billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - november 30, 2019 (VIDEO)

Oh boy, this was a total mess... and about the last time I'm properly rendering a video in 4K, because I'm not entirely pleased with how this turned out when it came to this timeline. Anyway, next up... not sure, as the schedule gets messy, but we'll see how it turns - enjoy!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - november 30, 2019

You know, normally Billboard is a bit more organized when they delineate when their tracking year begins and ends - not this year. A lot of this is tied into some of the messiness that came when they adjusted their tracking week to be closer to current activity instead being so far post-dated, but since the calendar doesn't exactly correlate, this could well be counted as a 53rd week in this year... or the first next year. It's annoying, to say the least, but I'll adjust my records and thumbnail as we get new information.

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - april 13, 2019 (VIDEO)

And here we go... I'm expecting a bit of a mess with this one, but it was a busy week and it looks like this came out early than I expected... heh, go figure.

Enjoy!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - april 13, 2019

You can make the argument that this is one of the weeks where the Billboard Hot 100 will attract the MOST attention. Not just because of the expected album bomb from Billie Eilish or the posthumous charting entries from Nipsey Hussle - a damn shame he didn't achieve them when he was alive - but because of our new #1. And I'll be blunt, I'm a little surprised that the Streisand effect delivered so much controversy that we got this #1 - but there's a number of factors that got us to this point, and considering the hot takes and spin we've seen around it, I'll continue the work to set the record straight.

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - march 17, 2018 (VIDEO)

And here we go - took a lot of processing power to get it out the door, but it turned out pretty well as I still keep tweaking my camera.

Next up, looks like Young Fathers - stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - march 17, 2018

...so I said last week that most of my general predictions surrounding the week came true about the expected activity, and while I also did say that I expected Meghan Trainor to break through this week, I also made the statement that I didn't expect much else to happen. And boy, was I wrong in the worst possible way, as despite a few very select gems, XXXTENTACION and Chris Brown of all people showed up to remind me that the charts might just be at their most intolerable since 2016, and there's far from enough good songs to save them!

video review: 'texoma shore' by blake shelton

I honestly don't think anybody gave a shit about this record. Including Blake, really, because the bad tracks really do feel like they outweigh the good here...

Anyway, hopefully we'll get to SHREDDERS next, so stay tuned!

album review: 'texoma shore' by blake shelton

So here's the frustrating thing about writing this review: if you are not a Blake Shelton fan or peripherally interested in mainstream country, I have no idea what I could say to make this interesting. Let's face it, Blake Shelton is on his eleventh album, he cowrote only one of eleven songs on it, and with the lead-off single and set of cowriters he has, I had no reason to expect anything new or challenging. It wasn't like Bringing Up The Sun, where there was a very real question how he could pivot out of bro-country, or like If I'm Honest, where the only real reason I wanted to cover it was the fallout of his failed marriage to Miranda Lambert and what he was building with Gwen Stefani. 

But this time, he explicitly said he wanted this album to reflect 'where he is now, that's just happy and going with the flow'. In other words, going into Texoma Shore this felt like a record where Blake Shelton was just punching the clock - it was shorter, it looked to be heading back to his adult-contemporary style that made for pleasant and sedate but not really interesting music, it had the feel of an artist just looking to coast - hell, he's even using the same producer! So in other words, I'm probably going to end up repeating some things I said in my last two Blake Shelton reviews, but you know, even if he's not trying I might as well give this my due diligence, so what did I find on Texoma Shore?

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - september 30, 2017 (VIDEO)

Overall not a bad week, and I have to say, it's going to be interesting in the days ahead here, especially given all the coming shakeups.

But on the topic of one of those shakeups not quite going according to plan... well, stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - september 30, 2017

This is one of those weeks where I'm increasingly unsure where the hell the Billboard Hot 100 is going, and not just because we've got a few albums bombs in the making that are going to be dropping over the next few weeks for further destabilize things. And while part of it is also linked to the headlong race for what'll make the year-end lists, the larger point is that as a whole, songs that you'd expect to not seem fragile feel increasingly perilous, especially when you take a look at the top ten.

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - may 27, 2017 (VIDEO)

Yeah, pretty short week overall, but not a bad one in my books.

Next up, Zac Brown Band and followed by one of the worst records I've covered thus far this year - stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - may 27, 2017

So we're now at the halfway point of the Billboard year - and wow, 2017 has been something, that's for damn sure. I'm still not quite sure how to evaluate it as a whole. One thing's for sure is that it's been a turbulent year thus far - Ed Sheeran might have held the top for a measurable time, but ever since then it has been song after song seizing the #1, showing the sort of turnover that you'd more expect on the UK charts than the United States.

