billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - august 18, 2018 (VIDEO)

Okay, a Travis Scott episode... but honestly, not a terrible one to put together, it just went a little long to put together.

Next up... ugh, let's deal with Nicki Minaj, stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - august 18, 2018

...look, it's the week of Travis Scott. Yes, there were other debuts and we'll be giving them a little bit more time, but this is the week Astroworld rolled over the Hot 100 thanks to much of the same sort of juicy Spotify payola - I mean I promotion that Drake got. But while this means that all seventeen songs from the album charted - pray for my soul - it's at least a better record than Scorpion was, arguably one of the better album bombs this year, and at the very least I don't expect it to last, especially given that next week Nicki Minaj will likely net some sort of chart success right behind him, and then Ariana Grande behind them!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - july 8, 2017 (VIDEO)

Well, this was interesting enough of a week... not exactly a great one, but still kind of fascinating how it split down the middle between solid to great songs and absolute shit.

Anyway, think I'm about ready for Algiers, and after that... well, we'll see, so stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - july 8, 2017

In retrospect, maybe I expected way too much from the American public. Granted, I think I've been saying that for most of the past two years, but in this case it's particularly - and for the most part confined to the United States, I should. Because when I made the prediction that Lorde topping the sales charts with Melodrama on the Billboard 200 album charts meant that she'd have something that'd cross over... well, even despite the lack of an obvious pop single, it's not like anything on Pure Heroine was an easy crossover either. And yet, not a single new song from Lorde on the Hot 100, and only one on the Bubbling Under charts - for perspective, Canada had four, and do I even need to say the catchphrase anymore before I decide to get it printed on merch?

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - june 17, 2017 (VIDEO)

Well, this was a rough week. But eh, I got through it. Next up... well, it's Dua Lipa, but after that, I need to tackle some old business - enjoy!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - june 17, 2017

So I was predicting that this week would actually be a little slower going in - after all, it didn't look like the top ten was shifting at all, there wasn't any major album releases on the horizon, we'd have another week in a holding pattern... and yet that's not what we got, pretty much thanks to the record that never hit my schedule and that I would have had no interest in covering if it had. Yep, folks: this is the week of Bryson Tiller, accounting for half of the new arrivals... joy.

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - january 2, 2016 (VIDEO)

Goddamnit, this took WAY too long to get online - and really, it's entirely YouTube's fault, because I went back to the original video file and it was FINE. But apparently it glitched out at some point and because I'm a perfectionist (mostly), I fought through hell to get it reuploaded.

In any case, Pusha T and Baroness to get done tonight, so stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - january 2, 2016

I'll be blunt and say it - if this week didn't have The Voice, the charts would be significantly less interesting. And if I actually took some of you up on the suggestions to just avoid covering hits from The Voice, it'd actually be a pretty short week, but considering this was another deceptive week where things do not appear all that interesting outside of it thanks to the holiday slowdown, I might as well discuss it in more detail - it's not like the other new entries appear that much better.

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - november 14, 2015 (VIDEO)

Well, this was late, but eh, it happens.

Okay, we've got a lot coming, let's see if I can handle some old business quickly. Stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - november 14, 2015

Well, I'd like to say that I called it... but let me be honest here: I didn't call all of it. And really, if you had seen any of the sales data or streams or just simply checked YouTube, you could have predicted this. What caught me a bit off guard wasn't just that we got our new #1, but that we got a new #2 right behind it, a one-two punch we haven't seen this year!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - october 17, 2015 (VIDEO)

Wow, I'm amazed I got this out at all. Multiple crashes, editing was absolute hell, but here it is. 

Next up... I want to cover something I'm actually going to like, so how about The Underachievers? Stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - october 17, 2015

Okay, normally what happens on a week full of new arrivals from a big release, you can normally expect a bunch of them to fall off the week after or at least take a sizeable dip after the hype fades. What you don't normally expect is nearly all of them to gain traction and for the charts to pick up all of the remaining tracks from that album you didn't cover and add them too! Such was the apparent magnetism of Drake & Future that not only did they not go away, they got bigger and even brought more along for the ride. Joy.