...well, I can't say that the Hot 100 doesn't surprise me occasionally. I was expecting some fallout from the Pusha-T and Drake beef, but the most we got was the worst song to come out of it and half of Pusha-T's album! And when you pair it with all the rest of the scattered entries, this week wound up feeling surprisingly busy...
So I've said a number of times that the most interesting weeks on the Hot 100 are not those of the album bombs, but the week right after, when things seem to reset to some form of equilibrium and the charts regain some sort of stability, for better or worse. And in the week following two album bombs in a row, you'd expect the recovery to be more pronounced... and then Childish Gambino unleashed 'This Is America'. And unsurprisingly, that's the much bigger story to discuss later on this show, but make no mistake, we will be talking about it, albeit with more of a focus on the song than the video.
I'm going to pose a question that's been on my mind ever since we started getting stream-trolling album bombs on the Hot 100 and one that became glaring with KOD by J. Cole: is anybody thinking about the long-term impacts of any of this? Sure, it's an indictment on streaming platforms who take label payola to dump entire records on their playlists, and an even more scathing indictment on the public who won't bother to build their own damn playlist or find new things, but really, who does this benefit long-term? Do you even remember anything from Logic's middling album bomb a few months back, or do you remember a single that's been properly promoted and managed, where precision growth can lead to even greater success. We'll get to more of this in our top ten, but if you want the most prescient example of how the album bomb might hurt an album's public lifespan long-term, look at Drake and More Life last year, and compare it to his current singles rollout in 2018.
Huh, this is up... WAY earlier than usual. And when the week is this decent, I'm all right with that! Next up... well, we've got the Trailing Edge, but after that stay tuned!
Okay, I made the statement last week that things were likely to slow down - I didn't expect it to slow down this much. Of course, it was still a modestly busy week within the charts - fair number of gains and losses, sizable number of returning entries, even some top ten activity - but we only have two new songs this week, so regardless of what I do this is going to be pretty short... at least until 6ix9ine crashes in next week, but we'll deal with that engorged appendix when it explodes.
Hmm, so this turned out all right... filmed it the same day as the Ought review dropping tonight, so stay tuned for that, but overall it was a pretty decent week. Okay, so next up, Ought and Courtney Patton, then probably something from my backlog, then Resonators - stay tuned!
This is one of the weeks where everything seemed muted - I made predictions about what was coming, and while most of those predictions came to pass, the impact was less than expected. Sure, I was planning for the Black Panther soundtrack to make an impact, but it wasn't much of an album bomb, and there were larger debuts that disrupted the top 10 and Hot 100 more. Not precisely bad, sure, but in a year where I have felt oddly disconnected with a lot of the songs that have shown up, it leaves me with a very weird feeling.
There are only three names that matter on today's Hot 100. Sure, you could talk about how a bunch of old 2017 hits got their final wind, or how Christmas music seemed to linger a week longer than I personally expected, but the real story to open this week - with the date slightly revised because Billboard is bringing things closer in sync with their tracking week - belong to three people: Travis Scott and Quavo under their duo name 'Huncho Jack', and Cardi B, who seems to be pushing hard to extend her success into 2018.
So we're now in our last two months of the Billboard year - it ends in November, and yes, that makes both more and less sense than you think it does - and yet I'm a little surprised how uncertain the Hot 100 feels right now. Granted, this is one of those weeks that feels deceptively quiet in that we only had a few new arrivals, but again, major turbulence is coming considering the albums on the horizon, and it'll be fascinating to see what cracks first.
Yeah, not exactly my most popular episodes, filmed from the road with no script and a bit more bluntness and camera movement, but this turned out alright enough, I think. Enjoy!
Bit shorter this week, but I think the thumbnail looks awesome and I get to rain all hell on Jake Paul again, and who doesn't want that? Okay, you all know who's coming, so stay tuned!
Well, if you're all looking for more evidence that I'm just crap at predicting what's going to happen on the Hot 100 these days... well, okay, maybe it's specifically Jay-Z related, because just as I underestimated how much 4:44 would have an impact, I also overestimated how long people would want to hear it, as the majority of that record left the charts and a weird cluster of songs rushed in to fill the void, leading to a week that in some ways feels oddly leaden but in others feels way more busy than I expected - more returning entries than new arrivals, a lot of gains, and a top ten that stubbornly refuses to move all that much.
So this is one of those weeks where I expected a lot of activity... and I didn't get it. This was supposed to be a week where Harry Styles and to a lesser extent Paramore impacted the charts... and it didn't happen. In fact, if we're looking at a week where summer grooves seems to be settling into gear, it's here, which led to a little more stability than I expected.
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!
