Billboard Hot 100 Top 10:
1- "Nice for What" - Drake (+1) -- I'm not at all surprised that Drake managed to get back to the top spot on the Hot 100. "This is America" has been held up these past two weeks mostly on huge streaming numbers, which crashed a bit this week. "This is America" still has slightly more streaming than "Nice for What," but the reason why Drake went back to No. 1 is more consistency on the radio while neither song got much in terms of sales. Even so, this is a really weak No. 1 as the numbers for "Nice for What" this week were 36.8 million U.S. streams, 23,000 sales and 78.9 million radio audience. That means it's not going to stay here for much longer unless nothing is willing to jump up, which at the moment almost seems like the case. The rules are that someone has to be No. 1, so Drake will gladly hold onto the title until someone steps up.
2- "This is America" - Childish Gambino (-1) -- The streaming numbers for "This is America" dropped to 45.2 million U.S. streams, which is ahead of "Nice for What," but again those radio numbers are only at 21.7 million in audience, up from 16.7 million last week, so it's increasing, but not by much. That number is enough to debut on the radio charts at No. 46, so it has a long way to go to be relevant. With this not being your typical single as it's more of a political commentary on today's society in the form of a song and video, it makes sense that the song ends up being more frontloaded in terms of its performance. But hey, the fact that it debuted at No. 1 and stayed there for an additional week is impressive in its own right. I would love to see it stick around, but I'm not sure how long it actually will.
3- "God's Plan" - Drake (=) -- I think "God's Plan" is about to start it's decline, but doing so would require other songs to want to start rising. A lot of movement in the bottom half of the top 10 this week, but nothing strong enough to shake up this current lineup at the top, so until then Drake will be camped out here. And I'm totally fine with that as I enjoy both "God's Plan" and "Nice for What."
4- "Psycho" - Post Malone featuring Ty Dolla $ign (=) -- I'm really happy that the rest of Post Malone's album is fizzling away rather quickly from the Hot 100, but I'm also really concerned as to why this is still here. The radio is incredibly strong with 83.6 million, jumping from No. 8 to No. 6 on the radio charts. I am fully aware that streaming is a thing that's dominated by the rap and hip-hop genre, but why is the radio falling in love with this? I mean, in addition to being No. 6 overall on radio, this song is No. 3 on pop radio and still gaining fast in spins. I don't know why any pop radio station would even play this song, so the idea that all of them are playing it so often is baffling to me. That means it could actually even start to jump up on the charts if the three songs ahead of it continue to fizzle out and that would be quite the shame.
5- "The Middle" - Zedd, Maren Morris & Grey (+1) -- "The Middle" leads the radio charts for a third straight week, but is slowly slipping, so I don't know how much life it has in it at the moment, but it jumps up into the top five because it's remaining more consistent overall than "Meant to Be," which took a bit of tumble this week. I'm content with this holding a spot in the top five for the moment, though I would prefer that "Boo'd Up" and "No Tears Left to Cry" take a turn in the region as "The Middle" has been in the top 10 for a while. That's 12 weeks to be exact, or about three months, as it's wavered between No. 5 and No. 8 for those weeks.
6- "Yes Indeed" - Lil Baby & Drake (+43) -- This is a situation where we jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire. After a total of 13 weeks in the top 10, "Look Alive" by BlocBoy JB and Drake, has finally slipped beneath the surface of the top 10, but yet Drake replaces himself as he drags another punk rapper with zero talent into the top 10. Rest assured, Lil Baby had nothing to do with this hit. It's all Drake's name on the song that boosted it this high. And no, Drake's actual musical content has nothing to do with this either. Just his name being on the song. Because Drake sounds as bored as ever as he lazily phones in a verse as if he lost a bet while Lil Baby put together a generic rap song around it where he mumbles and slurs his way through bars as if he recorded it drunk after barely memorizing the lyrics or possibly reading through the lyrics while recording. I hope that I don't have to wait 13 weeks for this song to go away.
7- "Meant to Be" - Bebe Rexha & Florida Georgia Line (-2) -- No hurt feelings for me here, even though I still enjoy this song. "Meant to Be" was in the top five for a total of 11 weeks and is in its 16th week in the top 10. It was bound to start falling at some point. It also spends a 26th week at No. 1 on the Hot Country Songs chart, with no signs of faltering there any time soon.
