Friday, January 17, 2020

DrogeMiester's Billboard Analysis - January 18, 2020

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- "The Box" - Roddy Ricch (+2) -- I'm not too terribly surprised here. "The Box" has been surging on streaming ever since its release and has now accumulated 68.2 million U.S. streams this week, which is a 60 percent increase from last week. And it's done this without an official video, which means this could be a streaming monster for weeks and weeks. At some point, it's going to have to get some sales and radio to go along with that, but until then the streaming is strong enough to hold this one up. I'm not really sure why the hip-hop world has started salivating all over themselves after hearing this song, which really isn't that good nor unique, but I suppose this is better than having "Roxanne" at No. 1, which is what I initially was thinking would take over for "Circles" following the end of the holiday season.

2- "Yummy" - Justin Bieber (new) -- I'll give my thoughts on this song below, but for now I'll just mention that Bieber had an excellent debut on sales (No. 1) and streaming (No. 2) and not a bad week on radio (No. 10). But those numbers are going to come crashing down next week. At least with those sales. Then Bieber will need to show traction on the charts after that for this to become a true hit. Quite frankly, I hope it doesn't.

3- "Circles" - Post Malone (-2) -- "Circles" has had a decent run at the top of the charts, but suffered a bit from unlucky timing around the holiday season and now gets pushed down again after a brief return. With Bieber set to tumble, this could go back up.

4- "Memories" - Maroon 5 (-2) -- I'm a tad bit surprised that this song got bullied out of the way. I would easily rather have this at No. 1 than "The Box" and I thought it had enough consistency to at least get ahead of "Circles." But it did not.

5- "10,000 Hours" - Dan + Shay & Justin Bieber (+4) -- Whoa! I'm guessing that this song got a residual boost from Bieber's debut? Or maybe Bieber fans needed a palette cleanser after listening to Bieber's new song.

6- "Someone You Loved" - Lewis Capaldi (-2) -- After a brief return to the top five last week, Lewis gets bullied back out thanks to Bieber. Honestly I don't really expect this to go back even though both Bieber songs will tumble next week. It seems like it's ran its course and is now ready to slowly disappear.

7- "Dance Monkey" - Tones and I (=) -- Consistency is good. Now let's hope this song can take advantage of the slightly shaky songs ahead of it and become a monster hit!

8- "Good as Hell" - Lizzo (-2) -- This has also seemed to have already ran its course and probably won't be here for too much longer. But both Lizzo and Lewis Capaldi were welcome entries to the top 10 and I hope they get good replacements.  

9- "Roxanne" - Arizona Zervas (-4) -- It makes me really happy that, after last week's unimpressive performance, "Roxanne" is now looking like its ready to plummet. Which is fantastic. Hip-hop fans have appeared to have already moved onto the next useless hip-hop song, meaning the whole world will forget this ever existed soon.

10- "Lose You to Love Me" - Selena Gomez (=) -- Selena has a new album out that should be impacting the charts next week. I don't know how big it will be or if Selena will get many new tracks to chart, but at the least I'm expecting this song to get a boost next week and soar up charts a bit. I'm not sure how big it will get, but there's enough weak songs in the top 10 right now for this to do some real damage.


Rising on the Hot 100:





14- "Don't Start Now" - Dua Lipa (+7) -- Can we please get Dua Lipa in the top 10? I really enjoy this song. This month I was going through all my favorite charting songs of 2019 in order to create my top 10 list that I posted on Monday. While this one didn't make the cut, it was a strong contender during my ranking process. So if we're going to start replacing some of the 2019 songs, this would be a solid replacement.

16- "Trampoline" - SHAED (+3) -- Speaking of my top 10 music list, this song was the last song left out, coming in at No. 11 as the top honorable mention. And it broke my heart that it couldn't fit in. The journey for this song has been a rather long one, meaning I don't know how much this really has left in the tank, but if it could manage to sneak into the top 10 for at least a week or two, that would be cool. But I'm not crossing my fingers as this might be destined to peak here in the teens, which is not bad for a smaller song like this from an otherwise unknown group.

