billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - august 3, 2019 (VIDEO)

Honestly, it was a tumultuous last evening, but I'm happy to be highlighting it all the same.

Next up... still not sure what I'm covering, but we'll have to see. Enjoy!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - august 3, 2019

...am I the only one feeling a bit of anticlimax this week? Yeah, we'll be getting to the biggest story in a second - and make no mistake, it's huge, and the sort of story that only serves to make my predictions look questionable - but it wasn't a desperate race to the end or something where the record was broken by the skin of someone's teeth. At least to me it became clear that nothing was going to seriously defeat the margin our contender racked up, and once that happened... well, it was just a matter of momentum.

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - december 1, 2018 (VIDEO)

So yeah, still fighting some copyright nonsense with this one, but one of the claims was released so I've got a hope that it reflects well going forward. Beyond that...

Well, J.I.D is out and I'll probably get Resonators and the Trailing Edge out soon, so stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - december 1, 2018

And so begins the fifth season of Billboard BREAKDOWN, the fifth year that I've been making this weekly show and what many folks have outright told me is the biggest draw to this channel. And you know, deep down there's a part of me that does have optimism for the future and the rough hope that things will improve in 2019, following off a particularly rough year in 2018 that may not have been as bad as 2016, but it certainly feels close. And yet if this week is any omen for what's to come... well, we'll get to it.

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - may 20, 2017 (VIDEO)

Well, this episode got a LOT of conversation... huh, a little surprised, to be honest, especially with so many mediocre tracks. Oh well.

Next up... ooh boy, it's Logic. Stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - may 20, 2017

So I think it's fairly obvious that we live in uncertain times, and while music critics and cultural anthropologists will debate how much the music that charts will reflect the world around us, I think you could make a case for the Hot 100 being the most unsettled it's been in some time. Because while you could make a story about Katy Perry collaborating with Migos, or the fight for dominance between One Direction members, or that Gorillaz for no discernable reason failed to sell enough to chart this week, the big story is for the third time in three weeks, we have a new #1... and like with the others, there's no clear indication of how long it'll last.

the top ten best hit songs of 2016 (VIDEO)

Well, this was certainly fun to make - genuinely curious if it ends up blowing up as much as it did last year, given how wonky this year was, so we'll see!

Next up, working on that big top 50 list, so stay tuned!

the top ten best hit songs of 2016

So for those of you who saw my last list, you might have caught my general assertion that 2016 was not good for the Hot 100. And here's the deeper truth: the bad songs, while there were more of them, they weren't the sort of atrocious that keeps you up at night, at least not as a whole. Despite how angry I got, I can think back to a few other years that had far more contemptible songs that would inspire a lot more rage - I think society as a whole has pretty much forgotten that in 2013 Rick Ross teamed up with Rocko and Future to release a song with a verse endorsing date rape - yeah, that was a thing.

No, the bigger problem with the year-end Hot 100 in 2016 is that there was a lot less good songs - we always get a lot of mediocrity but this was a year where the pickings were very slim. On the one hand, it makes this list pretty easy - very little to cut - but at the same time in stronger years, like 2012 or even 2015, I'm not sure how much of this list would have measured up. Many people made that same observation back in 2014 - I didn't, mostly because I genuinely found a lot to like about my list that year - but I'm not denying it for 2016, especially because the majority of songs that will make this list were originally released in 2015 and only became hits this year. If that's not the most glaring indictment on pop in 2016, I don't know what is, and what gets all the more infuriating is that the mediocrity clogging the arteries of this year kept otherwise great songs from catching on, especially in country music which despite big improvements even on the Hot 100 practically disappeared for the year end. 

But again, it had to land on that list, and it's a thin list indeed... but still, it wouldn't have made this list if I couldn't defend it being here, so let's start with our Honourable Mentions!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - february 13, 2016 (VIDEO)

As I said, better late than never.

Next up, Dream Theater - stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - february 13, 2016

So you know how I've been predicting things were going to get seriously unstable on the Hot 100 for a while now? Well, we've got a big one this week - major shifts in the Top 10 including a new number one, a ton of major shifts up and down, and a big crop of new entries... a shame more of them aren't better, but we'll get to that. Of course, Billboard also exacerbated the situation with a choice to shift their chart formula to better temper the impact of streaming, which they did by slightly shifting the balance in favour of sales. So how did that turn out?

video review: 'delirium' by ellie goulding

Man, this was a drag. I really wanted this album to be better... but no. No.

