billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - july 6, 2019 (VIDEO)

Honestly, I've been tinkering with the past few episodes in the audio mixing and thus far it's turning out well - generally nice.

Next up, though... Gibbs is coming, folks. Stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - july 6, 2019

So remember when I said last week that it looked like things were about to be changing? It's hard not to look at the Hot 100 right now and think that the disruptions are starting to come en masse - not the album bomb I expected from Lil Nas X, sure, but we still got four new songs in the top quarter of the charts, as well as a few shifts I definitely did not predict - we could be in for an interesting summer, just putting it out there.

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - october 14, 2017 (VIDEO)

And that's all the posting for tonight... man alive, this takes a while to get through everything, but here we are. Okay, next up... well, it'll depend on what Patreon gives me, so stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - october 14, 2017

So okay, maybe I'm just bad at predicting when things are going to shift. I've been saying for a few weeks now that the Hot 100 feels precarious, on the cusp of something really shaking up the established order... and yet it didn't happen here, because outside of country rolling some new songs out, very little actually happened in any significant way. Not like I'm complaining - I like a shorter episode every once and a while - but there is a part of me that feels like the Hot 100 needs a good shakeup, and I'd prefer that happens before Taylor Swift drops reputation and blows everything wide open.

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - july 29, 2017 (VIDEO)

And this episode took WAY too long to finish... but overall pretty good, I think.

Okay, next review on the way, stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - july 29, 2017

Okay, I'll be very honest: I was not expecting this week to be as chaotic as it was. I expected that Kesha would cross over and we'd maybe get a few tracks from 21 Savage and maybe one or two from Jay-Z - after all, it's not really a radio-friendly record, I didn't see a lot of crossover potential. And boy, was I wrong, because nine out of the ten songs from 4:44 hit the Hot 100 - along with the expected Kesha and 21 Savage, along with singles from Selena Gomez and Demi Lovato and the point is that this week turned out way busier than I expected. I clearly underestimated the still-remaining star power from Jay, because it took out a swathe of the charts - and in the middle of the summer, it'll be fascinating to see what even has a chance of recovering.

video review: 'this unruly mess i've made' by macklemore & ryan lewis

Goddamn it, I wanted this record to be so much better than it is... can't expect this review will go over well, especially considering the political start to things, but still...

In any case, next up is Billboard BREAKDOWN and The 1975, so stay tuned!

album review: 'this unruly mess i've made' by macklemore & ryan lewis

"You know why people hate liberals?  Because they lose. If liberals are so goddamn smart why do they lose goddamn often?"

That was a quote from a self-identified Republican from the Aaron Sorkin-penned show The Newsroom in 2012, and as we head into the upcoming trainwreck that will be the 2016 general election, I think I can see an answer to that question. It's not an answer anyone wants to hear, especially as a liberal, but where conservatives will unite despite most internal schisms, liberals will demand ideological purity and drive people away, preferring to 'win right' rather than win, which can make the losses all the more costly.

Okay, so what does any of the politics have to do with Macklemore, a good but not great independent rapper who has released his sophomore record pairing him with the perennially underrated producer Ryan Lewis? Well, the more I've seen the hype and the even greater backlash to Macklemore the more I've come to realize that his career probably be most damaged by the audience for whom you'd think would be a natural fit - the social justice community. Keep in mind this is a rapper who months before 'Thrift Shop' caught fire released a song supporting same sex marriage in the United States, and who has released music criticizing the industry and exploring his own alcoholism... and yet in the past few years I've seen Macklemore be dealt more hatred, distrust, and outright scorn from an audience on the surface you'd expect to be more receptive than rappers who you'd think would be much bigger targets who have said far worse things.

Now to be clear here, it hasn't helped that Macklemore is not particularly artful in some of his social commentary, and being entirely too earnest and corny makes him easy to mock. But of all of the criticisms leveled against him, the one that he is mercenary and 'profiting' off of the social justice movement while not truly believing it is the most ludicrous and frustrating for me, mostly because if that was true, he wouldn't nearly screw up as often and invite the tidal wave of hatred he gets. There are legitimate grievances with him - his work is clumsy and broadly sketched, he's proven too willing to be the martyr, especially in public, the tonal whiplash between goofy and preachy can be disconcerting, and at the end of the day as a rapper he has a lot more dud lines than he should - but for as hard as Macklemore is trying, it truly is frustrating to see the audience that you'd think would receive him counterattack instead of help.

So when I heard that Macklemore newest collaboration with Ryan Lewis was going to be called This Unruly Mess I've Made, it made too much sense. Here was a man who has had an exceedingly messy few years trying to make sense of it all, and given the extremely mixed critical response, I wasn't sure where this was going to land. And his list of featuring credits was even more bizarre, spanning golden age titans to Ed Sheeran, KRS-One to YG, Anderson .Paak to Idris Elba - so what sort of mess did we get here?

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - september 12, 2015 (VIDEO)

And that's that episode. Another not particularly easy shoot, but eh, that happens.

Next up... okay, Miley, I'm prepared for the worst, BRING IT!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - september 12, 2015

So we're finally getting out of a lurching, generally incoherent summer and into the fall - in other words known as one of the most clustered and panicked times of the year when it comes to the Hot 100. The last hits of the year tend to debut in these weeks in the gamble they'll snag the year-end list, the album release schedule starts to pile up, and things get all the more busy on my end. And that's not counting any major shifts on the chart like we got this week, or the dropping of surprise albums that come right out of nowhere, which we'll be probably talking more about tomorrow.

the top ten best hit songs of 2013 - video

So this turned out as well as I expected. List 2/4 done, stay tuned for more!

the top ten best hit songs of 2013

Here's a fun fact about me - as much as I nitpick and criticize and say all manner of things people don't want to hear about the music they love, I've got my own fair share of popular music that I cherish, appreciate, or outright love. Sometimes, quality rises to the top, and while none of this particular list will show up on my upcoming list of the best songs of this year, I still think they're worth mentioning if only to reinforce some vague sense of populism that I have. But really, it's nice to point out that some mainstream music gets popular because it's good, and sometimes pop or country or mainstream hip-hop can be just as good as the most underground of indie hits.

Now the rules are as before: the songs have to debut on the Billboard Hot 100 year-end chart this year - so as good as 'Die Young' by Ke$ha or 'Some Nights' by fun. are, I can't exactly mention them again on this list after they made my list last year. And on that note, don't expect any sort of coherent theme to these picks. While my year-end worst list had an abundance of terribly vapid luxury rap (especially near the top), on a year as varied and confused as the 2013 chart would indicate, my choices might surprise you. And fair warning: you won't agree with the majority of this list.

So let's get started with some Honourable Mentions, shall we?