billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - december 2, 2017

So we're now starting the fourth year of Billboard BREAKDOWN, and the plan - at least for me - was that we'd start off with a bang, the flurry of activity that you would expect coming from the massive release of Taylor Swift's reputation... and yet as I predicted last week, the impact was pretty muted, thanks to her one-sided war with streaming that led to the album still not up on those platforms. So what could have been a blowout turns falls limp, and the week actually turns out pretty quiet... eh, it happens.

the top ten best hit songs of 2010 (VIDEO)

I'm so damn glad this turned out as well as it did, especially as I had to re-edit to avoid the damn copyright bot. In any case, thank you all for watching and subscribing, I dearly appreciate it!

the top ten best hit songs of 2010

I have to admit, when I first added the highest tier option to include requests for a top ten list, I had no idea what was going to be requested. Opening up the vast decades of Billboard history meant this could go in any direction, and that could mean a wealth of new discoveries. And thus our first Patreon request is for the best hit songs of... 2010.

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

This was certainly a less excruciating week than last time - more diversity here, for one - and I'm fascinated to see how the Grammys impact things going forward. Until then, back to my schedule and... hmm, P.O.S.. Well, this could be fun, so stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - february 25, 2017

So folks, did you have enough of me talking about Big Sean when the review dropped last night? Well, it's not over - because to replace Migos and as a lead-in to the expected chaos that'll come with the Grammys, Big Sean brought in six new songs to the Hot 100 to an already busy week. Yeah, believe it or not, I'm not sure he's the biggest story here, from some major shifts in our top ten to a swathe of new arrivals peppering the rest of the Hot 100.

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - december 10, 2016 (VIDEO)

So this video was longer than usual... and actually really great, I dug the hell out of this! Two good weeks in a row... man, if only I had any hope we could keep this up, 2017 has some real potential to be a damn good year.

In the mean time, let's take care of old business next, shall we? Stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - december 10, 2016

So this week was a little weird. Not just because we started getting tracks from The Weeknd earlier than expected - I'm imagining next week to be just overloaded - but we got some big surprises all over the place, including a few artists I have not thought about or talked about in years. That, at the very least promised to make things interesting - note that I didn't precisely say good, although there really was some promise here.

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - august 15, 2015 (VIDEO)

Yeah, I was away for a bit. Long weekend, got a haircut, shit happens.

Next up, B. Dolan, then it'll depend which leaks first. Stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - august 15, 2015

So I think last week was a bit of an anomaly when it comes to the summer slowdown - a glut of new tracks and very minimal changes within the chart itself. This week made more sense - a whole slew of shuffling and not many new arrivals, which reflects the pretty sparse release schedule right now, especially when it comes to mainstream album.

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - august 1, 2015 (VIDEO)

So, that week was pretty lightweight. No complaints, especially considering the rest of things look a little crazy.

Next up... hmm, I'll decide in the morning, I've got a good three or four reviews nearly ready. Stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - august 1, 2015

So we've now settled into the doldrums of summer, the time of year where everything seems to slow down and nothing all that interesting happens on the charts. The Top 10 was mostly static, not many movers and shakers, and even our list of returning and new arrivals is smaller than ever...

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - june 20, 2015 (VIDEO)

Completely forgot to post this. Oops!

Next up, Surf - stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - june 20, 2015

You know, after the past few weeks – and somehow falling behind again in my reviews – it’s nice to actually have a new Hot 100 that’s actually fairly lightweight in terms of new songs, most of which I’ve already heard before in some capacity. It’s one of the breather moments you get as summer starts to settle into gear and the album release schedule eases back a bit, at least for the pop charts.

video review: 'shady xv' by eminem & shady records

There are more important - and vastly more enraging - issues going on tonight, but still, the album is worth talking about. Worth your time.

Next up... Christ, another Rick Ross album. Really?

album review: 'shady xv' by eminem & shady records

I wish I had a better feeling about this album going into it than I did.

See, when I heard Eminem was talking about launching a collaboration album, I immediately had very real concerns, because I remembered when this happened eight years ago with Eminem Presents: The Re-Up, a record that had a few pretty decent songs but really was nothing all that special. I'll reiterate what I said back in March when I reviewed the Young Money compilation project, that these sorts of records are made for three purposes: reassert the strengths of the old talent; show some cool interplay across your label; and show off the new guys.

