billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - september 22, 2018 (VIDEO)

So this was a tricky week to put together, but overall it turned out okay.

Next up... man, I'm excited to talk about Noname, so stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - september 22, 2018

I've said before that certain weeks can seem deceptive on the Hot 100, and this is one of those weeks, where both more and less than you'd expect happened. On the surface, it just looks like a regular cooldown week, but dig between the margins and you'll see a fair amount of movement coming out of the summer... but whether that movement matters is a different question altogether.

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 - december 9, 2017 (VIDEO)

Yep, I know it's late - stupid Warner forcing me to re-edit a chunk on a song that I apparently didn't call out immediately as being owned by them... fuck, that's embarrassing.

Anyway, I want some light-hearted fun, so this next one might just be the ticket...

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - december 9, 2017

...am I the only one who thinks something strange is happening with the Hot 100 right now? I wouldn't say it was anything that felt too far afield, but while last week was near-complete garbage - and the fact that a disturbing amount of it appears to be sticking around does not bode well - but this week seems rather slapdash, and I have a hard time seeing much of this sticking around beyond a brief blip on the radar before the holiday season sweeps a chunk of it away.

video review: 'bloom' by machine gun kelly

So this blew - but thus far the reception to the review has implied that everyone already expected this. Eh, no surprise there.

Next up... ooh, this'll be a big one, so stay tuned!

album review: 'bloom' by machine gun kelly

So let's talk about selling out, because while I've opened up reviews with this topic before, I think a refresher is in order. To make this abundantly clear, going 'pop' or changing your genre and style isn't in and of itself 'selling out' - just because an act goes for what be deemed is a more accessible sound isn't inherently bad if the core of what makes a specific act unique and special remains, instead of just nakedly following commercial trends less because you're going to do anything interesting with them and more because it's guaranteed to produce a hit of dubious quality. And even then, it's not inherently a bad thing for an artist to want to cash in and make money, and some acts only discover their pop appeal when they try this. My point is that 'selling out' is often a misused term, it's not always a bad thing.

With Machine Gun Kelly, it was a bad thing. Look, I'll admit right now I was never a huge fan of this Cleveland MC: I always tended to slot him in the Tech N9ne mold of cranking out impressive flows and delivery but saddled with production that was too thin or flimsy to back up its pretensions to bombast, and could also slide towards corniness or some utterly wack bars. But even then, I was a sucker for a good flow, and while his full-length debut album Lace Up was pretty far from great - it's was overlong, his reliance on crass party bangers that he didn't have the personality or wordplay to back up - there were definitely moments of flow and energy I could appreciate. Most of this went out the window for his second album General Admission, which aimed to play darker and more personal but also did so by compromising the delivery and much of the intensity that made his early work at least likable. There are a few choice tracks and stories being told, but when you factored in the production, he wasn't doing anything any number of more aggressive, insightful, and honest MCs didn't do already, and that's before you get to the Kid Rock collaboration!

Then 'Bad Things' happened - which is apt in referring to both the godawful duet with Camila Cabello and the likely trajectory of Machine Gun Kelly's career. Because thanks to 2016 giving a pass to entirely too many boring white rappers in the mainstream, MGK got his breakthrough with his most pop-accessible flows and least interesting content to date. In other words, I was expecting Bloom to suck, and I'm only covering it because at least it looks shorter than his last two albums and because I need it off my schedule on Patreon so I can cover Perfume Genius. So on that promising note, what did I find off of Bloom?

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - april 8, 2017 (VIDEO)

So this was torturous to film. And edit. My god, being sick doing it too was horrible. Not sure I'm proud of this one, but I'm just happy I won't have to worry about Drake for a few months more at least... or at least I hope so.

Next up, though... okay, nothing tonight, but I'm working on the AllttA and Creeper episodes, so stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - april 8, 2017

You know, it didn't use to be like this. Oh sure, make no mistake, there were times where artists could have multiple singles on the Hot 100 at once, and I remember distinctly how much some chart watchers hated how Glee would get a few charting entries every single week to eventually accrue the most Hot 100 entries of all time. But do you want to know the big distinction between Glee and Drake, who thanks to streaming got all twenty-four of his album/playlist/background noise to debut on the Hot 100 this week? Glee may have had cheap, watered down production and attempted to appropriate styles they didn't understand, but there was at least color and passion and diversity in the sounds and styles they were trying to cover! Whereas with Drake it seems like we get all of that, plus refocused into a hazy hall of mirrors that all circle back on this Canadian, minus the existential horror that could potentially make any of this interesting!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - november 5, 2016 (VIDEO)

Well, not a great week, but you can get by on stuff like this. Plus 'False Alarm' came back and that song rules.

Next up, D.R.A.M., so stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - november 5, 2016

Well, it couldn't last. The past few weeks on Billboard BREAKDOWN, while not perfect, have at least shown a little more potential, but this week shows that crap has its own certain inertia - even though there are some positive signs, a lot of this week feels for every two steps forward we're taking one step back.