Well, this was... a week? Still wish I could get some damn confirmation on whether this is the last week of the Billboard year, but we'll have to see. Anyway, it's going to be fascinating for next week, but in the mean time I think I'm going to handle something in my back catalog, so stay tuned!
Well, here we go folks: down to the last weeks of tracking the Billboard year (either this week or next week, I've yet to get clear info)... and yet I don't really get a finale vibe out of 2019. That's the frustrating thing when you try to cram a messy chart show into any sort of narrative, especially on a week that seemed relatively predictable, but here we are.
I'm honestly not sure how this will be received - silent majority acts like him always get a bit of an odd response, so we'll have to see how this goes down. Anyway, FKA Twigs is finally up next, so stay tuned!
So I'm not too proud to admit that I screwed up in a big way by not covering Luke Combs' debut album. Now to be completely fair, at the time I'm not sure anyone could have predicted how fast Luke Combs would rise in the cultural conversation, especially off of the badly produced, overmixed clunkers that passed for many of his singles. At best, they were tepid or kind of amusing in a very middlebrow, Tim McGraw sort of way, trafficking in broad relatability and underdog charm rather than much in the way of sharp songwriting or emotive punch, and when you tack on middling to bad production, I just wasn't all that interested outside of a passing fondness for 'When It Rains It Pours'. And over the past few years, Luke Combs' star has risen high and fast, because as much as I might find that approach underwhelming or predictable, to mainstream country listeners it reflected a middle-of-the-road accessibility that wasn't always seen in the increasingly slick and anonymous dregs of bro-country, or the broad neotraditional pivot of Jon Pardi and his lane, much less the more untamed indie scene. Coupled with the fact that he looked the part of every down-home country boy who might be a little rough around the edges but had the best of intentions and I'm not at all surprised his mass appeal blew up across the industry, radio, and audiences. What I was more concerned about was how this would translate to the second album, especially as the singles seemed to reflect a more organic and thoughtful pivot, and while I knew he'd never dive completely into that lane, I did have some tempered expectations, especially as I knew he'd never fully ditch the overproduction. But hey, what did we find on What You See Is What You Get?
These are the album bomb weeks I always tend to find a bit perplexing... because the fuse seems "delayed", for lack of better words. Post Malone may have cut a swathe across the Hot 100, but like with other huge album bombs, many of his songs didn't crash out that hard, which meant that many other songs didn't rebound as big as you'd expect. All of this translates to a relatively mild week for me, and while I'm not complaining, I can't help but feel I'm waiting for the next shoe to drop.
You know, one of the most frustrating things as a music critic is that sometimes you can find yourself in a bubble of your own biases - you know what you like and dislike, and thus while you're actively seeking the former, if you're stuck covering the charts you might totally forget a project dropped that could impact them. Hence was the case this week, where I did expect the Jonas Brothers would have a little more traction - and they do - and I remembered vaguely that Luke Combs was moving an EP, I completely forgot that Future still has enough chart cache to get his new EP multiple entries. Guess I'm going to wind up covering it after a fashion anyway - joy.
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!
...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.
Man alive, this took WAY too damn long to put out - hell, I had something ready in Birmingham, but the footage got corrupted. But not to worry, I've got more reviews on the docket and then the next episode of Billboard BREAKDOWN, so stay tuned!
Kanye album bomb. Yeah, I know there are other things going on right now - a new #1, a sizable amount of activity further down the chart, but the big story is all of Kanye West's 'ye' crashing into the top 40, triggering a shockwave down the Hot 100 that'll likely be a mess to clean up next week... presuming of course Kids See Ghosts doesn't create its own impact!
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.
Heh, this turned out WAY more controversial than I expected... eh, it happens. Next up, something way better than everything I'm talking about here - enjoy!
You know, given how the past week has been it's been very tempting of me to just step up in here, say the Billboard Hot 100 shit itself inside out like most of the rest of this year - and let's not mince words, it's about as bad as I've seen it in the past few years - but hey, it could have been worse, right? We didn't get a full album bomb from XXXTENTACION, and while I sure as hell don't think our replacements are anything close to good, I have to keep reassuring myself with the thoughts that this could be a much more miserable experience than it is.
And here's an especially long episode of Billboard BREAKDOWN... man, this took a while to put together, as they always do... But still not all tonight, stay tuned!
It's never the album bomb weeks that are actually interesting - it's the weeks that come after, the fallout period where you see the headlong rush to plug the holes. And considering the summer music season tends to have a dry spell in album releases, this is the time where songs that might not otherwise crossover have a shot for some traction, where the weird or strange stuff might bubble up.