And yet Shady Records is in a bit of an odd position. In comparison with its other rap label peers, it's proved to have a shaky track record of establishing definitive new stars. Albums from Yelawolf and Slaughterhouse proved to be non-starters even despite their very real talent, and while the Bad Meets Evil project was the biggest shot of adrenaline to Royce de 5'9'''s career possible, the last EP Hell: The Sequel hasn't exactly been a record I've really revisited outside of maybe one or two songs. That's not saying I wouldn't enjoy the wordplay of records like Shady XV, but I definitely did not have high expectations.

And there were other issues too, with the lead-off single 'Guts Over Fear' being one of the Eminem's least interesting opening singles for a project ever, and while I understood bringing on Sia and Skylar Grey for hooks, why the hell was Danny Brown, DeJ Loaf, Trick Trick, and Big Sean on this album? Sure, I get it, Detroit rappers, but wouldn't it make more sense to stick with your label if you're looking to push them? And while I get putting money behind Danny Brown and DeJ Loaf, Trick-Trick hasn't been relevant in years and Big Sean shouldn't be relevant, period. And the fact that this album was also being included with a disc of former Shady Records 'hits', most of which are from artists who are no longer signed, screamed of either Interscope's interference to guarantee their investment, or pure desperation.

But you know, this is Eminem, and even though his track record has been inconsistent, he's still got a solid group of rappers behind him, so this might be pretty solid, right?

the top 50 best songs of 2013 (PART ONE: 50-26)

Part One, songs 50-26! Enjoy, and stay tuned for part two!

video review: 'the marshall mathers lp 2' by eminem

It's out - are you happy now?

I kid, of course, because this review was actually reasonably fun to make. So now I'm going back to working on the reviews for Celine Dion, The Wanted, and M.I.A.. Then Lady Gaga.

album review: 'the marshall mathers lp 2' by eminem

If you know music in the past fifteen years, you know Eminem. You probably own one of his albums, considering his classic album The Marshall Mathers LP has gone diamond in the States. He has become a fixture in American pop culture, and with several acclaimed albums under his belt, some could make the argument he has nothing left to prove.

And yet I don't think anyone has told Eminem that, as recent releases seem to have taken the form of an artist trying to recapture the spirit of something that he once had and is now gone, and he's never quite managed to find it in the same way. And this is speaking as an Eminem fan who will defend all of his albums. Yes, even Encore and Relapse, a pair of albums that aren't quite as bad as certain folks have made them out to be. Yes, Encore is incredibly uneven and contains some of the worst raps of Eminem's career, but it's also an album that does exactly what it was designed to do: a ritualistic endpoint for Eminem's career (characterized by his drug-induced spiral of depression) capped off by artistic suicide on the last track. And yet, the fans hated it and demanded the return of Slim Shady, and Eminem did just that five years later on Relapse, a tortured and punishingly bleak album where Eminem brought all of the sick nastiness behind Slim Shady to the forefront and said, 'You wanted it, you got it'. The mistakes he made with both of these albums is that stylized artistic ugliness works best with a good core framework, and the haphazard rapping and accents damaged that core and compromised those albums.

Fortunately, Eminem corrected this with 2010's Recovery, his spiritual revival where he finally put to bed some of the demons that had been haunting him over the past several years - primarily finding his place in the modern hip-hop landscape, his drug overdose in 2007, his constant issues with women, and finally the death of his best friend Proof in 2006. However, a new problem began cropping up here and on his team-up with Royce de 5'9'' the next year: the instrumentation always felt a little too polished and slick for Eminem, and lacked that gritty edge that made so much of his old material compelling. Furthermore, despite superb technical skills, Eminem's anger now felt directionless as he had solved the majority of his issues, and the resulting albums felt unfocused and too dour for their own good. The nadir of this was 'Lighters', a momentum-killing turd of a song that didn't work for me in the slightest and epitomized the worst symptoms of both poor instrumentation and unfocused rage.

