs, this song is timing itself quite well.
19- "Boyfriend" - Ariana Grande & Social House (+3) -- I would like to forget this song ever existed. I was a bit surprised to see it show up this week, but I guess Ariana still has enough momentum from her early year dominance to keep this around?
21- "Hot Girl Summer" - Megan Thee Stallion, Nicki Minaj & Ty Dolla $ign (+10) -- I was pleasantly surprised when this song failed to hit top 10. But I guess I'm not out of the woods quite yet. Given the names here, I can understand the appeal. These three are just not my cup of tea and I don't think that will be a surprise to anyone.
27- "Wow." - Post Malone (+8) -- Only gaining because of Taylor's drop. Although this could get a boost next week with Post Malone's album?
29- "Panini" - Lil Nas X (+11) -- Lil Nas X trying to maintain relevance. But let's admit it. "Old Town Road" was a fluke success for him that he's never going to repeat. The fact that "Panini" has been around for a while, yet still can't even hit the top 10, is proof of that. Lil Nas X will end up being the definition of a one-hit wonder.
35- "Only Human" - Jonas Brothers (+9) -- Jonas Brothers, meanwhile, do appear to be maintaining relevance. After the huge success of "Sucker," I was wondering if they were going to get a second song to stick around. I guess this is it.
36- "Cash S---" - Megan Thee Stallion featuring DaBaby (+6) -- Please go away.
41- "Good as Hell" - Lizzo (+11) -- I skipped this song last week because I decided to listen to all of Taylor Swift's album, which turned out to be a surprisingly enjoyable experience. But that took so much time that I just ignored everything else. So here we go playing catch up. This is not a song from Lizzo's album this year, but was released back on her debut EP "Coconut Oil" back in March 2016. I also learned that it was initially recorded for the movie "Barbershop: The Next Cut," which was released in April 2016. It's here three and a half years after its release because of Lizzo's performance at the VMAs, which I finally went back and watched and... yeah, she owned it. While I'm not the biggest fan of "Truth Hurts," it's totally fine, but not something that jumps out to me, this song is pretty fantastic, especially with her VMAs performance as context. Not only did she completely own the stage, but her empowerment speech during the performance was electric. It's hard to watch that and not be inspired to feel good about yourself. Maybe the song on its own is a bit simplistic, but it still works. Lizzo reminds me a bit of Megan Trainor in that Megan is always singing empowerment anthems, but Megan falls flat on her face every time as she's lyrically careless and quite hollow in her delivery. Lizzo does a similar thing, but she lands it, especially in this song. The "Coconut Oil" EP describes Lizzo's style as a combination of hip-hop, gospel-soul and club music. I think that's a better description than I've been trying to come up with in previous weeks. That combination of genres is why she's able to have a broader reach. "Good as Hell" certainly leans even more towards the gospel-soul element than than "Truth Hurts" as neither song really strike me as hip-hop, but "Good as Hell" certainly isn't. But if the hip-hop community wants to embrace this, then I'm cool with that.
42- "One Right Thing" - Marshmello & Kane Brown (+17) -- I'm not happy about this.
45- "On Chill" - Wale featuring Jeremih (+10) -- I still haven't listened to this one. Maybe I will one of these weeks. I just don't care enough about these two.
48- "The Ones That Didn't Make It Back Home" - Justin Moore (+5) -- Not surprised to see this in the top 50. It'll probably continue to climb higher.
49- "China" - Anuel AA, Daddy Yankee, Karol G, Ozuna & J Balvin (+9) -- Gross.
50- "I Don't Know About You" - Chris Lane (+18) -- Boring country doing well. Yawn.
51- "Motivation" - Normani (+15) -- I'm fine with Normani sticking around and doing well. I like her. I just wish this song had more to it. It feels like a Fifth Harmony song to me and expect better from Normani, given her other solo outings.
55- "Lalala" - Y2K & bbno$ (+16) -- Get this out of here.
57- "Living" - Dierks Bentley (+16) -- I guess I'm fine with this?
60- "Time" - NF (+12) -- Nope. Not interested.
64- "Did It Again" - Lil Tecca (+35) -- Don't care. It only got this big of a boost thanks to Lil Tecca's album. He only had three new arrivals from said album that barely debuted this week. I praise the music gods for that lack of success.
66- "Southbound" - Carrie Underwood (+10) -- I like me some Carrie on the charts. Let's get this higher.
70- "Ballin'" - Mustard featuring Roddy Ricch (+13) -- Nope.