8- "Boo'd Up" - Ella Mai (+3) -- It's really impressive that this little song has become quite the phenomenon. Ella Mai hit the sweet spot with her first Hot 100 entry as this has been on fire ever since it debuted. Based on that momentum, I was expecting it to be here this week. But when I initially played and talked about it a few weeks back, I did not envision it being the type of song that would be a top 10 hit. The interesting thing about this song is that it's only at No. 30 on the radio songs with 35.1 million audience and has practically no sales. It's done well based on strong streaming that has continued to gain momentum. That means there's still a lot of room to grow and if it taps into this potential, this could be here for a while.
9- "No Tears Left to Cry" - Ariana Grande (-2) -- I expected the BBMAs to have a bigger impact on the charts this week. I was hoping Ariana would be boosted up to the top five instead of being muscled back down to No. 9 following huge gains by "Yes Indeed" and "Boo'd Up." I really want this song to be a monster hit that holds a spot in the top 10 for the next few months because Ariana deserves it. And the pop genre really needs more hits because it's been struggling, especially when it comes to female pop artists. Not enough of them have done that well recently.
10- "Fake Love" - BTS (new) -- Ha ha, they did it. BTS got a song of their's to hit the top 10 of the U.S. Hot 100. And because of it, the BTS Army is in major celebration mode. If you go look at any comment section for a YouTube channel or website that covers the Hot 100, all you'll see is an endless stream of comments from this rabid fan base celebrating this major achievement. Because, yes, this is the first top 10 appearance for BTS on the Hot 100. It's also the first appearance in the top 10 for a K-Pop group and the first time a K-Pop song has debuted in the top 10. Although it's NOT the first time a K-Pop song has been in the top 10, lest we forget that a dude named Psy was a thing as both "Gangnum Style" and "Gentleman" hit the top 10 in 2012-2013.
Ever since BTS became a thing, this Army has been everywhere in comment sections wondering why BTS hasn't been in the top 10 or No. 1 every time a new song of their's is released. Now this is a very illogical, emotionally-driven fan base that have been endlessly drooling all over themselves for months and years, so I don't expect them to care about or listen to a random music blogger such as myself, but I'm going to point out a major distinction anyways that none of them care to think about. This is the Billboard charts of the UNITED STATES. Streaming and sales from are counted from THIS COUNTRY ONLY. In other words, the 110 million YouTube views that "Fake Love" has accumulated in a week means almost jack squat when most of those views come from Korea. The actual results for this song are 27 million U.S. streams across ALL streaming platforms. And it has no U.S. radio and very weak sales that are only going to plummet. In other words, this is going to act like nearly every One Direction song on the charts. Strong first week and nothing in the ensuing weeks.
I'll have plenty more to say about this song and this group down below, but I have not been shy in my opinions that this is a mediocre-at-best boy band with little talent and pretty bad music. Why they've become such a monstrous hit is beyond me, but let's keep these boys back in Korea where they belong and away from the United States. Not that we as a whole listen to quality music anyways, but we certainly don't need any of BTS's garbage spamming our charts even more. If saying this causes the BTS Army to swarm and attack me, then so be it. But I'm not a significant enough of a presence in the world of music for them to actually do so and none of my Facebook friends have admitted to me that they are into these boys, so I think I'm safe in saying all of this.
Rising on the Hot 100:
11- "Friends" - Marshmello & Anne-Marie (+5) -- There are a few other songs that I thought would get more of a boost this week than "Friends," but I'm certainly happy that Marshmello and Anne-Marie are now closer than ever to breaking into the top 10. Anne-Marie has been in the region with Clean Bandit on "Rockabye," but if the two of them break in next week, this will be Marshmello's first appearance. For the sake of female pop songers and the EDM genre, I really hope this makes the jump. Being that BTS are set to come crashing down next week, the door will be wide open.
