Thursday, October 24, 2019

DrogeMiester's Billboard Analysis - October 26, 2019

The new Billboard charts have arrived and so it's time again for me to give you my thoughts! This is a weekly post where I cover three main sections of the charts: the Billboard Hot 100 top 10, the songs rising on the Hot 100, and the new arrivals. As pertaining to the rising songs, in order to be included, a song has to rise at least two spots between Nos. 11 and 20, five spots spots between Nos. 21 and 50, or 10 spots between Nos. 51 and 100. As pertaining to new arrivals, I used to dedicate myself to covering every single song that debuted, but that started to burn me out, especially with the high number of album bombs, so I've been a lot more selective recently and so far I've received no complaints. However, if I skip a song that you want to hear my thoughts on, feel free to let me know. I'll occasionally mix things up depending on the week, like throwing in a notable re-entry into the rising songs section, but generally this is what I go with. Most of the data I give you comes from Billboard.com, usually Gary Trust's weekly article. If I pull from elsewhere, I'll generally let you know. With all of that out of the way, let's dive in and see what this week has to offer!

Billboard Hot 100 Top 10:




1- "Truth Hurts" - Lizzo (+1) -- Ah, that feels better. That Travis Scott thing had me really nervous because his song simply wasn't good at all. Granted, I'm not a Travis Scott fan, but still. Him reigning at the top was not a pleasant sight to behold. Yet I was nervous that his song would stay there for a while given how strong "SICKO MODE" ended up being. But as it turns out, the floor fell out from under him in week two and now he'll have to rely on his song to gain traction in order to stick around. More on that later, but that song's dip causes the charts to reset themselves to the natural order of things, which allows Lizzo to go back on top for her seventh week, tying Iggy Azalea's "Fancy" for the longest ever reign on the Hot 100 for a rap song by a female artist. If it can hold on for one more week, it'll have that record all to itself. As I've said before, I roll my eyes a bit at that record because I still claim that "Truth Hurts" isn't a rap song. It's a hybrid of a few genres, but I think it's primarily a pop song. So a pop song now has the record for longest female rap song. Eh. Whatever. Regardless of what we call it, I'm glad it's back at No. 1. But it's not going to be here for long because it continues to tank across the board, falling 29 percent in sales, 9 percent in streaming and 5 percent in radio.

2- "Señorita" - Shawn Mendes & Camila Cabello (+1) -- Likewise, "Señorita" moves back up to its No. 2 spot. Given how much "Truth Hurts" is falling, I can only assume that "Señorita" is falling equally as fast. Which means if there's a song that wants to jump up and take the top spot, the door is wide open.

3- "Someone You Loved" - Lewis Capaldi (+2) -- You would think with the weakness of "Truth Hurts" and "Señorita" that "Someone You Loved" would be the song that sweeps in and takes the top spot. But last week when Travis Scott and Justin Bieber swept in with their songs, "Someone You Loved" got bullied down to No. 5, so it might not have the necessary traction at the moment to make the move.

4- "Circles" - Post Malone (+2) -- I wasn't sure exactly what Post Malone was going to do with this song, but looking at things right now, this song might actually be the song with the best momentum going forward. And it wouldn't be a crazy idea to thing Post Malone getting another No. 1 single. And I wouldn't mind it, either.

5- "No Guidance" - Chris Brown featuring Drake (+2) -- This is just here because something has to be No. 5. I am surprised to see this song ahead of Travis Scott.

6- "HIGHEST IN THE ROOM" - Travis Scott (-5) -- As I've mentioned a few times now, I'm surprised to see this song fall so far in its second week. The problem here are those sales. There might be a few contributing factors here, but it tanked 87 percent in sales. That's a huge drop. It also dropped 37 percent in streaming, but still manages to be No. 1 this week in streaming with 37.2 million U.S. streams. And it's still very early on in radio. It's gaining in radio, up 61 percent, but that's only to 11.1 million in audience. So it's a long ways away from making a dent. If it's going stay around, it's going to need to somehow regain those sales and stop the bleeding in streaming. Personally I'm not convinced its going away, but I would love for it to do so.

7- "Ran$om" - Lil Tecca (+1) -- This only gains a spot because the Justin Bieber song fell out of the top 10. But let's hope we can get this song out of the top 10.

8- "bad guy" - Billie Eilish (+1) -- With "bad guy" sticking in the top 10 for one more week, it officially moves past "Sunflower" for the No. 2 spot on the year in my personal tracking. Taking the No. 1 spot away from "Old Town Road" is out of the question, but seeing "bad guy" as the second most popular song of the year makes me really happy. There may have been a lot of unfortunate things that happened on the Billboard charts in 2019, but at least one positive was Billie getting her first huge Billboard hit.

9- "Panini" - Lil Nas X (+1) -- I don't think "Panini" is going to stick around in the top 10 for much longer, but it survives for one more week. And maybe it'll hang out in the bottom section of the top 10. That wouldn't offend me.

10- "Bandit" - Juice WRLD & YoungBoy Never Broke Again (+1) -- This debuted at No. 11 last week and sneaks into the top 10 mainly because Justin Bieber fell out, so something had to fill up the last slot. The second week numbers on this song aren't that great. It fell 3 percent in streaming and 49 percent in sales. But I'm certain that fall would've been worse had it not been for YoungBoy's album this week giving it a boost. Granted, I don't know if this song is on the album, but I've still seen non-album songs from an artist getting a boost along with the rest of the album songs. So regardless, I still think this got a boost from the album. Which means I expect this to drop next week. If it does, that's good. And no, I'm not going to touch that album, but you knew that already, right?

