billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - march 25, 2017 (VIDEO)

So, might as well review the album all over again, apparently... by the Nine Hells, this was an absurd episode, but overall it's been well-received, so who the hell knows.

Next up, though, something equally as weird, but much better - stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - march 25, 2017

So last week I made a very optimistic prediction that Lorde would challenge Ed Sheeran last week, that she'd keep the airplay momentum and huge sales to seriously step up against 'Shape Of You' with 'Green Light'. In retrospect, someone probably should have smacked me with the big stick of reality, because I was wrong in spectacular fashion. The truth is that nothing could stand against Ed Sheeran this week - Divide massacred everything in its path, which meant that of our ten new arrivals, every single one of them are from Ed Sheeran... which is a bit ironic, considering that in critical circles he's sliding rapidly towards the backlash zone.

video review: '÷ (divide)' by ed sheeran

So this is going to get a ton of hits... and I'm not all that surprised, it was a fun record to talk about.

But next up, another movie review, so stay tuned!

album review: '÷ (divide)' by ed sheeran

The more I listen to Ed Sheeran, the more I'm a little baffled that he is as big as he is, especially in the mainstream.

Now that's not a knock against Sheeran, believe it or not - on average, he's probably released more singles I like than otherwise, because while I was no big fan of 'Sing' or 'Thinking Out Loud' or 'Photograph', I did really come to love 'Don't' and 'Lego House', and that's not even counting his big two singles from his new album, both of which I'd argue are really good. But it's more than the songs at this point, because Ed Sheeran doesn't make a lot of sense as a pop star, especially in recent years, from his look and presentation to his voice to his content! For one he's an acoustic singer-songwriter who isn't really playing to gimmicks beyond an uncanny knack for skipping into R&B and soul and blues and sticking the landing, and for another, his songs have the sort of distinctive detail and character that if anything show more of an auteur voice than a lot of modern pop. And that details matters, because Ed Sheeran is not writing about wealth and success - his stories are often small-scale and character-driven, with messy human framing and a lot of alcohol abuse - he'd be very much at home in the mid-90s adult alternative scene, which is a little bizarre to hear in 2017. Sure, he'll write the boring songs that'll make the young girls cry - he knows what pays the mortgage - but I'm far more interested in the Ed Sheeran that writes 'Don't' or 'Castle On The Hill' or the absolutely stunning 'Afire Love', which to this day remains one of my favourite songs of 2014. And it's amusing to me that Taylor Swift was one of the big forces to propelling Ed Sheeran to popularity around 2013, given that in the beginning she may have tried for populist authenticity and framing but never showed the courage to get raw or real outside of 'Back To December', so where she retreated into pop artifice, for Sheeran it all feels on the table - that's what gives it bite. 

As such, I was very interested in his next album ÷, which has been getting some interesting reviews, with the critical line seeming to hang on whether you buy into Sheeran's authenticity, especially in the detail of his stories. Whether or not that's fair is a different question - I have the suspicion if Sheeran was just any other indie folk songwriter nobody would care to ask - but given that authenticity is a pretty key factor to the emotional throughline of Sheeran's stories, it was always going to be a question. For me, it all came in the execution, and I had reason to hope this would click, so what did we get with ÷?

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - march 11, 2017 (VIDEO)

Man, this was a week of surprises - half songs I didn't think I'd like as much as I do, half because there wasn't a single damn Future song that I liked (and believe me, I tried).

Eh, anyway, next up we have something I wanted to talk about that's a little on the weirder side, so stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - march 11, 2017

So I didn't have a good feeling about this week going in, mostly because I knew what was coming. I knew that we were getting the first half of Future's 'two albums in two weeks' mistake, and when you follow it with The Chainsmokers working with Coldplay, Linkin Park working with Kiiara, and Lana Del Rey, I was gearing up for a disaster... and that's before I found out about our biggest new arrival, but we'll get to that.

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - january 28, 2017 (VIDEO)

I have to say, I'm still enjoying those Ed Sheeran songs more than I think anyone expected. Yeah, still pretty damn solid, I'm kind of looking forward to the record...

But on the topic of something I wasn't really looking forward to - well, stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - january 28, 2017

Well, isn't this a fascinating development... and yes, I did call it last week. Even though the rest of our chart really isn't all that interesting, everyone's eyes are fixed on the big #1 debut, the sort of return that if you had told me that this could have happened even five years ago, I would have called you crazy. And yet to some extent it is historic, because for the first time in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, this is the first time two songs from the same artist ever debuted in the Top 10 at the same time. I knew people had missed Ed Sheeran for some time, but that they missed him this much is a little amazing, at least to me.

