billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - september 7, 2019 (VIDEO)

Okay, here we go, lot of Taylor Swift this week - and for a change, it actually made this pretty easy to handle, go figure.

Anyway... yeah, the week of frustrations doesn't end, because we're going to be talking about Lana Del Rey next - stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - september 7, 2019

So here we go: album bomb from Taylor Swift, where all eighteen songs from Lover has broken onto the Hot 100... and honestly, it just feels like a net positive for the Hot 100 overall, which is always the bizarre feeling I have when we get a good album bomb. Sure, it reflects a skewed anomaly on the Hot 100 that isn't healthy... but I can argue that this one didn't even inflict much collateral damage after Young Thug last week, just sweeping away the wreckage! No, the real turmoil will come in two weeks when Post Malone crashes in, but that's a different conversation entirely...

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - may 25, 2019 (VIDEO)

Another pretty lightweight week overall (thank GOD for that), but now it'll be fascinating to see how Tyler hits next week.

And perhaps on that topic...

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - may 25, 2019

So I'll be honest, I'm so happy this week is a slower one: I just got back from Sonic Temple in Columbus, Ohio - I'll have a recap/review video dropping in a few days and there'll be plenty of other videos I'll pop up in - and when you consider last Friday was one of the biggest release weeks of this month, I've got a lot to catch up on, so the relative lack of stories is encouraging.

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - may 18, 2019 (VIDEO)

Okay, here we go - pretty bad week, but at least the Bazzi song was good, right? Right?

Anyway, I've got Logic or Emotional Oranges to be covered next, we'll see - stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - may 18, 2019

...so yeah, there are weeks where I'm wrong, and then there's this week, where I might have been expecting a slowdown - which in some categories we did get - only for a few big singles to disrupt the top 10 from out of nowhere and force me to re-evaluate where the chart could be going in the next few weeks. Now granted, one of those singles is coming from an album that's also out of nowhere - and boy oh boy, I can't tell you how much I don't want to cover it - but still, this is one of those cases where I feel I should have seen this coming, and I'm kicking myself that I didn't.

video review: 'cuz i love you' by lizzo

You know those reviews where you're just certain that you're going to piss off a lot of folks, and certainly the artist should she see it? Yeah...

Anyway, I've got Billboard BREAKDOWN next and then probably this PUP album - stay tuned!

album review: 'cuz i love you' by lizzo

I get the feeling, looking at Lizzo's career arc, that her story could have been a lot different.

And to explain this, you need to go back to her debut project in 2013 Lizzobangers - and if you're familiar at all with her larger discography, this project will surprise you in sounding very little like her major label work. For one it's a lot more hip-hop, produced mostly by Lazerbeak of Doomtree - which makes sense because she had moved from Houston to Minneapolis and you can tell how her sound was influenced by the tropes and genre-blending that came out of that. Which was awesome, I've always been a huge fan of that sound, and while she took steps towards thicker indie R&B atmospherics on her 2015 follow-up, it's a tone and style of hip-hop that I'd love to see get more traction... but that was quick to evaporate by the time she signed to Atlantic, mostly because executives probably saw her huge personality and great singing voice and knew she'd probably have a bunch of crossover appeal. 

So Lazerbeak is gone and replaced by Ricky Reed, Oak, and X Ambassadors - and look, this doesn't have to be a bad thing, but when I listened to her EP Coconut Oil and then saw a tweet from a fellow critic suggesting Lizzo might be falling in the line of Bruno Mars... look, it's an easy and unfortunate comparison to make. But there's truth in it: a great personality who ultimately is more palatable to a larger audience making pastiches of sounds and styles that are not uniquely hers alone, only redeemed by the fact that she's a legitimately great talent behind the microphone - certainly better than when Ricky Reed tried a similar schtick with Meghan Trainor nearly five years ago! But suffice to say my expectations for Cuz I Love You were considerably diminished going in, but this could still be a good album, right?