16- "Be Careful" - Cardi B (+7) -- It's been a rougher than expected journey for Cardi B ever since this new album debuted. After "Bodak Yellow" vaulted her into superstardom, you wouldn't think it would be that difficult for her to get a song to stick in the top 10. But she is now significantly closer to getting back in. Although I'm surprised she's seeing more success with "Be Careful" than "I Like It." The latter is the one that debuted in the top 10 during that album bomb debut week and seemed like the type of song that would be a monster hit, even though I didn't want it to be.
19- "I Like It" - Cardi B, Bad Bunny & J Balvin (+2) -- Speaking of "I Like It," as you can see, it isn't too far behind "Be Careful." Though if you do the math on how much each song rose this week, "Be Careful" has a lot more momentum at the moment as "I Like It" was ahead last week. "I Like It" is the slightly better song, but not by a whole lot, so I would rather neither song had success. Maybe both songs will get stuck in the teens.
35- "Lucid Dreams" - Juice WRLD (+39) -- In case you missed my comments last week, surprisingly this is a song that I don't mind at all. When it comes to all these untalented SoundCloud rappers that come out of nowhere to be huge hits, this song is a lot better constructed, Juice WRLD is actually rapping so that you can understand what he is saying and has decent flow, and the song feels like Juice WRLD actually cares about what he's singing instead of just rapping about about drugs, sex, money or fame. I'm not going to say I love this song, but I'd be fine if it keeps this keeps momentum.
42- "Overdose" - YoungBoy Never Broke Again (+10) -- I would definitely prefer Juice WRLD becoming a thing that YoungBoy continuing to gain momentum. Luckily his songs haven't had huge breakout success as he doesn't seem close to getting a top 10, but YoungBoy occupying any spot on the Hot 100 is frustrating because it means he's keeping someone else out. Most likely someone who is more deserving of being there.
53- "All Girls Are the Same" - Juice WRLD (+39) -- This is the lesser of the two Juice WRLD songs on the charts. I prefer his relationship venting in "Lucid Dreams" than "All Girls Are the Same," especially since the mindset of all girls being the same is certainly not going to get him very far in life. Luckily "Lucid Dreams" remains the higher charting song as both songs jumped 39 spots after their debut last week. I'm curious to see how these songs perform moving forward.
58- "For the First Time" - Darius Rucker (+13) -- Not a ton of country doing well this week, but I'm not going to complain at a Darius Rucker song doing well, even though he's done better in the past. But still, Darius Rucker not quite giving it his all is still way better than most country in this world, so let's bring this song to the top 50.
70- "Alone" - Halsey featuring Big Sean & Stefflon Don (+14) -- Does anyone even remember that this song exists? I certainly don't until I see it again every week while going through the charts. And I hope it's that way with everyone because we need to stop giving a bland singer like Halsey success on the charts. It encourages her to keep making bland music. Let's dig deeper and award other female pop singers who are actually trying to make good music.
71- "Mercy" - Brett Young (+15) -- I expect Brett Young to find a lot of success on country radio. I suppose that's not the worst thing ever. But his previous major country hits were actually worthy of being hits while this one is becoming a hit simply because country radio assumes we all now love Brett Young rather than rising on its own merits because this is rather forgettable.
New Arrivals:
10- "Fake Love" - BTS -- When I first covered this group on this blog at some point last year, I was apologetically underwhelmed. I heard so much hype about them because the internet won't shut up, but when I listened to them, I was like, "That was is?" But now I've completely dropped the apologetically aspect of that because the BTS Army is the most annoying fan base, possibly in the history of music. And there's been a lot of annoying boy band fan bases over the years. Their non-stop clamor that these boys are practically gods that have descended down to Earth along with their inability to shut up and stop spamming every single music website has completely driven me into the ground. Every week when I look up the new top 10, I enjoy spending a bit of time in comment sections to see what other people thought. Yet in weeks where BTS released a song, the comment sections are overflowed with the BTS Army, regardless of whether or not they charted, wondering why BTS isn't No. 1 or isn't in the top 10. So you can imagine what this week was like with they actually debuted in the top 10.