17- "Heartless" - The Weeknd (+3) -- No, let's not let this one back in the top. The Weeknd has another song that is miles better. And thankfully its actually doing rather well. So let's continue to build that one and simply forget this song ever existed.

19- "everything i wanted" - Billie Eilish (+4) -- 2019 was a great year for Billie as she had two songs in my top 10 list and six more in the honorable mentions section. This here was one of the stronger honorable mentions of the Billie songs and thus it would be excited if it could maintain some traction and get Billie another monster hit. Although admittedly it's not the most mainstream thing. But hey, Billie has so far made a living off of convincing the world to love her weird, unconventional music that I really love, so why can't this be another big hit?

22- "Woah" - Lil Baby (+5) -- Yeah, whoa is right. Let's not get this one any higher. Although typing this up is making me realize that Lil Baby doesn't know how to spell whoa right. Because, yes. It is spelled with the "h" before the "o." Not that I expect rappers to know how to spell since most of them probably flunked elementary school. But I still feel obligated to point out their continued incompetence with this thing called English when they don't know how to do it right.

24- "Adore You" - Harry Styles (+11) -- Can Harry Styles actually gain traction with a song from his album? He's been unable to do that so far, but we'll see if that changes. This song isn't the best song from the album, but I'll accept it.

26- "The Bones" - Maren Morris (+10) -- Good for Maren! I like me female country singers, so seeing one of them doing really well is encouraging. Nashville needs to accept more of them into their regular radio rotation instead of over-promoting so many lazy and untalented male country singers.

30- "Futsal Shuffle 2020" - Lil Uzi Vert (+14) -- Gross. This debuted in the top 10 and quickly plummeted, making me happy. So let's not let this get real traction.

35- "High Fashion" - Roddy Ricch featuring Mustard (+35) -- Why are we so obsessed with Roddy Ricch right now?

39- "Blinding Lights" - The Weeknd (+20) -- YES!!!! Are we actually going to make this song a thing instead of The Weeknd's other lame song that his team tried to promote instead? While "Heartless" is a piece of junk, "Blinding Lights" is so good that it could not be denied a spot in my top 10, despite it being a fairly new song comparatively. So let's push this song to be the smash hit of 2020 because it absolutely deserves it.

40- "What if I Never Got Over You" - Lady Antebellum (+9) -- We're starting off on the right foot with country this week. Maren Morris is the big country riser this week and Lady Antebellum is right behind them. This is a solid song, so go country! Although I just now discovered the piano version of this song. And that version I like a whole lot more.

44- "My Oh My" - Camila Cabello featuring DaBaby (+6) -- Please no, Camila. Your next big hit shouldn't be one that pushes DaBaby any higher. Let's leave him back in 2019 and forget that his mistake of a career ever happened.

49- "Playing Games" - Summer Walker (+5) -- I'm not sure why this is rising this week. I don't expect it to be here many more weeks.

56- "Start Wit Me" - Roddy Ricch & Gunna (+12) -- Why are we so obsessed with Roddy Ricch right now? 

61- "South of the Border" - Ed Sheeran featuring Camila Cabello & Cardi B (+11) -- I suppose we're at the point where we might have to start taking this song seriously. It's not my favorite song from Ed Sheeran's collaborations, but he also has plenty worse. Ed Sheeran and Camila do have strong interplay in the song. They mesh rather well. We just have to ignore that third-verse rap feature from Cardi at the end.

69- "BEST ON EARTH" - Russ & BIA (+12) -- Please, no.

75- "What She Wants Tonight" - Luke Bryan (+11) -- Well, I suppose it couldn't be all rainbows and butterflies with country this week, right? At least this is only at No. 75.

79- "Tip toe" - Roddy Ricch featuring A Boogie wit da Hoodie (+10) -- Why are we so obsessed with Roddy Ricch right now?