And I've got to be honest here, when I heard about The Marshall Mathers LP 2, I was more than a little concerned that these problems were going to get worse. I mean, I love The Marshall Mathers LP, the album is a goddamn classic, so why besmirch it by making an record that's probably guaranteed not to be a follow-up aligned with the original on a thematic level? That album's dark madness had a lot to say about Eminem's personal psychoses and his issues with fame, pop culture, women, and his audience - and I was willing to bet that Eminem, despite being a great rapper of superb technical skill, probably would not return to this well of influences. And coupled with the list of guest stars and my own natural skepticism, I was dreading this album's release and I expected the worst. Did I get it?

album review: 'don't look down' by skylar grey

The more I think about it, the more I believe that being labelled the 'protege' of a popular artist is a lot worse than one might think.

Sure, you get the immediate hype and buzz from association with your more popular and successful mentor, but like all popularity, it can be replaced by backlash the second you make the slightest mistake. And this backlash tends to be harsher than if you struck out on your own, because there is the implication that you had the backing of a great artists and still struck out. Sure, that might be unfair, particularly when the general public doesn't really know how much influence or control said great artist had over your work, but there is a grain of truth to it.

But if even if you succeed and rise to your mentor's level, the comparison with said mentor will always be invited, particularly if there are stylistic similarities. At best you'll be deemed a 'copycat', an act permanently confined to their greater's shadow. At worst you'll be branded a rip-off, a soulless copy of something greater that came before. And even if you manage to surpass your mentor (as I'd argue Drake and Nicki Minaj have occasionally done with Lil Wayne), there will always be that asterisk associated with your work, that it isn't quite entirely your work and thus ever so slightly not as good. 

So it's not entirely surprising that it's fairly rare a protege of a popular musical act rises even close to the level of their mentor. Sure, Justin Bieber might be more popular amongst his fanbase than Usher is right now, but Bieber certainly isn't getting Usher's level of critical acclaim. And even though 50 Cent definitely had his moment in the spotlight in the early 2000s (his publicity heightened even further by his gutting of Ja Rule's career), he has mostly faded from public view in comparison to his 'discoverer', Eminem (which, frankly, is something I'm okay with, because 50 Cent was never that talented anyway).

Now I'll admit right out of the gate that Eminem remains to this day one of my favourite rappers, and I'm definitely looking forward to his new album later this year. That said, I can't help but notice he has a rather poor reputation in recreating his level of success with his collaborators and proteges (outside of 50 Cent, obviously). As much hype as D12 had in the early-to-mid 2000s, the band never took off with the same notoriety as Eminem had, and while his influence has been a boost to Slaughterhouse's careers, they certainly haven't had that mainstream breakthrough to match their critical praise. Even Yelawolf, who was once praised as the 'next' Eminem, hasn't had the nearly same degree of success (then again, that might have something more to do with his bizarre collaborations with Travis Barker and Ed Sheeran (?)).

And I've got to be honest, I was more than a little skeptical when I heard he was the executive producer behind Skylar Grey, a rising female singer who you might recognize as a co-writer behind Eminem and Rihanna's 2010 collaboration 'Love The Way You Lie', a song I really like but don't quite love. in fact, going back through the writing credits and vocal performances of Skylar Grey, I can't exactly say I've been impressed. I'll acknowledge that her touch is recognizable on her featured tracks ('Coming Home' by Diddy, 'I Need A Doctor' by Eminem & Dr. Dre, and 'Words I Never Said' by Lupe Fiasco), but while I like all three of these songs, I don't quite love them. But I'm fairly certain I know why: Skylar Grey, at least on these tracks, has absolutely no vocal personality.

Now that's a steep charge to level, but go back and listen to all of those tracks. Sure, she's an adequate singer, but outside of a harsher, semi-darker vibe, I don't get much idiosyncrasy or force of personality behind them. There's none of Rihanna's sultriness (well, back when she was good), none of the mostly convincing innocence in Taylor Swift or Carly Rae Jepsen, none of Lady Gaga's haughtiness, none of Ke$ha or Pink's brash attitude or Avril Lavigne's brattiness. She doesn't even have the raw energy that can occasionally make Katy Perry tolerable. Basically, if I'm going to draw a comparison to R&B, Skylar Grey reminded me of Keri Hilson: an adequate singer, but devoid of the flash of the visual presentation, not much more.

But I'm always one to be fair here, so I picked up her major label debut Don't Look Down. Did she manage to grow a personality while I wasn't looking?

album review: 'the terror' by the flaming lips

I think I'm obliged to say this as a professional: the majority of music that is designed to be 'scary' and 'intimidating' fucking sucks.

