Billboard Hot 100 Top 10:
1- "Old Town Road" - Lil Nas X featuring Billy Ray Cyrus (=) -- "Old Town Road" gets its third week on top out of what I'm guessing will be a lengthy run here. As I've said the last two weeks, get used to this. In terms of its numbers, after totally a record-shattering 143 million U.S. streams last week, its total this week is 125.2 million U.S. streams, which also tops Drake's previous record last year of 116.2 million U.S streams. This is heavily boosted by both versions of the song contributing to the overall total, which might be a bit unfair, but it is what it is. I probably prefer that over two versions of the song being in the top five. Although when I look at various streaming charts like Apple Music or Spotify, I've noticed that the original version is falling on said lists while it's this remake with Billy Ray Cyrus that's the biggest contributing. The song fell a sharp 26 percent in sales this week as well, but is still at 91,000, which in today's world of diminishing sales for music and increased streaming is around four times as much as any other song. 20,000 weekly sales is now considered a good week. The radio for "Old Town Road" is its weakest metric, but it still shot up 33-18 on the radio charts, increasing 57 percent to 45.2 million audience impressions.
2- "Wow." - Post Malone (+1) -- I've said it the past two weeks and I'll say it a third time. Although I'm not a fan of "Old Town Road," I'm glad it's here at No. 1 because the alternative this week would be "Wow." at No. 1, which would be awful. This song still has plenty of traction across the board for some strange reason, but I don't think there's any chance this ends up having longer legs than "Old Town Road," thus I think Post Malone will be prevented from hitting No. 1 with "Wow." I've been wrong before. I'm not necessarily a charts expert, per se. But I really hope that I'm right.
3- "Sunflower (Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse)" - Post Malone & Swae Lee (-1) -- Post Malone again switches spots with himself on the charts as "Wow." now seems to be the Post Malone song that will maintain traction going forward. "Sunflower" still might be around for a while, but it's going to eventually start sliding down. Although given that it's still two spots above Halsey's "Without Me," if that margin continues into next week, "Sunflower" will take over as the most popular song of 2019 on my own personal Excel charts. "Old Town Road" might eventually compete for that spot, but even if "Sunflower" and "Without Me" dropped out of the top 10 next week, which is not going to happen, it would still take "Old Town Road" 11 additional weeks at No. 1 to take over. So I'll get back to you in three months to see how that turns out. "Old Town Road" is going to be around for a while, but I don't know if it's going to stay at No. 1 for THAT long.
4- "7 rings" - Ariana Grande (=) -- Even though Ariana celebrated eight weeks at No. 1 with "7 rings," she's still significantly behind both "Without Me" and "Sunflower" on my Excel charts. And I don't think she's going to be making up any additional ground on them as the three songs are probably going to fall at similar rates. If anything, I could see Ariana being the one who ends up falling out first.
5- "Without Me" - Halsey (=) -- Clinging onto a spot in the top five, as well as the top spot of the year on my Excel charts, is Halsey with "Without Me." It's quite the impressive run for a simple pop song that has a strong chance of being completely forgotten about in a few years. But I've been totally fine with it being around. I like this pop resurgence that we've had in 2019, which continues with our next several songs in the top 10.
6- "Sucker" - Jonas Brothers (=) -- Although Jonas Brothers are stuck here at No. 6 this week, I'd say they are officially here to stay in the top 10 as "Sucker" takes over as the No. 1 song on the radio. Sales and streaming might not quite be up to par, but the fact that the radio has completely fallen in love with the song is positive enough to keep this song around for the weeks to come. And I'm down with that. I think this is a fun song from this trio of brothers. Much better than their song "Cool" that debuted last week. The latter song troubled me enough that I don't think I'm excited for their upcoming album, but I'll gladly keep this song around. And I'm guessing it's not too many weeks away from jumping ahead of "Sunflower," "7 rings" and "Without Me" on the Hot 100 as I think those songs are going to slowly start to decline in the weeks to come.