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - december 3, 2016 (VIDEO)

Well, this is a damn good way to start a year, I most certainly approve. More of this, less all of 2016, please?

Next up, though, after the Patreon reshuffling of the schedule last night... well, we'll see. Stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - december 3, 2016

Well, here we are, folks: welcome to the third year of Billboard BREAKDOWN! Year three, covering the Billboard year of 2017, and man alive, I'm hoping that it'll be be better than the disaster of mediocrity that was 2016. We'll be covering more that near the end of December during the year-end end lists, but until then, let's focus on 2017... and I have to say, if we're going to start off like this, I've got a really good feeling going forward. Not perfect by any stretch, but overall... yeah, there's a lot to get excited about.

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - july 16, 2016 (VIDEO)

This was... well, an interesting week to say the least. I genuinely hope we get a shakeup instead of a summer lull, because I don't have much patience for the rest of this. In the mean time, though, I've got Weval, then probably Grace and a few others coming soon, so stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - july 16, 2016

So here's the thing about the summer lull period with the charts: you get out of it basically what you put in. If you have good songs primed to go live in May or June that'll have some momentum, you'll basically have your summer lineup providing there's no big shakeup or surprises. But if you don't... well, basically you're left with most of the Hot 100 right now, which isn't so much outright awful but full of tracks that engender barely a reaction at all. Fellow music critic Todd In The Shadows described these tracks as fragments, but I'd prefer the term hollow: they fill time on the radio, but you're left feeling like nothing sticks in the way some years have, which is bad even for pop.

video review: 'if i'm honest' by blake shelton

I honestly thought I wouldn't be able to get this review out tonight - turns out I was able to film and edit two, the latter of which will drop tomorrow and is sure to cause a stir. 

Want to know what it is? Stay tuned to find out!

album review: 'if i'm honest' by blake shelton

When I reviewed Blake Shelton's last record Bringing Back The Sunshine in 2014, I made the comment that he had to be the luckiest guy working in modern country music. In retrospect, I probably too kind to the guy.

So let's put his career in context, shall we? A mild-mannered b-lister who played a little more contemporary than Tim McGraw but not quite as rowdy or political as Toby Keith, Blake Shelton got his start in the 2000s with some decent tunes but nothing you'd really care about after you heard it with very rare exception. Part of this is because Blake Shelton maybe wrote one or two songs per album - he wasn't really a distinctive authorial voice - but partially because as a whole he was never all that consistent or interesting, and like everyone else, I assumed when Chris Young came along Blake Shelton would find himself replaced. But then bro-country happened, and having shrewdly snagged a judge position on The Voice that he'd ride to victory after victory, Blake Shelton was able to capitalize on the biggest spotlight he'd ever have to ride the trend to previously unheard of heights. And sure, some of this was luck - Tim McGraw was fighting for artistic freedom against Curb, Toby Keith was sinking into alcoholic mediocrity, and the rest of his competition were either too young or too harsh to play in a similar genial lane - unlike someone like Jason Aldean, Blake Shelton seemed capable of smiling when he was singing, even if he hadn't written a single song on a fair few albums by then. 

And then things changed. His marriage to fellow country superstar Miranda Lambert failed in spectacular tabloid fashion, and he got involved with fellow judge on The Voice and pop star in her own right Gwen Stefani. And while I was eagerly waiting for the album of unbridled hellfire that Miranda Lambert was bound to bring - there's not a woman in mainstream country who can get as emotively raw and pissed off as Lambert since Reba McEntire - I was genuinely curious to hear what Blake Shelton was planning. And the record almost seemed to designed to provoke controversy, featuring the most writing credits Blake Shelton has ever had on an album and the title If I'm Honest. And while there's a part of me that's definitely skeptical - at the end of the day Blake Shelton is a consummate businessman who has never been particularly raw or personal in his writing - I hoped there was something here that cut a little deeper... so did we get it?

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - may 28, 2016 (VIDEO)

Nearly forgot to post this, but it did go over pretty well, so I'm pleased. Next up, the 20,000 subscriber Q&A, so stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - may 28, 2016

And now... the cooldown week. After the past several weeks of instability, this is the return to the 'status quo' that is characterized by songs returning to old positions of strength and a ton of returning entries. So while to the outside viewer it might appear that there were a lot of shifts this week - and there were, let's not kid ourselves - most are just resets to a form of equilibrium as Drake and Beyonce's big debuts continue to fade away. As such, you'd think it'd be a quieter week, and for the most part it was...