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - october 31, 2015 (VIDEO)

And this was surprisingly easy to get done - either I'm getting better at editing or filming these, or positivity just works for me.

Next up... ooh, I've got a good one coming. No, not that one, the other one....

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - october 31, 2015

You know, when I looked at the Billboard Hot 100 charts this morning, I was astounded: because this week scanning through the returning entries and new arrivals, I could find little to complain. Even the songs I didn't like as much weren't so much bad and in a worse week would easily miss the bottom spots, whereas for the best we got a plethora of solid to genuinely great songs. Now I'm not too optimistic to expect this'll last in the long term, but weeks like this always give me a little thrill of hope: maybe the air is shifting as we come into the last weeks of 2015, you never know!

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.

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - september 19, 2015 (VIDEO)

I'm fairly certain this might be the longest episode of Billboard BREAKDOWN to date, and that's saying something. Here's betting the next one will be big too as so many of those album tracks from Beauty Behind The Madness drop out.

Next up, let's go metal and talk Iron Maiden - stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - september 19, 2015

You know, there are some weeks where I wonder why I even bother doing my album reviews, instead just focusing on Billboard BREAKDOWN, because in the case of certain records, nearly every song from it is going to land on the charts at some point, so why should I bother? And this week, not only do we have one of those cases, we also have a song from a previous case of it returning high to the charts. And yet, none of those have ended up being the biggest story of this week, mostly we have a new #1, the first of his career and one riding the wave of a tearful VMAs performance to take the very top. And folks, time to dust off those old pitchforks: Justin Bieber is back, and he's bigger than ever.

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - may 30, 2015 (VIDEO)

And that actually went a lot smoother than I expected. Nice feeling, that is.

Next up... hmm, I've got a country record I really want to cover, but will I have a chance to get to it before a special episode of Billboard BREAKDOWN or something special for this weekend? We'll see, but stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - may 30, 2015

So we’re now at the halfway point of the Billboard Hot 100 year, so let’s take stock of the situation – and while I wouldn’t quite say it was a disappointment, it certainly is interesting to see how certain trends have oscillated. R&B and neo-soul are fighting pop for dominance – with pop arguably gaining the upper hand – country has mostly stayed quiet to flush the last dregs of bro-country out of its system, all sorts of off-beat, weird tracks have fought their way up from both electronica and the indie scene, and hip-hop continues to marginalize talent and wordplay in favour of the lowest common denominator. Sure, I might lament the failure of a few promising pop and country tracks, but the rise of nu-crunk and the prevalence of Vine have driven more than its fair share of forgettable garbage to the top – and the alarming thing is that it keeps happening.

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - january 24, 2015 (VIDEO)

You know, I actually thought this episode would be a quicker edit than it was. Go figure.

Okay, I think I'm ready for some Fall Out Boy now, bring it on!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - january 24, 2015

This week, things finally seemed to get back to normal - and to be honest, I was expecting the charts to get a lot worse this week thanks to an injection of new album tracks from reviews I did last week. Instead, it seems like the opposite is true, as no additional Rae Sremmurd tracks landed on the Hot 100 - thank God - and Meghan Trainor had losses across the board. In fact, for the first week ever on Billboard BREAKDOWN, we have no returning entries, just brand-new songs - granted, with more Chris Brown than is healthy for anyone, but hey, we're getting Jhene Aiko, another Fall Out Boy single, and a punk cover of Taylor Swift, I'll take it!

the top 50 best songs of 2014

And now onto the third list, and by far one of the hardest to make. This year I discussed 210 albums and from there I had just under 700 songs that I considered eligible for this list. From there, the task of narrowing it down and ranking them was excruciatingly difficult, because I want to make sure this list was of the best of the best, and even with that I had to make some painful cuts. And once again, keep in mind these are not the hits. We have singles and deep cuts here, from artists who are defiantly mainstream to those lodged deep in the underground. And one more thing: for a song to land on this list, it has to have been released from an album I reviewed this year. If it was just a single, it doesn't cut it - but on a contrary note, if the single dropped last year or even the year before and the album was only released now... well, it qualifies in my books.

But enough wasting time, let's get this started with...

the top ten best hit songs of 2014 (VIDEO)

And here's list #2. Yes, I know it's excruciatingly early, but I'm posting this from the airport, it happens. Enjoy!