7- "Dancing with a Stranger" - Sam Smith & Normani (+5) -- For our first major entry to the top 10, we have "Dancing with a Stranger" surging up to No. 7 from No. 12 last week based on the weaknesses of the songs that were ahead of it. But also it is helped by strong radio play as it is the No. 2 song on the radio charts behind "Sucker." It's only No. 11 on sales and No. 30 on streaming, so it has a long ways to go in those categories, but the radio loves this song, which I am happy about. This is Sam Smith's sixth trip to the top 10, with the most recent song being "Dancing with a Stranger," which peaked at No. 4 in 2017. It's been a slow rise for this song, which had me wondering if it would make it to the top 10 or not, but I'm glad that it's maintained traction on the charts. And like with "Sucker," I think the strong radio is going to keep this around for a while, especially with several songs in the top 10 on the decline. In regards to Normani, she is now a perfect two for two in her trips to the top 10 as a solo artist. Although both songs had her tag teaming with an established male star, with her previous trip being with Khalid on "Love Lies." Whether or not she can survive on her own is yet to be seen as she hasn't released any personal stuff, but I think this song can help give her a boost of recognition when she does. And Fifth Harmony is certainly not doing anything right now, so I think she should go for it. She's better off solo, anyways.
8- "Boy with Luv" - BTS featuring Halsey (new) -- I'll get to my opinion of this song below, so keep reading for that. Or jump ahead if you're curious. I'm not a BTS fan, so don't expect much. As far as this making the top 10, I'm not surprised. As I mentioned when I talked about BLACKPINK's new song last week, BTS broke the record for fastest music video ever to 100 million views, which was accomplished shortly after BLACKPINK did the same thing with their video. But as I also pointed out, Billboard counts U.S. streams only, which handicaps anything from BTS as they rely on worldwide views. So for those ignorant BTS fans who thought this was debuting at No. 1 due to its record breaking YouTube totals, it only got 29.9 million U.S. streams in its debut week of tracking, which was nearly 100 million behind "Old Town Road." And for those ignorantly thinking this is going to eventually rise to No. 1, the last time BTS debuted in the top 10 was "Fake Love," which debuted at No. 10. In its second week, it took a sharp nosedive to somewhere in the 50's. This is the case with most boy band releases. Their rabid fan bases cause super high debuts, but to maintain longevity they need to connect with general audiences to get the consistent radio, streaming and sales numbers. That's certainly not going to happen with BTS. So you can count on this song being gone from the top 10 next week and I'm nearly 100 percent certain that it won't return.
9- "bad guy" - Billie Eilish (+2) -- Making for an absolutely solid top 10, our final new entry this week is "bad guy" returning to the top 10. This actually surprised me. It was down at No. 11 last week, but I thought it was going to slowly fall since this is completely M.I.A. in regards to radio play. Billie's team isn't even sending it to radio, I don't think, as "when the party's over" is her current radio single. But hey, if this can survive on excellent streaming and decent sales, I am more than happy with this being here. I love Billie's music and her new album is excellent. I want 2019 to be the year of the Billie, so let's make this happen, America, even if the radio won't get on board.
10- "Please Me" - Cardi B & Bruno Mars (-3) -- It "please me" seeing this song failing. Granted, I'm not going to call it a flop since it's been in the top 10 for eight weeks, but a song featuring Bruno and Cardi together should be doing a whole lot better. If the general public is getting tired of these two, though, I think that's an overall win as I was tired of them a long time ago. And I feel no shame in admitting that.
