billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - may 30, 2015

So we’re now at the halfway point of the Billboard Hot 100 year, so let’s take stock of the situation – and while I wouldn’t quite say it was a disappointment, it certainly is interesting to see how certain trends have oscillated. R&B and neo-soul are fighting pop for dominance – with pop arguably gaining the upper hand – country has mostly stayed quiet to flush the last dregs of bro-country out of its system, all sorts of off-beat, weird tracks have fought their way up from both electronica and the indie scene, and hip-hop continues to marginalize talent and wordplay in favour of the lowest common denominator. Sure, I might lament the failure of a few promising pop and country tracks, but the rise of nu-crunk and the prevalence of Vine have driven more than its fair share of forgettable garbage to the top – and the alarming thing is that it keeps happening.

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - january 31, 2015 (VIDEO)

Overall, a pretty solid week - happy I was able to get this out before the convention kicked into high gear.

Okay, time to enjoy myself and maybe catch an album - or four - in between. Stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - january 31, 2015

So this was a pretty simple week on the Billboard Hot 100 - in that there were movements and changes that you could easily predict. And yet it was almost a deceptive week on the charts, where it might seem a lot happened - we even got a new song debuting in the top ten, and trust me, we'll get to it - but it's not exactly disruptive to the status quo, and if anything, its success is all the more predictable.

video review: 'v' by maroon 5

Okay, glad that's out of my system.

Next up... well, we'll see here. I've got a few rap projects I want to talk about before Interpol or Opeth, so stay tuned!

album review: 'v' by maroon 5

I'm amazed this album exists.

Because if you had told me a decade ago that one of the few pop rock acts still charting singles highly on the Billboard Hot 100 would be Maroon 5, I probably would have laughed in your face. And it wasn't as if they were originally a bad band: their brand of funk was aggressively stiff but they could write some impressively catchy songs. I might not have been the biggest fan of Adam Levine's vocal delivery as he occasionally came across as more obnoxious and smarmy than he could really back up, but his voice was unique and he did have some versatility as a performer. And as much as many of Maroon 5's relationship songs screamed of douchebaggery and framing that was nowhere near self-aware enough to pull it off, they occasionally brought some swagger or even real sincerity to anchor their better material. 

But as the 2000s became the 2010s, it became clear that Maroon 5 was becoming less of a rock band in any capacity and more of a vehicle for Adam Levine's solo career, one that was supported by an arsenal of professional songwriters. In other words, they sold out, which honestly wouldn't have been a problem for a pop act if the music had stayed strong or at least maintained some vestige of individuality. And that really didn't happen, culminating in the album Overexposed in 2012, a record that has only gotten worse every time I listen to it. It was a record that somehow stripped away even more of Maroon 5's unique sound with even worse lyrics. It was a sour, bitter, unpleasant listen with the exception of the gentle and heartfelt piano ballad 'Sad', and it left me with little hope the band would ever recover any artistic integrity, especially considering the record sold shockingly well, so why would they have any reason to try?

And even with the return of keyboardist Jesse Carmichael from hiatus, I didn't have high hopes at all for their new album V, and I was not looking forward to covering this album. But then again, this meant Maroon 5 had nowhere to go but up, at least in my books, so I gave the album a chance: how did it go?

the top ten worst hit songs of 2012

About a year ago, I wrote my list of the Top 10 Worst Singles of 2011. My criteria was simple: the songs had to debut on Billboard's Year-End Hot 100 list that year. Now, I easily could have gone digging for far worse songs, but I wanted to make the point that these songs weren't just bad, but they were also disgustingly popular, far more popular that all of those independent smaller acts that you might like.

And to be honest, while I can never understand why these awful songs get popular (well, I can, and that gives me plenty of ammunition to keep doing this for years to come), the more I think about it, the more I think the big problem with the pop charts isn't that they tend to be bad, but that they tend to be bland. Now granted, there are some years that are far better than others (2011 was a lot better than 2010, and 2012 was better than both of them), but there's a whole load of mediocre music that isn't good enough to like, but isn't bad enough to be worth hating. There isn't a lot of excellence or awfulness, just a lot of 'meh', at least in the majority of years.

