billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - october 5, 2019 (VIDEO)

Bit of a slow episode, but it happens. Hope you all enjoy it, regardless!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - october 5, 2019

The prediction I made last week was that this week would be relatively quiet - I was not expecting it to be this quiet. Sure, next week could well see a small album bomb from DaBaby or maybe a smattering of Kevin Gates, but this week? Yeah, one of the fewest numbers of new arrivals I've seen in 2019... and yet I'm not really all that thrilled about it, given that the current Hot 100 feels kind of shaky to mediocre on average, and I'm not seeing what's going to make it better.

the top ten worst hit songs of 2012 (VIDEO)

A long time coming, but I'm actually really pleased how well this turned out - enjoy!

the top ten worst hit songs of 2012

So I've said before that 2012 is probably among the best years of the Hot 100 this decade, and I stand by that - there was a plethora of fantastic songs, both well-remembered stalwarts and forgotten gems, and multiple genres were in the throes of transition, which gave indie music a breakthrough window to the benefit of everyone. Pop, rock, R&B, hip-hop, country, they all notched real success and were above average overall, all of which bolstered the fact that there's just not that many awful songs this year. And even if they were here, by the overall standards of any other year, they didn't seem that terrible - more grating production choices and sloppy writing than anything offensive or in overwhelmingly bad taste. I could get angry at the worst of 2016 - for the majority of the list, I can laugh at the worst in 2012.

But we did get bad songs, and it's worth pointing out where they came from... and really, most of them are clustered in saccharine music across pop, pop-country and adult alternative that just utterly missed the point, or in hip-hop where the genre was going through a transitional year between pop rap club bangers and what would become the darker, heavier trap sounds throughout the decade. And it wasn't helped by a few artists in particular having a bad year in 2012 specifically, but I think it's time we get to the list proper. As per usual, the songs had to debut on this year-end list to qualify - so 'Sexy & I Know It' is reserved for 2011 - and if you previously saw my worst hits of 2012 originally published on my blog that year, I recommend you stick around regardless, as things have shifted a little bit. 

Okay, got that? So without further adieu, let's dig into a year that for the most part wasn't really that bad, starting with...

the top ten worst hit songs of 2018 (VIDEO)

Well, the lists start off strong - the Premiere really was fun to hang with y'all, might have to do that again soon...

Also, just addressing this here because some people are bitching about me interjecting some relevant social commentary: 

a.) if you're angry about me calling Juice WRLD a misogynist and are instead throwing out the 'he's a confused kid just expressing how he feels', otherwise known as the 'boys will be boys defense, the problem is you;

b.) Lil Dicky is not funny, and I can make the credible argument he's never been funny. And frankly, I don't care that it's been years since what Chris Brown did - I have a long memory and I don't have to forgive him or like his artistic output, and considering he references his own life in the song, I'm well within my rights to bring it in;

c.) If you think Kavanaugh's confirmation wasn't anything but a gross abuse of procedure, bastardized political flailing, a compromised investigation, and the continued enablement of the lack of accountability for rich, spoiled frat boys, maybe consider the fact that he's now on the Supreme Court, and Christine Blasey Ford can't still return home. I'll insult that beer-soaked abuse of privilege for all its worth, especially because the same dismissive defenses of him come from the exact folks who think Lil Dicky is worth defending.

Next up, the list of the best hits of 2018 - stay tuned!

the top ten worst hit songs of 2018

So I'm not going to mince words or waste your time here: 2018 was not a good year for the Hot 100. Perhaps not as bad as 2016 given how many songs were outright atrocious that year, but 2018 was not only an eventful and exhausting year, but it was one where the Hot 100 as a singles chart didn't even seem to matter. And yes, success on a manipulated ranking scale like the Hot 100 is always a bit of a shell game that most discerning artists recognize, but on some level we convince ourselves that it matters - you know, like the Grammys.

But here's the funny thing: as much as I've characterized 2018 as the year of the album bomb, where thanks to playlist payola - no jokes anymore, let's call it what it is - an entire album will overrun the Hot 100, the songs rarely last, which means when it comes to making the year-end list you run into a weird split: the streaming hits that cling to relevance just long enough, usually hip-hop and trap, and the pop- and pop-adjacent songs that receive regular radio and sales promotion that hold up long enough to weather the storm. And of course there is some overlap, but I was actually a little surprised how despite streaming hits getting so much media attention, there's still a traditional pop structure that'll get hits on the year-end list. We'll get into the unfortunate side effects of this in the next year-end list, but it is absolutely a shifting ecosystem, and there weren't many who could navigate that storm.

But make no mistake, the ability to have charting success has never been proportional to the talent of the artist, and with trap being an oversaturated mess and most radio hits defaulting to the safest possible options for relevancy in a year where Cumulus and iHeartRadio were on the cusp of bankruptcy, it was a rough year. And while I was more faintly embarrassed about the junk from 2017, 2018's bad stuff is in a different league - and keep in mind this is just the stuff that debuted on the 2018 year-end Hot 100. So let's take out the trash, starting in no particular order with our Dishonourable Mentions...

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - june 9, 2018 (VIDEO)

And now we have a busy but overall pretty damn good week, I'm generally pleased with this.