Next up, probably Grimes, but if I'm in the mood for a bit of black metal, I might tackle Vallendusk or Panopticon. Stay tuned!

album review: 'delirium' by ellie goulding

Let's go back to 2012 for a second. The pop charts are in a state of upheaval as throughout the majority of the year they've been dominated by indie rock and pop that flagrantly dodged the club material that had been dominating for the past few years. Sure, established stars still have hits, but it's a time where anything can happen, and it leads to one of the most musically fertile years for the pop charts of the decade. And into this time comes a little unassuming song from an indie pop unknown from the UK that seems to be too stripped back and restrained to become huge... and yet rises up to #2.

That song was 'Lights', the artist was Ellie Goulding, and like most hits from the UK, the song had dropped over a year earlier from her reasonably well-received debut album. It was one of those songs that seemed to come from a different universe than mainstream pop, all restraint and atmosphere and esoteric lyricism... and yet it didn't seem to take long for Ellie to jettison most of that for her second album Halcyon, which was bigger, broader, and showed she was just as comfortable playing in more conventional pop too. On the one hand, I can see why some people would take issue with her ditching her more acoustic touches for heavier, more symphonic electropop, especially considering singles like 'I Need Your Love' had her working with Calvin Harris who could run against David Guetta for the least interesting producer working in EDM. On the other hand, though, 'Lights' has always been one of those songs I respect more than I actually like, whereas 'Burn' remains one of my favourite songs of 2014, with Ellie's willowy tones and the bells show exactly how to make a simple pop tune so much more. 

That said, when I heard that Delirium was going to be even more of a pop-centric record, recruiting songwriters like Max Martin, I was a bit uneasy. One of the reasons that I thought Ellie was a good fit for airy, more sweeping electropop or even EDM is her ethereal vocal tone and her more abstract writing - getting her to make more modern pop tracks just struck me as an awkward experiment. That said, 'On My Mind' has grown on me a fair bit, and I figured I might as well give this a chance. How did it go?

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - october 10, 2015 (VIDEO)

So this should have gone up last night, but apparently my upload freezes when the file is grotesquely massive or when my computer goes to sleep. Go figure.

Next up on a far lighter note, CHVRCHES! Stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - october 10, 2015

For all of you who wanted me to cover Drake & Future's surprise collaboration release, you're going to get your wish - because it effectively crushed everything in its path and for I think is the third time this year, turned the Hot 100 into the Drake show. And please tell me that I'm not the only one who's starting to get a little sick of it at this point. Coupled with my suspicions that Views From The 6 will probably still end up dropping this year - and the fact that Drake was responsible for cosigning The Weeknd and helping him become huge - the hip-hop story has been dominated by Drake this year, and yet he got there by making some of the least interesting music of his entire career. And given the somewhat mixed critical response I've seen for What A Time To Be Alive, I'm suspecting we're going to hit the backlash zone any time now, because Drake is reaching dangerous points of overexposure. But apparently the mainstream public disagrees, because we had seventeen new songs this week and nearly half of them had Drake on them.

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 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!

the top ten best hit songs of 2014

And now onto our second list, and the one that doesn't give me heart palpitations whenever I think about it, the Top Ten Best Hit Songs of 2014. 

Once again, let's go over some of the main rules: the songs need to debut on the year-end Billboard Hot 100 list this year - so while there are songs like 'Counting Stars' and 'Wake Me Up!' that came out last year and still made this year's Billboard 100, they already had their shot to make the list.

What gets a little frustrating because while the year-end Billboard Hot 100 didn't have as many outright terrible songs as last year, I'd also make the argument it didn't have as many genuinely awesome smash songs either. 2014 tended towards average all around, with only a few genuinely great songs and a whole sea of songs that were pretty solid but didn't evoke a huge amount of reaction from me, one way or the other. And once again, this is my list of my favourite hits - the list of the songs from across the entire year that never touched the charts is on its way - but that's not ripping into these songs, most of which had real genuine quality behind them.

But let's not waste time, let's get to the Honourable Mentions!