73- "Right Back" - Khalid featuring A Boogie wit da Hoodie (+20) -- This one confused me. I don't remember covering it all. I certainly don't remember a Khalid and Boogie collaboration. At first I thought I completely missed it. As it turns out, "Right Back" was a part of Khalid's mini album bomb back in April that I ignored. He released a remix of the song in August with Boogie added to it that re-entered recently and is just now gaining traction as a new Khalid single. And that's unfortunate. Khalid is one of those artists who I like as long as he's working with the right people. The problem is that he'll work with everyone who asks him to jump on a song with him. Boogie is certainly not the artist that will help his music be interesting. So I went and listened to the original. It's boring. I didn't miss anything by skipping it in April. The Boogie remix transforms it from boring to boring with a touch of annoyance since Boogie is a rapper we all should've rejected a long time ago, but somehow our deaf kids these days keep giving him a career by continuing to listen to his music. Although the weird thing is that Boogie is barely on the song. And he only gets a quick part at the very beginning instead of getting the typical third verse rap feature.
81- "Baguettes in the Face" - Mustard featuring NAV, Playboi Carti & A Boogie wit da Hoodie (+14) -- I still think this is one of the dumbest names I've seen for a rap song.
88- "Baby Sitter" - DaBaby featuring Offset (+10) -- Excuse me while I throw up.
New Arrivals:
7- "Circles" - Post Malone -- Full disclosure. If Post Malone has an album bomb as big as Taylor's was last week, I'm not covering it. If any additional songs show up in the top 10, I'll cover them. If future songs stick around, I'll cover them at that point. But there's 17 songs on that album. That includes "Goodbyes," "Circles," "Wow." and "Sunflower." Still, that means a potential for 13 new Post Malone songs and that's too much Post Malone for me. But with "Circles," this is another song from Post that's not bad. With both this and "Goodbyes," Post is leaning heavily into the pop side of his act. And I know people have claimed that he's always been pop and has never been hip-hop, but I've always disagreed with that, especially with all the empty flexing he's done on songs like "rockstar" and "Psycho." Or anything from his "beerbongs & bentleys" album. I got quickly annoyed with Post mumbling through all his empty flexing and turning into a superstar because of it. But even though I've mostly called him hip-hop, there's no hip-hop in "Circles" and there's no flexing. In fact, he just continues to be depressed about a breakup with his girl. That's the other thing Post does. If he's not flexing, he's singing breakup songs. And they're not that interesting. But they're a lot more interesting than his flexing, so I accept them. Although I think the problem with "Circles" is that it's almost the exact same song as "Goodbyes," so he's still lacking the lyrical creativity when he's pretending to be a pop star. And in terms of breakup songs, there's no personal responsibility on "Circles." He's acting like the victim here and waiting for the girl to do something as he then moans about their love going in circles instead of getting better. Again, this is fine. If we have to have a Post Malone song in the top 10 at all times, I'll take a song like this or "Goodbyes" over a lot of his other stuff, but I'm not going to remember this song too much after it goes away. "Sunflower" is still his best song and he still has Swae Lee to thank for that one.
59- "Doin' Time" - Lana Del Rey -- An album I am curious to check out is Lana's new album, although I am kind of annoying with the cursing in the title, even though it is censored as "Norman F*****g Rockwell." I'll just go with the other abbreviation on the cover art of "NFR!" Oddly enough, the title track doesn't even use that phrase in the song. But anyways, we're not talking about that title track, nor the album. Just the lead-off single "Doin' Time." Now I was a bit confused at this. First off, Lana was singing about a relationship with her girlfriend not working out, despite Lana having several boyfriends in the past. If she was bisexual, that's totally fine. It just surprised me. But the other thing is that the song's tone and lyrics don't exactly match. Lana uses her typical somber, depressed tone, but the lyrics appear like they should be more upbeat as they talk about partying and having fun, despite the fact that this relationship just isn't working out. Distracting yourself from the real life sorrow by partying. So using a sad, depressed tone for the whole time didn't seem to fine. And suddenly everything made a whole lot more sense when I learned that this song is a cover of the 1996 song of the same name by the band Sublime. I listen to that one and it's a guy singing about a girl and the song is upbeat. It has a fun, 90's groove to it while having a hint of sorrow. So when Lana covered it, it's not necessarily her revealing that she's bisexual. She just didn't switch the lyrics. What she did do is switch the tone of the song, which I don't think worked. I imagine that there are songs on the album that are good and I want to go check them out. But this song just doesn't do it for me.
69- "Babushka Boi" - A$AP Rocky -- Babushka? I was curious enough to look up what that word meant. According to the dictionary, it's either a triangularly folded kerchief for the head, typically worn by people from Russia or Poland. Or it's an elderly Russian woman. So points for being slightly unique there. I haven't seen many rap songs talking about a babushka. But I'm immediately taking those points away for purposely misspelling boy. I'm also not listening to the song since I've never cared about A$AP Rocky. I usually avoid people with dollar signs in their names, anyways.
77- "Heat" - Chris Brown featuring Gunna -- I'm certainly not giving Chris Brown and Gunna the pleasure of one additional stream counted towards their numbers.
80- "Out of Luck" - Lil Tecca -- Don't care about Lil Tecca's new album.
