billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - july 7, 2018 (VIDEO)

And that's the first here - overall a pretty messy week but there was some quality...

But now onto something a lot better...

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - july 7, 2018

Not gonna lie, I needed an easy cooldown week. There's a couple big releases on the docket that I'm working towards and I'm coming up on my fifth anniversary on YouTube so there are other things I'd rather focus on, so just a moment to catch my breath before the avalanche of Drake... yeah, that's very welcome.

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - january 20, 2018 (VIDEO)

So for as short as this is, it actually wound up going up pretty late... hey, what I can say, I was busy.

But not enough that something might be dropping early this evening, so stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - january 20, 2018

I feel like this week is close to the flip side of the coin to the last - and I'm honestly not sure if that's better overall. Where last week the Top 10 was fairly static with a huge amount of upward movement and no significant losses - with a relatively small number of new arrivals - this week the top ten saw major disruption, the gains were pretty modest, and the losses and dropouts were quite significant... all with a relatively small number of new arrivals. Now, whether this makes this week better remains to be seen, but I'd argue it does seem to be a return to form, and thus is a little more interesting overall.

the top ten worst hit songs of 2017 (VIDEO)

It's here, it's already controversial, and apparently the damn video malfunctioned because after rendering the damn thing three times I can't catch a break. Ah well, best hits of 2017 is coming in a day or two, stay tuned!

the top ten worst hit songs of 2017

There have been years where writing this list is easy. Sometimes it's like 2015 or 2012, where the bad songs can't diminish otherwise diminish a strong or interesting year - or on the flip side we get years like 2016, where the avalanche of awful is so pronounced I almost have too much material, and while that list might be painful to revisit, sheer rage makes it all surge out.

2017 has not been that year, and it's a little tough to explain why. You could make a comparison to 2014 in how so much of this year defaulted towards average instead of a more pronounced brand of awful - I'm certainly not as angry towards this list as I've been in previous years - but the truly excellent hits were much stronger in 2017. What I think has befuddled some critics is how pop was effectively overtaken by the hip-hop and R&B aesthetic on the Hot 100 - it might have become more pronounced in 2013 but in 2017 the takeover was complete, and if you weren't paying more attention to streaming instead of radio, you were going to be left behind. And thus in 2017 the truly bad songs are a bit of a mix of the pop songs tumbling towards the monogenre and the lazy, bargain-barrel dumpster fire that is the dregs of trap. And again, to establish the rules the songs had to debut on the year-end Hot 100 list for 2017, and purely boring doesn't just cut it for me. Given how much of this I've covered on Billboard BREAKDOWN, I've long been numbed to the endless swirl of interchangeable trap bangers and their brand of disposable mediocrity. If you want to land on this list, you need to really irritate me or piss me off, so let's get going with some Dishonourable Mentions!

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

Well, this happened - I'm actually pretty happy they changed the formula, but still, it's disappointing the load of crap we got.

Anyway, next up is Lauren Alaina and Japandroids, so stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - february 11, 2017

So this was an important week on the Billboard Hot 100 - which on the surface might be a surprising statement, given that it didn't seem that out of the ordinary, at least on the surface. But for those who pay attention, something big happened this chart cycle: Billboard changed their formula. And despite what I might have said earlier on Twitter, upon giving it more thought, I'm actually entirely behind this change - looks like Billboard got it right for once!