Rising on the Hot 100:




12- "Memories" - Maroon 5 (+8) -- Anyone surprised at this one? The radio has a new Maroon 5 song to play on repeat for the next year. I'm just glad that this one doesn't annoy me. I expect it to be in the top 10 sooner rather than later.

20- "Good as Hell" - Lizzo (+4) -- It's great seeing this song continue to rise, even if it is on a slower basis. I guess it makes sense since it is an older song from Lizzo and not a brand new release. But I'm still glad that it's in the top 20 and I hope a trip to the top 10 is coming up next!

22- "On Chill" - Wale featuring Jeremih (+5) -- Go away.

32- "Hot" - Young Thug featuring Gunna (+6) -- Go away.

38- "One Thing Right" - Marshmello & Kane Brown (+5) -- Snooze.

39- "Even Though I'm Leaving" - Luke Combs (+10) -- I suppose I'm not too upset at this. It's one of those songs that I have to keep reminding myself that I didn't think it was awful. And I have to keep doing that because it's a song that just doesn't stick.

41- "Heat" - Chris Brown featuring Gunna (+6) -- Go away.

45- "One Man Band" - Old Dominion (+9) -- Is this my first time covering this song? It debuted back in September during Taylor Swift week and I skipped it then. But I don't know if I ever got around to talking about it. It's a song that's stripped down and mellow, so it's a pleasurable listen. I've not ever really cared about Old Dominion, nor have I paid much attention to them. But this is fine, I suppose. Nothing worth salivating over and not one that I will play for friends on a long drive. But if it shows up somehow, I don't think I'll be too upset.

46- "Time" - NF (+6) -- Meh. I'm not angry. But I'm not ecstatic with this, either.

48- "Good Vibes" - Chris Janson (+8) -- No good vibes from me.

50- "Self Control" - YoungBoy Never Broke Again (+48) -- Only rising this much due to YoungBoy's album that I'll be gladly ignoring this week. 

56- "F.N" - Lil Tjay (+28) -- Go away.

75- "Dance Monkey" - Tones and I (+21) -- So I don't know how many people closely follow my week by week commentary on every song that shows up or remembers what I said in previous weeks. If you don't, I don't blame. I often forget myself and I don't get too worried because I often treat each week as if there are new people reading through this who haven't read one of my music posts before. But last week I mentioned that I was nervous about showing this to people because I could envision people reacting in a very negative way. Now I can't speak for everyone, but I did play this for my roommate and, to my pleasant surprise, the reaction from him was quite positive. Looking in the comment section of this very bizarre music video taught me that this song is everywhere all over Europe. Granted, I figured that was the case when I realized how many countries it had become No. 1 in, but the comment section confirmed this. And now it celebrated a 21 spot jump in its second week on the U.S. charts. Yeah, I don't want to speak too fast because there's a lot of worldwide hits that don't connect as well in the U.S. for some reason, but this has all the ingredients to become a huge smash hit here as well. And I'm on board with that.

New Arrivals:




17- "Lights Up" - Harry Styles -- Well this is easy. Only one new arrival to talk about with a whole lot of nope coming after it. And the song that debuted is the one song that I expected to debut. We just had Niall Horan sneaking in a new song a week before his former One Direction band member. Speaking specifically about Harry Styles, his debut album was quite the shocker as he delivered what had the feel of a 70's rock album, which was insane coming from a dude straight out of a pop boy band group. With that shock in the rear view mirror, I most certainly elevated myself to the excited stage when it came to a new Harry Styles song. And this is another slick groove from Harry. I'm not going to try to pinpoint an exact decade with this one as it does have a different feel to it when compared to his first album. At this point I'm not sure what type of different it is for me, whether it be for bad or good, but simply calling it different is sufficient. It does hit a few weird notes on the chorus, like he switches to a minor key out of the blue or something like that. But overall this is still solid. It's a bit toned back, but it doesn't slide into ballad territory, but rather has a very subtle groove that keeps it moving forward. I like what they do with the piano in this. It added a good touch to the song. There's also plenty of other instruments layered in with a gospel-style backing vocal arrangement that all adds together to create a pleasant song. I'm not sure if I like the song as much as Niall song last week. But this is another good entry from Harry and I hope that both of their songs perform well in the weeks and months to come.

44- "Lonely Child" - YoungBoy Never Broke Again -- Nope.

57- "Makes No Sense" - YoungBoy Never Broke Again -- Nope. 

62- "Carter Son" - YoungBoy Never Broke Again -- Nope.

64- "Kinfolks" - Sam Hunt -- It's funny, I almost completely forgot to include this song. I almost published without it. So I'm including this last second. However, at this current time, I'm not in the mood to go back and listen to this. Sue me. It's Sam Hunt. He sucks. Why would this be any different? Nevertheless, this is bound to become a hit, so I'll talk about it next week.Or whenever it shows up in my rising songs section.

66- "Hot Now" - YoungBoy Never Broke Again -- Nope.

70- "All Dat" - Moneybagg Yo & Megan Thee Stallion -- Nope.

73- "In Control" - YoungBoy Never Broke Again -- Nope.

79- "Time I'm On" - YoungBoy Never Broke Again -- Nope.

100- "Rich as Hell" - YoungBoy Never Broke Again -- Nope.

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