84- "Shots" - Lil Tecca -- Don't care about Lil Tecca's new album.
89- "Bezerk" - Big Sean featuring A$AP Ferg & Hit-Boy -- Big Sean with another dollar sign person in A$AP Ferg and... Hit-Boy? Don't care about the first two. And the new rapper with a dumb name doesn't help. Also the title. Too close to Eminem's "Berzerk." I re-listened to that instead, just for the heck of it. It's not even one of the better Eminem songs, but I'm sure it's better than this.
90- "Good Vibes" - Chris Janson -- This song had one job. If you're going to call yourself "Good Vibes," then you better have... good vibes. And I suppose it's upbeat enough to qualify for that. You can jam to this song as you're driving down the road listening to your country music. But it also probably requires a passion for the genre to enjoy this, which I do not have. For me, this song has no depth or soul to it. And it belongs with all the other fake country. Heavy drums and guitars that counts as country because Chris Janson sings with a twang. And he's singing about ignoring reality and just enjoying life instead of, you know, doing something to make the world a better place. But whatever. Country radio will probably overplay this and the audience will enjoy it. It's fairly inoffensive and will be easy for me to ignore.
94- "God Only Knows" - for KING & COUNTRY -- I was curious about this one since I've never heard of for KING & COUNTRY. My initial guess is that it was a country song from a new country group I've never heard of, but I wasn't 100 percent sure. Turns out that's a wrong guess. The correct answer is that for KING & COUNTRY is a Christian alternative rock duo composed of brothers Joel and Luke Smallbone from Australia. They initially called themselves Austoville, then Joel & Luke, before deciding on for KING & COUNTRY in 2009. "God Only Knows" comes from their third album "Burn the Ships," released in October 2018. Apparently these guys have done very well on the Christian charts, which I admittedly don't follow, but this is their first crossover to the Hot 100. How did this hit the mainstream nearly a year after its release? Well, back in June there was a Timbaland remix that adds Echosmith to the song. And while I'm sure that version helped, the best answer is that there was a second remix released August 29 that adds Dolly Parton. But on the charts on the moment, neither Dolly nor Echosmith get a credit here, so I think I technically have to talk about the original song.
In terms of said original song, it's a simple song that has a lot of heart to it. With Christian music, it's honestly pretty easily to get generic. You can be singing Christian words without meaning them or realizing what you're saying. But with this song the two brothers do great at bringing a sincerity to the song and the mellow, alternative rock really helps. It's more than just your traditional Christian piano ballad thing, but the rock elements aren't overdone. In terms of the remixes, I'm not sure I'm a huge fan of what I guessing Timbaland did with the music. There's a bit of extraneous things going on in that one and I prefer the more stripped back, acoustic. However, I think the girl from Echosmith really brings a lot. Her combined with the two brothers is the perfect mix that keeps the song interesting as the original does drag on a bit. Now take away Timbaland's remix and throw in an old fashioned, yet subtle country groove to the song and Dolly's version is also very well done. I don't think Dolly mixes quite as well with the brothers as the Echosmith girl does, but for crying out loud, it's Dolly. She's a legend. So all three versions have their positives and negatives, but overall I think all are solid. Whichever version it is that gets chart credit, I hope the song does well. If Lauren Daigle's "You Say" can stick around for forever, this can, too, right?
96- "The Bones" - Maren Morris -- Only two new country songs this week. Even though Chris Janson is not my lane, I usually like my country girls. Maren, specifically, seems to ride the country pop line pretty well and thus I'm curious to check out her album "GIRL" from earlier this year as I enjoy the title track "GIRL" that charted earlier this year and has done decently. But this follow-up single feels a bit empty to me and I can't quite put my finger on it, but there just doesn't seem to be much passion and energy here. And there are a lot of moments in the song where things are stretched out a bit too much and a bit too choppy. The message of the song is fine. She's comparing a relationship to a house. Even if the paint peels or the glass shatters, as long as the bones are strong, the house can survive. Although if I'm being picky, a house doesn't have bones. I think a strong foundation is what would've made the house metaphor better, but I understand what she was going for. Maybe that's the problem here. If I'm using her metaphor, the foundation of her song is not very strong. If that was in place, maybe the rest of the song would come together better.
97- "Love Me" - Lil Tecca -- Don't care about Lil Tecca's new album.
98- "La Cancion" - J Balvin & Bad Bunny -- I've heard too much from these two. Where there's J Balvin in 2019, there's also Bad Bunny. In fact, Bad Bunny is attached to most Latin songs that chart these days and I'm getting sick of it. He's the Drake of this Raggaeton genre because he's everywhere and he manages to suck the life out of everything he's on, so I don't know why he's so popular. Knowing these two, I had a feeling I knew exactly what this song was, so I almost skipped it. But I listened to it anyways. And yeah, it is what I thought it was. With a little extra boring adding in. There's no flow and no groove to this song, so I don't understand this.
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