But yeah, there was a significant amount of awful, and just for perspective, here's my original list of the Top Ten Worst Hit Songs of 2011:

10. 'What The Hell' by Avril Lavigne
9. 'Dirt Road Anthem' by Jason Aldean ft. Ludacris
8. 'Backseat' by New Boyz ft. The Cataracs & Dev
7. 'The Time (Dirty Bit)' by The Black Eyed Peas
6. 'She Ain't You' by Chris Brown
5. 'Lighters' by Bad Meets Evil ft. Bruno Mars
4. 'The Lazy Song' by Bruno Mars
3. 'Pumped Up Kicks' by Foster The People
2. 'Sexy And I Know It' by LMFAO
1. 'Don't Wanna Go Home' by Jason Derulo

Now upon reflection today and after relistening to all of these songs, I'd make a few minor changes to this list, make it look like this:

10. 'What The Hell' by Avril Lavigne 'Tonight, Tonight' by Hot Chelle Rae
9. 'Dirt Road Anthem' by Jason Aldean ft. Ludacris
8. 'Backseat' by New Boyz ft. The Cataracs & Dev 'Country Girl (Shake It For Me)' by Luke Bryan
7. 'The Time (Dirty Bit)' by The Black Eyed Peas 'She Ain't You' by Chris Brown
6. 'She Ain't You' by Chris Brown 'Lighters' by Bad Meets Evil ft. Bruno Mars
5. 'Lighters' by Bad Meets Evil ft. Bruno Mars 'Backseat' by New Boyz ft. The Cataracs & Dev
4. 'The Lazy Song' by Bruno Mars
3. 'Pumped Up Kicks' by Foster The People 'The Time (Dirty Bit)' by The Black Eyed Peas
2. 'Sexy And I Know It' by LMFAO
1. 'Don't Wanna Go Home' by Jason Derulo

Yeah, there's a bit of reshuffling of things around here, and a few swaps. The big surprise for me was taking 'Pumped Up Kicks' off the list, considering how much I hated Foster The People's début album and all of its pretensions to indie rock that it didn't earn or have in the slightest. And that's to say nothing of the issues I still have today with the rancid lyrical content of the song and the atrocious tonal choices. However, a year later, after observing the explosion of indie rock across the modern pop charts, I can't help but admit that Foster The People's success might have been the cue required to get other, better indie acts the air time they needed for groundswell. And with that in mind, I really can't hate 'Pumped Up Kicks' the same way.

Oh, make no mistake, it still is a bad song, but it's by no means the worst thing I've ever heard, and while the subject matter still gets under my skin, the song is so weightless and ephemeral (like the majority of faux-hipster trash pretending to have depth) that it really leaves no impression a year later. And while I was angered at the corporatization of indie rock, after a year of seeing great indie acts succeed with a vestige of artistic integrity intact, I realized that sometimes the machine can work (and besides, there are far more insulting corporate sell-outs this year).

In fact, when perusing the Year-End Top 100 list Billboard stamps out every year, I was surprised how many previously established 'good' acts delivered career worst performances this year. 2011 was a bit of a weird transitional year for the pop charts (coming out of the club explosion of 2009-2010), and 2012 was even stranger, with the eruption of indie rock, the return of lightweight immature pop music, and whatever the fuck hip-hop/R&B mutated into this year. I mean, this was the year 'Gangnam Style', a k-pop parody track satirizing the Gangnam lifestyle in South Korea, a track entirely in Korean, became one of the biggest tracks of the year (for the record, I actually think 'Gangnam Style' is pretty good, but not great, as PSY has a lot of energy and personality, which elevates the song above LMFAO's 'Party Rock Anthem').

But that said, there was still plenty of garbage that charted this year, and a whole lot of material I'd only describe as mediocre. Before I get to my actual list, let me run down a few Dishonourable Mentions that need to be brought up here:

album review: 'overexposed' by maroon 5

Short version: an album that's bitter, detached, and genuinely unpleasant to listen to. Worse still, the entire exercise comes across as completely insincere when in comparison with the one truly genuine song on the album. Top it off with a real loss of unique sound and some horrible lyrical choices, and you have a real mess of an album from a band who is capable of so much better.

Longer version...

It's always interesting to take a step back away from the typical pop music scene and consider the genres that influence it at various points. At points, rock music has been dominant, at others R&B or hip-hop or rap. At some points, there have even been influences from the indie scene or the country scene, particularly recently. 

But what becomes more interesting that even that are the acts that influence the music scene and the pop acts. These are the bands that push the boundaries, try something new, experiment with concepts or production techniques or interesting sounds. Sure, the experiments sometimes fail, but the attempt can be important as well, as it could be worthy of analysis to try and figure out why things didn't work out.

And today I'm going to talk about Maroon 5 - a band that once had a unique sound and looked to influence pop music, and then completely sold out and lost it. I can't say I'm all that surprised or all that disappointed.