To be fair, despite my extreme annoyance with the BTS Army, if these boys come up with something good, I will be honest and praise them. I won't hate just to hate. But the thing is, I've not yet heard a BTS song that was worth anything. These boys are worshiped as gods, yet their content is void of anything interesting. This song here is them being upset at this fake love. They've tried hard, but the relationship is not working because love isn't perfect. It's quite generic. I could probably come up with hundreds of songs that attempt this exact same sentiment, but actually have depth and emotion to it. This is just generic and empty. The other problem that really annoys me is that there's seven of these boys. Yet if I'm not following along with the lyrics on Genius, I have no idea where one of them begins and the other ends, except for when they try to sound hip and modern by rapping a lot more than they should or when one of them is singing English while the others are singing Korean, so that they can try to pander to their English-speaking audience. Otherwise, they all have similar-sounding voices and they spend no time trying to harmonize. They just take turns with the main melody. The voice of the lyrics is singular. The song doesn't need more than one person. If they came up with various harmonies or had distinct voices with some on tenor and others on bass, then they could justify three or four people. But seven? It's overkill.
In short, these boys could possibly do well in a dance competition and they're attractive enough to swoon all the teenage Korean girls, but their music isn't interesting. The lyrics are basic and generic. All their voices are too similar and they spend no effort justifying the existence of seven members. This song specifically is a forgettable song about a broken relationship and it's so forgettable that when you throw me the title "Fake Love," I'll probably start singing the Drake song instead of the BTS version.
68- "Change Lanes" - Kevin Gates -- Since we do have 10 other new songs on the charts this week instead of just BTS, let's get to them. We start with Kevin Gates, the guy responsible for "2 Phones" and "Really Really" in 2016. And he has two songs for us this week, but we start with "Change Lanes." In this song, Kevin starts out by telling us that he's gone through a lot of pain in his life and he's praying to the Lord to take all away. That's a nice sentiment. But it doesn't seem like he's making much of an effort for God to take away any of his pain. OK, fine, we'll steer clear from religion here because Kevin does the same thing in starting his song by talking about religion, but then going off in a completely different direction. In fact, I have no idea which direction he takes because this song seems completely devoid of any focus. If he wanted to write a song about all the pain he's gone through and how he's going to do his best to change, that would be great. But this song seems like a bunch of random phrases thrown together just because they rhyme. It's as if he came up with 30-45 seconds worth of content, then filled up with a bunch of nonsensical filler in order to get it to three minutes.
73- "Like That" - Kris Wu -- After me trashing on BTS, we now move over the China to discuss Kris Wu. Well, kinda. Kris was born in China, but moved over to Canada with his mom at age 10 and lived there for most of his teenage years. When he was 22, he joined the Korean boy band EXO, was in that group for two years before he left and is now doing all sorts of things as a Chinese actor, singer and model. Perhaps a few of our BTS boys could try this. I mean, it's not like they'd be missing anything we a few less members. Back to Wu, on the acting front, he's starred in several Chinese movies, but on the Western front, he was in "xXx: The Return of Xander Cage" and "Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets." So this guy is quite versatile. As far as this song goes, lyrically it's nothing special. He's just going on about how awesome this girl is. But what makes this interesting is that he has a lot of charm and charisma. He really sells his generic lyrics to make it seem like he truly cares. And the music itself is smooth and melodic, with enough of a groove to get you moving on a dance floor. The end results in a song that actually feels romantic and emotional, coming from a guy that actually seems like he has a lot of talent that he's making good use of.
79- "Southside" - Lil Baby -- I really had no idea who Lil Baby was until he showed up with Drake last week and is now in the top 10 with said song. But apparently the rap world knew who he was because he has a new album that dropped recently that has a whole bunch of features, including Young Thug, Lil Uzi Vert and Offset, in addition to the Drake song. Luckily I only have to cover two of those songs from the album instead of all 17. The first one is Lil Baby on his own, showcasing what he can do as a rapper without any of his friends featured, which is absolutely nothing. He's from Atlanta, so I'm guessing he's talking about his life as a rapper living on the south side of the city. In this song, he's talking about all the drugs his doing and selling, all of the money and jewelry he has, as well as all the girls he's sleeping with. That's all. And he's rapping this in all of his mumbling, slurring fashion. So I'm really confused as to what the world sees in this dude in order to try to make him the new big thing in rap music.
