billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - june 1, 2019 (VIDEO)

Frankly I'm surprised this video is holding up as well as it is... well, we'll see where everything lands as I work on Resonators and that Flying Lotus album - stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - june 1, 2019

So I'll admit I didn't quite predict this. I knew that Tyler, The Creator would have his album bomb - and with just enough songs to squeak into my qualifying rules, for the record - but I'll admit I did not expect DJ Khaled to do as well as he did. Now part of that is the suspicion that DJ Khaled didn't have the blowout single ready to hit beyond a song like 'No Brainer' - which was released last year, packaged on the album, and didn't re-enter the Hot 100 here - but he did see enough measurable chart success that I have to pay attention... even if I have less than zero interest in reviewing the album and it'll probably wind up on the Trailing Edge at best.

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.

video review: 'heart break' by lady antebellum

So yeah, this happened... overall not a bad record, there are a couple good songs, but as I said in the review, if I remember most of this record, it's going to be surprising.

Anyway, next up I've got SZA and then a crop of reviews that I'm really excited about, so stay tuned!

album review: 'heart break' by lady antebellum

So I'm going to say something pretty controversial here, and I want you all to understand this is not coming from a place of disrespect. Long time fans know that while I've been critical of Lady Antebellum, it's more because I see tons of potential that just doesn't materialize as often as it should. And you should also all know that when Charles Kelley put out his solo record last year, two songs from that album made my year-end list of the best songs of 2016 - and one song, 'Leaving Nashville', topped that list, it was my favourite song of last year, across the board.

So now that you all have that context, let me say this: going into this record, I was convinced Lady Antebellum should have stayed on hiatus, or maybe just broken up entirely. As a group together, they always felt uneven to me, hitting some tremendous high points that balance emotional maturity and great harmonies, but it's always felt imbalanced to me, skewed towards Hillary Scott instead of an even balance between her and Kelley. And with that more middle-aged approach to country, catering a little more to the adult alternative crowd, I've expected the writing to build to a level of sophistication that just hasn't materialized in the same way. I know they're in their thirties and they're not Little Big Town - who are all in their forties and their music is starting to sound like it - but I started to get uneasy when I saw the main producer behind Heart Break is busbee. And don't get me wrong, he can be tolerable with the right people, but nearly always more on the younger, trendier pop country mold, which just struck me as the wrong fit for Lady Antebellum, and lead-off single 'You Look Good' didn't help my feelings. But hey, I was willing to give this something of a chance, so what did I find on Heart Break?

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - april 22, 2017 (VIDEO)

Oh wow, this week took a lot out of me... lot to say, and a fair bit of controversy too (because of course there was).

Beyond that... fuck, you know what's coming. Enjoy!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - april 22, 2017

I'm honestly not sure where to even start with this week - mostly because it seems overshadowed by the biggest story here, being the huge top ten debut that seems like the first serious threat that our top spot has faced in some time. But there's other stories about this week that deserve some consideration, including major shakeups in country and other disruptive singles. Also, Kodak Black happened for some ungodly reason, but we'll get to that.

video review: 'the driver' by charles kelley

Yeah, this video honestly should have dropped a few days earlier, but I was at MAGFest and really never got a chance to get the editing done. Not to worry, I've got more footage and editing to get out there, but until then, I'm going to try and get the Pop 1280 and Lori Freeman reviews out. Stay tuned!

album review: 'the driver' by charles kelley

So I have said in the past that I don't care about the Grammys - it's an industry award that's more intended to recognize popular opinion than critical consensus, and it's often just as political as the Academy Awards - see the Best Album award this year. But sometimes the Grammys manage to surprise me, and when the nominations were announced for this year, there was a song nominated for Best Country Duo/Group Performance. Furthermore, it was a song that seemingly dropped overnight, and since then has never broken the Top 40 on country radio. Not the Billboard Hot 100, which might as well have no idea this song exists, but on country radio. Think about this for a second: this is a song from two well-established artists and a third with some critical acclaim, and this song went nowhere. In other words, for me this looked more like the Grammys trying to plug a hole in the ballots with whatever might fit, especially considering it didn't win.