Rising on the Hot 100:
13- "Sweet but Psycho" - Ava Max (+3) -- The only songs now standing in the way of Ava Max making it into the top 10 are "Middle Child" (No. 11) and "Happier" (No. 12), both of which are on the downward trend. With "Please Me" at No. 10 also looking like it's about to begin a steep decline and BTS guaranteed to drop out of the top 10 next week, I can comfortably say that this song is top 10 bound, which has me ecstatic. The song doesn't have a whole lot of streaming at the moment, but it's No. 8 on both the sales and radio charts, so I feel like it's in a similar position as "Dancing with a Stranger" where it's maintaining great consistency, which is timed quite well with all the other songs losing momentum. As I was madly in love with this song from the second I heard it (I almost put it in my top 10 favorite songs of 2018 despite it only being around for a week or two in December), it gives me much happiness to see it doing so well. Now before I finish this commentary on it, I need to go knock on some wood so that the song doesn't get stuck at No. 11 or something like that because that's happened a lot.
14- "Thotiana" - Blueface (+3) -- "Thotiana" still has huge streaming numbers, but it's had a hard time finding consistency on the charts because it has nowhere to be found on the sales charts and whatever radio momentum it had seems to be quickly drying up. And that's good because the song sucks. I think the only reason why it rose this week is due to a lot of other songs falling quite a bit faster.
41- "Here with Me" - Marshmello featuring CHVRCHES (+5) -- We have a huge space between songs now because there's not a whole lot of drastic movement on the top half of the Hot 100 this week, but Marshmello continues to sneak up the charts. I have no idea if this will end up getting as big as "Happier," but giving CHVRCHES more recognition is an overall positive, I think. For Marshmello standards, I think this is a song that's very much in his lane, so I'm fine with it.
44- "Eyes on You" - Chase Rise (+8) -- This is a very relaxing country song. One of those country songs that gives the genre a good name despite the crowded field of bland nothingness. Now I smirk at the idea that they're traveling the world, but the dude only cares about staring at his girl the whole trip while ignoring everything else. That's a lot of wasted money. If all you care about is the girl and not the trip, just drive around your own city. But hey, that doesn't affect my opinion of the song very much.
51- "Suge" - DaBaby (+12) -- Gross.
67- "Don't Call Me Up" - Mabel (+13) -- It's good seeing this rise. I hope it continues to get higher and further support this pop resurgence that we're getting in 2019.
74- "Pop Out" - Polo G featuring Lil Tjay (+15) -- Gross.
84- "Big Ole Freak" - Megan Thee Stallion (+15) -- Gross.
New Arrivals:
8- "Boy with Luv" - BTS featuring Halsey -- BTS is one of those groups where they could write music about using the restroom or eating a sandwich and they would still have their entire rabid fan base shaking uncontrollably in their shoes as if the songs were the best piece of music to grace the planet Earth in the entire history of music. Then after each song, each member of this BTS army has to go spam the whole internet to let everyone know that a new song came out. The sheer fact that this lazy, untalented group is worshiped like gods makes me angry. But if I ignore all of that and try to objectively focus on this specific piece of music, yeah it still sucks. It's seven singers, plus Halsey, taking turns singing a generic love song that, lyrically speaking, was written for one person. The song would lose absolutely nothing if it were given to an individual singer instead of a group. The song screams of either desperation or no shame as each singer tries a different style to make the song sound different, but the end result is a jumbled mess of crap that actually had me quite bored it had no flare, no groove and no flow. Their random switches to English throughout, as well as the unnecessary inclusion of Halsey into the chorus, means that they're trying too hard to increase their global presence instead of focusing on making good music. The silver lining here is that the song is going to be gone next week, so I don't have to worry about it for too long.
28- "Sanguine Paradise" - Lil Uzi Vert -- Don't care.
