billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - march 5, 2016 (VIDEO)

Well, that was okay. Little late to blast this episode, but here it is.

And speaking of late... well, stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - march 5, 2016

I was expecting this week to be busier than it is. I mean sure, it wasn't exactly a quiet week - new number one, a bunch of new arrivals and some considerable jumps around the chart - but I was oddly expecting more. Turns out one of the biggest factors that I was expecting - Kanye's big release - actually made no impact, because he kept it TIDAL exclusive, which Billboard doesn't count. And as for the Grammys... well, maybe it's just me, but with a few exceptions, it actually seemed more reasonable.

video review: 'frame by frame' by cassadee pope

Ugh, I hate giving mixed-to-negative reviews to debut acts. Sorry about missing the update yesterday, mostly because I felt ill as all hell. Next will be either Pusha T or Danny Brown - not sure which one, we'll see.

album review: 'frame by frame' by cassadee pope

Let's talk about The Voice.

Formed in the waning years of American Idol, The Voice was a desperate move by NBC to regain some market share given that several of their mainstream programs were getting crushed by Fox and CBS. They made the gamble that if they brought in several recognizable (and bankable) music stars who were desperate to regain the spotlight and had them 'overcome' the image-based discrimination of the pop scene, they'd capitalize on the degeneration of American Idol. So recruiting Christina Aguliera, who hasn't done anything worth mentioning on the charts in years, Adam Levine, who had just come out of a failed album and was hit with writer's block, Cee-Lo Green, who had just had a massive hit and was looking to coast on it as long as he could, and Blake Shelton, who hadn't had chart success in almost a decade, NBC put the show out and it was a massive hit and proved instrumental in reviving the careers of the majority of the hosts as well.

But here's the element that gets interesting; most of the 'winners' from The Voice did not really succeed in the same vein as Kelly Clarkson or Carrie Underwood or even Adam Lambert or Phillip Phillips. The albums were delayed, the hits didn't really materialize, and the show didn't turn into the massive chart-defining money spinner that American Idol had been. In short, it's hard for me to look at this show and any of the winning contestants as just props to reinvigorate the careers of established artists. That's not denigrating any of their talent, but it's worth noting that Zac Brown might have actually been wrong when he slammed Blake Shelton and how his influence had led to success for his chosen stars - because it hasn't.

But perhaps this is going to change now with the arrival of Miss Cassadee Pope, the winner from the third season of The Voice (under Shelton's tutelage) and who has just released her new pop-country album Frame By Frame. Now to be completely honest, I never watched The Voice, half because I didn't care and half because, well, I don't have cable. So with that in mind, I took a look at Cassadee Pope's major label debut - did she rise above her reality show roots like Kelly Clarkson and Carrie Underwood ahead of her?