Next up... okay, fine, we'll deal with the elephant in the room, and I won't have a lot of mercy - stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - june 9, 2018

...well, I can't say that the Hot 100 doesn't surprise me occasionally. I was expecting some fallout from the Pusha-T and Drake beef, but the most we got was the worst song to come out of it and half of Pusha-T's album! And when you pair it with all the rest of the scattered entries, this week wound up feeling surprisingly busy...

the top ten best hit songs of 2004 (VIDEO)

Well, this was long in coming... and overall, a pretty solid list. Not sure it's my wittiest list, but for those of you who remember the era, I think it works.

Next up, Black Panther and Wade Bowen, so stay tuned!

the top ten best hit songs of 2004

So this is the third big top ten outside of the current year that I've put together, and I think it's conducive to describe how this year differed in trends and sounds in comparison with those I discussed before. 2010 was at the height of club boom overexposure, and everything that charted, good or bad, was either informed by it and painfully dated, or ignoring it and sliding rapidly towards novelty. 1967... well, that was a year heralded by many as overstuffed with classic songs, but you could make a credible argument it was an 'off' year for many established greats, more transitional than anything else.

2004, meanwhile, has some elements of both. On the one hand, the charts were very much in the throes of the crunk explosion, but by proxy it was heralding hip-hop's utter dominance of the Hot 100. Yes, in 2004 indie rock was blowing up like you wouldn't see again for nearly a decade - most of which would hit the charts a year later - but 2004 hit the sweet spot where the kinks of southern hip-hop were getting ironed out and allowing for more diversity beyond New York and L.A.. And that was only a good thing, as 2004 was a huge breakthrough year for a number of acts that are now touted today with a ton of critical acclaim, either for landmark debuts or critical highpoints they'd seldom if ever reach again. And when you tack on the fact that pop rock was beginning its own rise, country hadn't started sliding to vapidity, and R&B was holding its own. The only genre that seriously suffered was mainstream pop, but that's more because hip-hop crossovers were doing it so much better, and when you consider that it really didn't have the stark lowpoints of, say, 2007, you can make a very credible argument that 2004 was one of the best years of the 2000s, at least for the Hot 100. And I can't even really say it was colored hugely by my nostalgia - yeah, I know and like a ton of this Hot 100, but it's hard to deny in a year flush with the debuts of Kanye West and Maroon 5, Usher's best album, Alicia Keys' best album, plus high points for Avril Lavigne and OutKast that we got something really special in 2004. And if you think that spoiled a lot of my list... well, maybe a bit, but you haven't seen nothing yet, so let's get this started!

trailing edge - episode 001 - 2017 (VIDEO)

Well, this was a TON of work... and overall, pretty damn fun to assemble too, generally happy with how it turned out. Enjoy!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - november 25, 2017 (VIDEO)

And that's the last of this Billboard year... and I'm exhausted and drained by all of it. Walk The Moon tomorrow, good night folks!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - november 25, 2017

So we've now reached the end of the Billboard year for 2017, the third year I've been running this show. And while I'll have plenty of thoughts about what hits eventually make the year-end list - stay tuned for about a month for year-end lists, I'll have a lot to say - 2017 from a weekly chart perspective has not exactly been one of the more interesting years. Yes, there was a pretty exciting point midway through the year where we flipped over a few #1s in a row and the top ten certainly has felt unstable over the past couple of weeks, but for the most part the year has been dominated by a few absolutely monstrous hits and a whole lot of songs that either blew their hype or never seemed to be that huge to begin with. It left many a track scrabbling to eke out a spot on the year-end list, and what does finally make it through in a month will be fascinating...

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - september 16, 2017 (VIDEO)

This week took entirely too long to edit... and it sucked. Go figure.

Next up, LCD Soundsystem momentarily, so stay tuned...

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - september 16, 2017

Because this is what I want to deal with on my first few days back from vacation, a double album bomb from records that I had no reason to expect were anything close to good or interesting, just goddamn perfect. And of course there is more news than that, but at this point, if I want to keep this episode at a sane length for the twenty new arrivals we have, we're going to have to keep this moving...

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - march 4, 2017 (VIDEO)

Well, this week was all over the place - and seemingly like every meme-associated review I do will probably wind up with a ton of hits, go figure.

Next up, though... actually, I have no idea how many hits this next review will accrue, we'll see. Stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - march 4, 2017

Okay, so as you can all probably see, this episode of Billboard BREAKDOWN is a day late. This is because of President's Day in the United States, another holiday that extends the chart week... and considering the Grammys happened, it also seems to have the peculiar impact of blunting their overall impact on the Hot 100, at least in the way I expected. Now that didn't mean it didn't cascade through - we'll get to that - but it also meant that we got another overloaded week full of changes...

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - october 29, 2016 (VIDEO)

So this was way too much fun. No joke, I had more fun editing the 'meme' segment of this review than any other time I've edited a video - it was weird and zany and fun, I dug it! Might see more of it if more memes chart, I could do this Fantano homage pretty regularly (and yes, he did give me permission).

Next up, JoJo, and then Blackberry Smoke, so stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - october 29, 2016

So this week was weird. I'm not going to say it was a bad week - it definitely wasn't, there's enough quality coming up new that I'm not going to call this precisely bad - but there are both shifts and new arrivals that extend all the way to the top ten that deserve some investigation, so this episode might run long, for as strange as things are...

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - may 30, 2015 (VIDEO)

And that actually went a lot smoother than I expected. Nice feeling, that is.

Next up... hmm, I've got a country record I really want to cover, but will I have a chance to get to it before a special episode of Billboard BREAKDOWN or something special for this weekend? We'll see, but stay tuned!