This is another incident where the fact that I am a music critic and have heard a ton of music speaks to a disconnect with the average music listener, but I think part of it comes down to my growth of musical knowledge. As I've said before, I jumped pretty much from boy bands and Eminem straight to power/symphonic metal, thus skipping the rap rock/rap metal/thrash period that most young teenage guys go through. But really, the more I think about that, the more I'm grateful I avoided those trends, because any retrospective examination into those genres has just filled me with contempt, disgust, and revulsion. And as someone who can get back into the teenage mindset enough to tolerate even the occasional Simple Plan song, there's no goddamn excuse for the dearth of quality in this genre.

So yeah, I'll come out and say it outright: acts like Hollywood Undead and Killswitch Engage and Atreyu and Underoath and Bring Me The Horizon just plain suck. Musically, they aren't within spitting distance of quality metal and content-wise, they just bore me. Too much of this material is wrapped up in unfortunate sadomasochistic tendencies (you know, always talking about the BLOOD and the PAIN and the SUFFERING and all that nonsense), and it's very rare that any of it is all that compelling. On top of that, it's hard for me to consider any of these acts remotely 'scary' or even all that intimidating, particularly recent entries in the genre. I think most of my issues with these acts comes back to similar issues that I have with the American horror film industry, namely that there is no subtlety or pacing. In the pursuit of over-the-top 'gorn', too many acts come across as way too ridiculous to take seriously, the music of immature white boys who don't have the sophistication or patience to take in something better. The slightly better side of the genre features acts that aren't taking themselves all that seriously but are still trying to come across as 'scary', and this tends to remind me of the trashy, too-hip-for-the-room schlock otherwise known as 90s horror films. 

But either way, it's not scary to me. The obsession with gore and tits in some of this material is exploitative, but it's not compelling exploitation and it has nothing to say. I'll make an exception for some of Marilyn Manson's material because he has occasionally made some interesting albums, but even that stuff relies too much on shock imagery and the musical equivalent of a jump scare. And sure, that can be startling or revolting, but that doesn't horrify me or even come across as particularly memorable. I think some of it is desensitization, but really, outside of the occasional political polemic Marilyn Manson includes (which you tend to see more of in the industrial punk/metal scene), there's just not much there.

I think the other big problem with my retrospective examination of these genres is that I'm a fan of Eminem, who is probably the only artist I can think of who balanced being scary with being listenable. That's another issue I have with most of the modern metalcore or horrorcore acts: the overproduction stands out, making the songs appear too polished to really get under my skin. Hell, this even happened a bit with Eminem's Relapse (although I'd argue that overproduction choice was part of the point of that album, showing just how heinous and simultaneously pathetic Slim Shady really was). 

But let's ask the question why The Marshall Mathers LP, arguably the best horrorcore album ever made, works and actually does come across as genuinely scary to me, even to this day. Well, there are a number of elements that contribute here: Dr. Dre's minimalistic, grimy beats, the bleak production, the tone of menace present even on the lighter tracks, or the fact that Eminem always brings an intensity that feels genuine (one of my recurring problems with horrorcore rapper Cage, by the way). But what I think made the album work the best was the grounding of it all in real, human places. Songs like 'The Way I Am', 'Kill You', 'Stan', 'Marshall Mathers', and especially 'Kim' are creepy and unnerving not just because of the instrumentation and subject matter, but the fact that they feel like they're grounded in human emotion and come from a very real, very dark place. Eminem isn't trying to ingratiate himself to you or come across like a decent human being, he's intentionally exposing his very worst impulses to the microphone and daring you to listen. This purposeful alienation really adds an interesting concept to the rest of his career, particularly on subsequent albums, and some could read that alienation and subsequent loneliness and disillusionment with fame as founding factors for his next three albums.

But I'm getting off-track, because what the ultimate point I'm trying to make is that even today, Eminem managed to nail the elements that make music genuinely scary for me, stuff that can send a shiver down my spine. And really, no other artist who has followed him has really managed to capture that same fear.

Until now. Because The Flaming Lips, the experimental rock act known for some of the strangest and psychedelic experiments in music have just released their thirteenth studio album The Terror - and it scared the shit out of me.