66- "Blue on Black" - Five Finger Death Punch featuring Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Brantley Gilbert & Brian May -- Whoops! I forgot about this song when I first posted this, so some of you may not have read this and the smartest of the bunch might wonder why I missed it. Honest mistake. If this sticks around I'll make sure to repeat my opinion in future weeks. Now trying to figure this thing out was interesting. Why is Five Finger Death Punch charting and why do they have a song with Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Brantley Gilbert and Brian May? Now I know who Brian May and Brantley Gilbert are. And I've heard of Five Finger Death Punch. I could lie to you and say I know all about them, but that wouldn't be honest. I only know them by name. I don't seek out a whole lot of heavy metal. Sorry. I also have to apologize for having no idea who Kenny Wayne Shepherd is, which might get me in trouble since "Black on Blue" is his song from the 90's and it's Five Finger Death Punch that covered it in 2018. Then we have a new remix of the cover that adds Brantley Gilbert as co-vocalist and Brian May on guitar. Yeah, this is a strange combination. In learning all of this, I had to of course listen to the original. Yeah, great song. I won't do any deep analysis of it since it's a 20-year-old song and most of you have probably already heard of it. Heavy metal is not my favorite genre, but if done with enough control, it can be great. But listening to the two songs back to back, a heavy metal version of this song is not nearly as great as how it was initially. And the remix of the cover with Brantley Gilbert and the Five Finger Death Punch lead singer trading off is a bit strange. Fans of the original song are probably going to be upset at this cover. Fans of Five Finger Death Punch will love it and they will certainly be ecstatic that their band is on the charts. Meanwhile, I'm just standing here not sure what to think of it all, but hey it's something different on the charts, right? I'll give this credit for introducing me to the original and apologize to all the fans of it for me not having heard it before. Or maybe I did and just forgot. That's a possibility.
68- "SOS" - Avicii featuring Aloe Blacc -- OK, I'm not going to lie, an Avicii song is about the last thing that I was expecting on the charts this week. I guess I wasn't following the news closely enough about a posthumous album release for him, but I have now learned that said album is going to be titled "TIM," given that his name is Tim Bergling, and will be released on June 6, 2019. Before I comment on this specific song, I want to give my thoughts on the idea of a posthumous album release of Avicii. While he was alive, Avicii was quite honestly one of my all-time favorite artists and probably my favorite DJ. His music, especially from his first album "TRUE," is some of the most influential music for me when it comes to shaping my personal taste. And his use of the EDM genre is mostly unparalleled. News of his suicide a year ago (April 20, 2018) completely wrecked me. That said, I've been highly critical of other people in the industry taking advantage of the deaths of certain artists to get money and popularity. People in charge of Lil Peep and XXXTENTACION have been especially gross in my opinion. But from what I'm gathering, most of this Avicii album was finished or was in advanced stages of production when he died. And with the nature of DJs, there's probably a lot of stuff that they work on that never gets released. So if the goal here is to simply complete an album that he was working on before his death, then I think that's much different than people taking advantage of the death of the artist. I also read here that all profits from the sales of this album will be going to the Tim Bergling Foundation, a foundation set up after his suicide to help raise awareness for mental health. So with all that in mind, I feel that the hearts of the people working on this project are in the right place and thus I can be excited for this third Avicii album.
Onto the song. I read that this song was 75-80 percent completed when Avicii died. Co-producers Krisfoffer Fogelmark and Albin Nedler said all the sounds and notes they received in an MIDI file for the song were from Avicii himself and the only additional production was surrounding the vocals of Aloe Blacc, who recorded the vocals after Avicii's death. He was considered for the song beforehand and is certainly a good fit for a first posthumously released single considering he does the vocals for "Wake Me Up" and "Liar Liar" from Avicii's album "TRUE." In addition to reading about that on the Apple Music description for the song, there's also a video on Avicii's channel that I have linked to you write there talking about the story behind the song. So that adds a lot of depth to the song knowing this came from Avicii and is not something that was put together afterwards. Also, knowing this came from Avicii gives this emotion as the lyrics talk about a lot of struggles that he's going throw. He's telling this person that they could be more than just part-time lovers as said person could make it so he doesn't need his drugs or weed, while adding, "I can feel your touch picking me up from the underground." I don't know all of the demons Avicii was facing in his life that led him to suicide, but him touching on it in this song makes me feel emotional even though the song itself is not a deep dive into all of his struggles. In fact, it's a bit of a surface-level dance song. I don't mean that in a bad way. Just that it's a simple Avicii groove that is focused more on being a fun, upbeat song rather than being an emotional exploration of his feelings. But the context of his suicide and Aloe Blacc's amazing vocals elevate this song to a different level. If he finished and released this song before he died, I would still think it's good, but in hindsight as a posthumous release, it's quite the experience. The legacy of Avicii will live on forever.