80- "Life Goes On" - Lil Baby featuring Gunna & Lil Uzi Vert -- Our second, and thankfully final song from Lil Baby this week is even more frustrating than "Southside" as it suffers from the sin of only having one line of music that was written. I envision that they put together that one line, then did copy and paste to fill four minutes of music and Lil Baby came up with different generic rap lyrics to fill up the four minutes. Said lyrics consist of cars, girls and riches, with half-hearted, generic jabs at the other rappers in the industry sprinkled in there. And in case his portion isn't boring enough, whoever this rapper named Gunna is, comes in and is even more generic with worse mumbling. Top that all off by a cameo from Lil Uzi who probably recorded 10 seconds of song for Lil Baby just so he could have his name attached. Said 10 seconds gets thrown in at the end as an afterthought to boost sales for the song.
82- "Let It Sing" - Kevin Gates -- The second Kevin Gates song from this week. I didn't like "Change Lanes," as you can see from above, but at least that song had a topic and an idea behind it. This song just feels like he's singing about whatever comes to his mind. I tried to figure out what it was about or what point he was trying to make, but I rather quickly gave up after not coming up with anything. I will say that Kevin Gates has a voice that seems like it fits the genre and thus gives him potential to be interesting, but both of these songs this week feel like they are devoid of any sort of content. So if in the future Kevin Gates picks an interesting subject matter and decides to create a whole song focused around that subject where he manages to stay on topic for the whole three minutes, then maybe I could buy into it. But this week he did the exact opposite.
83- "Sangria Wine" - Pharrell Williams & Camila Cabello -- After a pretty rough stretch of new music, with the only good song up to this point coming from Kris Wu, we finally get rewarded with a song that's worth something. I heard this song when it was first released on May 17th, more out of chance than anything. I saw a new song by Pharrell and Camila and that was enough for me to click the video of the official audio that was trending at the moment. And yeah, this song is infectious. Thus when I saw that Pharrell and Camila performed it at the BBMAs, I was excited because I felt that this meant that it was chart this week. I was wrong about a lot of my BBMA predictions as those performances mostly failed to impact the charts, but I was happy to see this song chart. Sangria is a Spanish drink and the Dutty Wine is a Jamaican dance move. It seems like Pharrell and Camila are combining the two to create their own dance move? The song talks about her moving her body, front and back, side-to-side, doing the sangria wine. And that's it. It's a simple dance song where the song gives us dance moves to move to, infused with just enough Latin Pop to give it the perfect flow. I think this song has all the right ingredients to become a huge, summer dance hit. I hope it does.
84- "Welcome to the Party" - Diplo, French Montana & Lil Pump featuring Zhavia Ward -- Speaking of dancing and parties, one that includes French Montana and Lil Pump is one that I don't care to join. Although Diplo himself has done a lot of great things over has career, the best of which have come from his EDM trio Major Lazer that he founded. But he's also done a whole lot of stuff that ranges from mediocre and forgettable to outright bad, so his name alone doesn't excite me. And finally we have Zhavia Ward invited, who comes from the new singing competition "The Four," that I don't think anyone watched. Yet it's sad that "The Four" managed to get a singer to chart, but the new rebooted season of "American Idol" didn't. The four of these artists together form a fairly generic EDM/rap song that was good enough to be successful background noise in "Deadpool 2," but forgettable enough to make me not even remember that fact until I looked the song up, despite me really enjoying that movie. If Diplo had invited singers or rappers who actually had talent, this could've worked really well. His beat is a bit generically robotic, but if there was talent behind it, it may have been serviceable. But French Montana and Lil Pump were the wrong rappers to bring on, although Lil Pump is better on this than he is from anything on his own, even though that's not saying much. And Zhavia Ward is barely even on this track. In the end, this song isn't awful. But more than anything it makes me a bit annoyed that this is the song from "Deadpool 2" that charted and not Celine Dion's "Ashes."
