billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - june 13, 2015 (VIDEO)

Well, the computer crashed twice when uploading this thing, which might be a sign or something.

Next up, something special - stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - june 13, 2015

Well, that didn't last long. Almost as quickly as it took the top slot, Taylor Swift and Kendrick Lamar were elbowed off the top, and it's not exactly surprising that happened either. Once again, the fight over the top will likely be the biggest story this week, but it obscures what happened below, where a whole load of songs surged up the charts and we got another well-sized crop of new songs - and in a nice change of pace from last week, most of them are actually decent!

video review: 'sunshine & whiskey' by frankie ballard

Well, that was quick. Didn't expect this one to come out as quickly as it did, but sometimes I even surprise myself.

Next up will probably be Cynic. Stay tuned!

album review: 'sunshine & whiskey' by frankie ballard

Let's talk - again - about bro-country. Because at this point, its prevalence in mainstream country is starting to really get on my nerves. And not for the reason you might think - as I've said in the past, bro-country is a qualifying term and not immediately a denigrating factor; just because something is bro-country doesn't immediately make it bad. But since it's everywhere, it immediately colours my expectations when it comes to certain debut acts. I mean, I can take a look at the album cover, that one hit single that gets popular, and the track list overloaded with Music Row's songwriting machine, and I can make a snap judgement on the genre.

But now I'm not so sure that holds up anymore. Both Eric Paslay and (to a lesser extent) Jon Pardi surprised me by being more than just their hit singles and actually being promising country artists when I delved into their albums. In other words, I'm not quite sure what to expect going into acts like Frankie Ballard, who recently released his second album Sunshine & Whiskey. And on the surface, this looks like an archetypal bro-country album: he has only one writing credit on this record, you have a selection of Nashville's 'finest' writing for this guy, and his lead single 'Helluva Life' fits directly into the softer 'bros-trying-to-be-sensitive' brand of country that's popular right now as bro-country tries to show it has variety and staying power. And considering he was yet another male country star with an underwritten Wikipedia page and was introduced to the world via a contest run by Kenny Chesney, I had no high hopes this album would be very good.

But I've been surprised in the past, and I went into this record with the slightest hope that even if it was bro-country, it'd be listenable. Was I right?