But is that unfair? The song, as you're all probably aware by now, is the title track from Charles Kelley's debut album - and if you don't recognize the name, he's the frontman of Lady Antebellum, a band that I've always found frustrating in that I should like them more than I do. Now of the members of Lady Antebellum I tend to like Charles Kelley more than Hillary Scott for having a voice with more unique character... but let's be honest, we're not exactly hurting for male mainstream country acts right now, especially when he doesn't even have the majority of songwriting credits on his own album. And that was presuming this record would be country at all! Lady Antebellum has always rested on the border between country and adult alternative, and considering the album included a Tom Petty cover with Stevie Nicks - because why not make the Fleetwood Mac parallel all the stronger - I honestly wasn't sure what Charles Kelley would be delivering with this. But on the other hand, it was only nine tracks and I was curious, so how did The Driver turn out?

video review: '747' by lady antebellum

Well, that was fun in an odd sort of way. 

Okay, next up will probably be Perfume Genius. Stay tuned!

album review: '747' by lady antebellum

I'm starting to get the impression nobody in Lady Antebellum has the slightest damn clue what they're doing.

Now I've talked about this band when I reviewed their album 'Golden' and much of that review was monopolized by the comparisons to Fleetwood Mac that everyone seems to place on this band. And the more I examined the comparisons, the less they seemed to fit - sure, the bands did a fair bit with the interplay between male and female singers, and yeah, they did start with a certain rough-edged authentic power before sliding towards a more pop-friendly direction. But Fleetwood Mac had a loose, rougher edge and they occasionally got weirder with albums like Tusk, a brand of off-beat weirdness that Lady Antebellum will never embrace, given their tendency for more traditional and safe subject matter and slick pop-friendly hooks and production while still staying firmly lodged in the relative security of country music acts like Little Big Town or The Band Perry. 

...or at least that was what I thought was going to happen. The thing is that while Lady Antebellum have always firmly been lodged in pop country, the band has been looking more and more towards pop with every single since Golden with 'Downtown' and 'Compass', definitely a firm cry from their more reserved material like 'Need You Now'. And with the pseudo-rap delivery and very pop production of their leadoff single 'Bartender', I wasn't sure what to expect with their newest album 747, especially considering the lack of producer Paul Worley and frequent cowriter Eric Paslay, the latter being one of the biggest songwriting talents in country music right now. But I figured that Lady Antebellum has always delivered some measure of quality, so 747 was probably worth the look, right?

album review: 'golden' by lady antebellum

A few days ago when I walking home, I flipped up Rumours, the classic 1976 Fleetwood Mac album. Completely unsurprisingly, the music held up and I enjoyed a few very solid moments walking in the sunset listening to several of the classic songs from that album that haven't aged in the slightest. It was a great moment, and one I definitely cherished.

But then I started thinking why Fleetwood Mac's music seems so timeless, at least off of Rumours. Why does that album remain so goddamn solid nearly forty years later, a pop rock album that still feels as relevant and poignant as the best music released today? Why, in short, does Rumours work?

Well, it became fairly clear as I continued listening. The songs are rooted in catchy, memorable melodies that stick in the mind, the performances are solid across the board, and most importantly, very few of the musical 'quirks' that can make 70s pop seem dated are here. Instead, the album seems grounded in simplicity, sticking to the elements that made Fleetwood Mac attractive to a mass audience. And by rooting the album in the tumultuous and complicated internal conflicts of the bandmates, the album gains a surprising emotional resonance that carries their best songs. Rumours feels, for lack of a better word, real, in that it both came from sincere emotional responses and is rooted in genuine feelings that the songwriters had.

And really, the more I listen to music, the more I've come to cherish sincerity and the acts that rely upon it. Eminem, Ke$ha, Meat Loaf, early Avril Lavigne, Nick Cave, these are all acts I love because the emotions powering their music are genuine and came from a real place. Sure, the sincerity can be awkward or uncomfortable at points, but it adds a fresh paint of reality to their music that you can't really fake. Hell, on that note, though I think the man has made serious missteps, I'll still defend Kanye West in this regard. On the other hand, that's why late-period Taylor Swift and Chris Brown piss me off so much - it's so obvious their music is hollow and lacks poignancy, and Taylor Swift's case, where real emotion was hurled aside in favour of plastic artifice. Sure, some of the original appearance might be there, but there's no soul left in this music.

But let's pose an interesting question: what happens if you do perform with sincerity and maybe even some emotion, but the topics you choose to talk about don't entirely fit well with that sort of delivery, or the instrumentation or lyrics doesn't back you up? Or what if the ideas you want to talk about just can't support that emotion?

Well, in that case, you run smack into the band we're going to talk about today, Lady Antebellum - or, as I like to say, the band that really, really wants to be Fleetwood Mac.