86- "Champion" - NAV featuring Travis Scott -- Next up we have Canadian rapper NAV, who most recently charted last year with his song "Wanted You," featuring Lil Uzi Vert, a song that I neither enjoyed, nor particularly remembered. If NAV wants to get me to remember his music, featuring Travis Scott isn't much of an upgrade over Lil Uzi. Speaking of Travis Scott on this song, this actually feels more like Travis Scott featuring NAV as most of this song is Travis Scott rapping about how cool he is with NAV coming in for a brief verse in the middle, mumbling some generic rap lyrics. To me this feels like NAV and Travis Scott's pitch to be included in NBA Finals advertising as "Ballin' like I'm in the NBA" is the first line of the song while the chorus includes the line "We got a trophy like a champion," even though I'm not sure how the rest of the song fits in with those two lines. But ESPN never cares about that when they include a dumb rap song like this, so I guess that's all these two really tried to do. Throw those two lines in and rap about generic rap stuff around in.
98- "Downtown's Dead" - Sam Hunt -- It infuriated me just seeing another Sam Hunt song on the charts after that abomination that was "Body Like a Back Road." The only silver lining was seeing this debut all the way down at No. 98 instead of on the top half of the charts because maybe that means the world has grown cold to this untalented country wannabe singer. I suppose I shouldn't get too far ahead of myself so that I don't curse this. Putting my rage aside, I tried objectively listening to this song, but all I got was bland mediocrity and poorly written lyrics on top of a song that's more basic southern rock than it is country. Without this girl, downtown's dead and Friday night might as well be another Tuesday night, even though he tells us that this a booming city with lots of people. Yeah, I don't care. And I don't really understand what he means when he says "As long as you're in my head, there ain't no way I can paint a ghost town red." Interpret that for me if you really want to. In the meantime, I'll just settle with the idea that he needed words that rhymed with dead for the chorus. I suppose the only positive I can get out of this is that he's not doing something offensively awful and dumb like comparing a girl's body to a back road, while thinking that's romantic enough to sing to his wife. I'll take boring Sam Hunt over offensively awful Sam Hunt.
99- "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" - Backstreet Boys -- Oh this is a treasure. I began this new arrivals section by discussing why I think BTS is painfully average and extremely overrated. Now I get to spend the last entry, comparing them to possibly the best boy band to ever exist. Why do the Backstreet Boys work so well? First off, they're all talented singers on their own. And yeah, they often take turns singing the melody, but their voices are distinct and they do a solid job selling the emotion and the passion behind their music. But potentially more important is that they harmonize. And they are dang good at harmonizing. Each of the five of them has a purpose as together they create beautiful harmonies that make their music soar through the roof. The harmonies are so good, that they perfectly frame the solo outings of the song to make them even better. It's well constructed music with phenomenal singers that have caused this group to stand the test of time. I still hear songs like "I Want It That Way" and "Everybody (Backstreet's Back)" played today on the radio or at dance parties. Go listen to those two songs, or most of Backstreet Boys' music, then listen to BTS and I think it'll be a no-brainer as to which boy band has knowledge of how to be a good boy band. I highly doubt many people will remember BTS in 25 years like we all do Backstreet Boys.
But that's just a general comparison because the opportunity so perfectly presented itself. Let's zero in on this specific song because sometimes bands or groups are great in their hey day, but are more average in their later years. It's crazy to think that the Backstreet Boys are celebrating their 25th anniversary this year and yet are STILL together. In their year of formation, 1993, Nick Carter, the youngest member, was only 13 years old. Kevin Richardson, the oldest member, was 21 going on 22. So they were actual boys. Now they're kinda the Backstreet Men, soon to be the Backstreet Old Men as Nick is now 38 and Kevin will be turning 47 in October. But amazingly, they've still got it. Yeah, the lyrics of the song are basic, but they've always had fairly basic lyrics. The power with all of their songs, this song included, comes with the passion and energy that they bring to the table as a group. The song starts with Nick on his own, but slowly everyone else comes in and we have the powerful Backstreet Boys harmonies that they still are great at. AJ gets verse two, with his verse bringing a distinct sound to it as compared to Nick's. And those two are the only two that get solo time this song because the song as a whole didn't need it. The other three are perfectly fine with adding to the harmonies of the song. What makes this song unique is the modern influence of EDM infused into it. But I don't think it's overdone at all. I think it provides a good balance to the music of the song to make this still feel like classic Backstreet Boys of the 90's and 2000's while giving it a modern edge of 2018. Now just imagine if this became a hit. Wouldn't that be great?