New Arrivals:





2- "Yummy" - Justin Bieber -- I've often defending Justin Bieber as someone who has matured quite a bit after a rough start to his career. I mean, he certainly had his huge fan base, but as far as mainstream likability, he didn't quite hit that until much later. Now it comes to the point where I often can anxiously await a new Justin Bieber song. He proved most recently with his collaboration with Dan + Shay that he can still make likable music. But yikes. "Yummy" sees him digressing by about 10 years. "You've got that yummy?" I mean, really Bieber? Is yummy an adjective that any girls likes being described by. It feels more degrading to me. That aside, it also makes for a really cheesy, stupid song as he repeats yummy way too much and doesn't have anything intelligent or interesting to say on any of the verses. It just becomes extremely annoying. If Bieber has a new album coming soon, let's hope that he has some songs on there that are much better than this because this is an awful start. If this is simply a randomly released single that has nothing to do with an upcoming album, then let's just forget that this one existed and all move on with our lives.

60- "U Played" - MoneyBagg Yo featuring Lil Baby -- So many things wrong with this. And that's just when I look at the song title and artists. I'm sure it would get much worse if I actually listened to the song. Which I have no desire wasting my time doing.

70- "Sugar" - BROCKHAMPTON -- I initially thought that BrockHampton was an individual singer who had just taken his full name and removed the space to create a rap name, which is stupid. Turns out this is a group of 14 people, none of whom is named Brock Hampton. Turns out that's the name of a street that one of the members grew up on. OK. The song is not really my thing. This is a hip-hop group. And who knows, maybe if I were to dig deep I would find something good. But I'm really not that motivated at the present time because I found this song more annoying than anything, with plenty of hip-hop tropes that drive me crazy combined with an overabundance of creativity and random nonsense, like 14 people trying to create one song without any sort of unity as to what they're doing. I don't know. Maybe that's too harsh.

90- "All I Want" - Olivia Rodrigo -- We got a "High School Musical" song to chart this week. Or, rather, a song from "High School Musical: The Musical: The Series," which I certainly haven't kept up with. Even if I did get my Disney+ working properly on my devices, this is probably not the series that I would be catching up on. But I'm still rather amused at the title, which gets even worse when I look at the album cover for this song: "High School Musical: The Musical: The Series: The Soundtrack." Someone had a little too much fun with that. But the song? Well, OK. But I won't dive too deep into it because I would feel obligated to know more of the context. Although after listening to the song, it probably isn't rocket science as far as what's going on here. This is a very high school themed song. Specifically it's a high school themed love song for the teenage girls watching this series. I'm not sure it's really going to connect to anyone outside that audience, but it probably wasn't trying, nor was it probably attempting to be a big Billboard hit. But I will give Olivia Rodrigo credit for having a good voice. Vocally, she nails the song. That doesn't quite make up for the juvenile love song lyrics that are overly cheesy and hard to connect with or take seriously.

93- "I Hope You're Happy Now" - Carly Pearce & Lee Brice -- And now we graduate from teenage love to adult love with this big boy and big girl country song. And you should know that I like my country girls, which I why I don't mind this one. Carly has a great voice and her and Lee Brice fit well together. For a while there I was thinking that she was going to give him and the other country boys a piece of their medicine by only using him for backing vocals, but he did get his own verse. And I liked the attempt at a duet. Although it still kinda does this thing where it's not much of a duet. Just two different voices taking turns singing with the same voice, if that makes sense. Carly is singing about a breakup, which she may have actually instigated, but is irritated at his poor reaction. With that, I was hoping for a bit more of a contrasting tone when Lee Brice came in, but there really wasn't one. Still not bad, though. It does get a bit too heavy, which is a common annoyance of mine with mainstream country. They always go loud and boisterous despite lyrics that would work better with music that is more stripped down. But Carly and Lee are still good enough together to cause me to be accepting of this country song. On a completely unrelated note, after listening to this song, I went and listened to "Defying Gravity" from "Wicked" because that's one of the songs that showed up in the search results of my Apple Music after searching this title.

94- "20/20" - Lil Tjay -- Nope.

95- "Say So" - Doja Cat -- Nope.

98- "ORANGE SODA" - Baby Keem -- Part of me was hoping that this was another "Baby Shark" style of kids song. I mean, who calls your song "ORANGE SODA" and hopes to be taken seriously unless the song is directed at five-year-olds? But nope. This is another trap artists thinking he's super cool with Baby in his name while releasing a song that is barely over two minutes. Yeah, I'll pass.

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