76- "That's a Rack" - Lil Uzi Vert -- Don't care.
81- "Love Ain't" - Eli Young Band -- Love ain't... what, Eli? Oh. It's a phrase at the end of the stanza. He says that hotels are made for two night stands and that whiskey is made for when you're bored on a Friday night. But love ain't. Then we get the story of this girl who, based on Eli's second-hand perspective of what this girl is going through, is in a miserable relationship. Eli admits that he doesn't know what love is, but he knows what love ain't, so this girl should leave this guy and be with him so that he can show her things that this guy can't. Which kinda sounds contradicting because Eli admitted that he doesn't know what love is, so how is he supposed to do a better job than the other guy? Despite what the song says, love is more than just knowing what not to do. It's knowing what you should do. So this song just doesn't connect with me. Add to that the overly twangy vocals and the heavily produced sound to back it up and this just simply isn't a good country song. But I could see it catching on in spite of me.
95- "Make It Right" - BTS -- Oh dear, we have more BTS to deal with? I suppose they just released their album "MAP OF THE SOUL: PERSONA," but I didn't really expect it to get multiple songs to charts. But at least it's only two and not more. And at least this song doesn't scream of desperation. It feels like more of a song instead of a scattered mess that "Boy with Luv." But it still switches back and forth from English and Korean while having sections of various genres that BTS tries to cram together. Top that off with an annoying horn-like sound playing throughout and this still isn't a very good song. Given that this is at No. 95 and will certainly be gone next week, I have less motivation to dive into the Korean portions of the song, but I think the random English phrases clue me in on the idea that this still isn't a creatively written song. Just typical boy band lyrics pandering to their oblivious audience. So yeah, this is a bit smoother than "Boy with Luv," but I'll still be happy to see this gone and hope that it never re-charts.
96- "Hey Look Ma, I Made It" - Panic! At the Disco -- I will admit that last year I was very bad at listening to full-length albums. I was really gung-ho in 2017 and created a top 10 favorite albums list on this blog that year, but in 2018 I only listened to a handful that caught my attention outside the ones that album bombed on the charts. There were a lot of albums that I wrote down on my Excel file from 2018 that I simply never got around to and one of them was the "Pray for the Wicked" album from Panic! At the Disco. I meant to listen to it, but just didn't get around to it. But I loved "Say Amen (Saturday Night)" and "High Hopes," their two big singles from the album. And now we have a new single from the album now that "High Hopes" officially ran its course on the charts, lasting longer than I ever expected and probably becoming a song that will survive for many years to come. But crammed in between those two songs on the album is "Hey Look Ma, I Made It," which does have a much different feel to it than the other two songs. Outside portions of the chorus, it's really not a song that is loud and in your face as the other two, which might make it a decent follow-up single. Sometimes it's good to making you sound fresh to have singles that don't sound all alike. But admittedly, in listening to all three songs in a row, which I just now did, this is the song that feels the most like filler. A song to serve as an appetizer to "High Hopes" or a pallet cleanser in between the two anthems so that you're not completely overwhelmed. Maybe in the journey through the album, that's a good thing. But the song on it's own isn't quite as memorable or exciting. The song resembles the other two songs quite a bit both in sound and theme, but is overall subpar in comparison. Although this is me being a bit more nitpicky than super negative because I still think this is a good and I'll hope it does well. I'm just not going to remember as much as the other two.
