billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - august 4, 2018 (VIDEO)

So this was... generally pretty okay, I think. Yeah, let's go with that.

Next up, Cody Jinks - stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - august 4, 2018

You know, I'm always hesitant about saying the charts are back to 'normal' at any point, especially in 2018 where we have album bombs every other week and especially in comparison to years where we got fewer entries... but outside of one new top ten entry in particular, this week was pretty typical. Not precisely great by any margin, but it doesn't appear to be that bad either...

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - august 8, 2015 (VIDEO)

Yeah, a little late, but it uploaded late and I was tired last night. It happens.

Next up, Bea Miller, and then probably LMNO & Mr. Brady, followed by Ashley Monroe and B Dolan. Stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - august 8, 2015

Well so much for the summer lull. Even as the album release schedule has slowed a bit, it was a reasonably busy week on the charts, thanks to even more change-ups in country, a slice of album tracks from Future, and one of the biggest leaps to the Top 10 I've seen in a while.

video review: 'jackie' by ciara

Well, this was... honestly better than I expected. Seriously, I expected this to go in one ear and out the other, but there's some quality here, and 'I Bet' is genuinely excellent. Sincerely hope it's a bigger hit...

Okay, next up is Billboard BREAKDOWN, then time to see what all the fuss is about with this Chris Stapleton record. Stay tuned!

album review: 'jackie' by ciara

So here's the thing: even though I was a teenager who listened to popular music in the mid-2000s, I never really got into R&B in a big way. Part of it was that I was busy listening to symphonic metal at the time, but part of it was that the mid-to-late 2000s wasn't a great period for the genre, at least in the mainstream and especially for its female artists. Sure, you had Beyonce, Alicia Keys and Mary J. Blige, but the R&B boom of the 90s and early 2000s had faded significantly in the wave of crunk and the rising swell of pop. The male stars of the genre had fared better, with Usher, Ne-Yo, Chris Brown, and even Justin Timberlake raking in significant rewards, but many of the starlets who had done exceedingly well in the years prior began to struggle a bit.

And one of those artists was Ciara. Now let me admit right out of the gate I was never really a huge fan - her lyrics were frequently underwhelming when they didn't just get weird for no adequately explained reason, she occasionally worked with some obnoxious co-stars, especially early on, and her voice was so thin and delicate that it often seemed peripheral to the music, analogous to Janet Jackson but often lacking that core of strength and personality that I've tended to like about Janet's work. And yet in the era of snap percussion and incredibly minimalist beats, Ciara thrived for a few years. But as pop started to take over in the late 2000s, Ciara's material started to seem a little desperate to hold the spotlight, and that third album Fantasy Ride with its murder's row of top-line producers and guest stars ironically only stole more of the spotlight away from her. And after the follow-up the next year Basic Instinct did even worse, and I assumed, like many, that Ciara's career was over.

And yet in 2013 she came back with a self-titled album and with the rising tide of R&B, she was back on the charts. Now I'm not going to say that record's great - it's not, like most of Ciara's work I tended to find it pretty thin, as I tend to like my R&B more soulful or fiery, although Ciara's voice was becoming more rich with age. And the two Future collaborations didn't help, both of which I assume are there because they were in a relationship at the time. But two years later, the scene has changed - her engagement broke off with Future, her first child was born, her album quietly filled with some more material focusing on that broken relationship, and more cowriters and producers than ever. And as I said, I've never been a huge fan of Ciara's, but I really liked her debut single from this album 'I Bet', and hey, if she was going to spend an entire record taking potshots at Future for being a cheating asshole, that's a theme I can get behind! So how did Jackie turn out?

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

By the Nine Hells, it gets annoying when the upload keeps failing. In any case, I'm actually really quite happy with this episode - finally, some good songs and signs for the future.

Next up... you know, I haven't done a country review in a while. Let's change that, shall we...

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - february 14, 2015

This was one of the more deceptive weeks for the Hot 100 - not that it was a bad or good week, we'll get to that, but that from first glance, not a lot seemed to change or evolve. I mean, the Top 10 barely seemed to shift at all, and we only have seven songs, new or returning, to talk about. But look a little deeper and you'll start to see a lot more traffic, some expected, but a fair bit that did surprise me.