billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - september 28, 2019 (VIDEO)

So yeah, this was better - but next up, ugh, it's not good... stay tuned?

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - september 28, 2019

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.

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - august 31, 2019 (VIDEO)

And we're back on somewhat normal schedule. I do have a few reviews that will be shot in vacation format, but I think I might get to Taylor first... stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - august 31, 2019

Not to get hyperbolic about it, but it seems like the entire purpose of the Billboard Hot 100 charts this year has been to get me to look stupid. Sure, we got another new #1 this week that I predicted, but everyone has been calling that for weeks if not months, and yet just as soon as I was musing that this year has been quiet on the album bomb front, here comes Young Thug with a proper album leaving the Hot 100 in disarray. And yes, to get in front of this now, album bomb rules are in effect and will probably will remain in effect if Taylor Swift does the same next week, we'll have to see - I just got back from vacation, I have a ton of catching up to do, just hold tight on this one.

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - june 15, 2019 (VIDEO)

Okay, that was a long episode... and yet amazingly I'm ahead of schedule with it, go figure.

Anyway, next up is the equivalent of a double album, so stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - june 15, 2019

So this is one of those weeks that I'm just convinced whatever I review, I'm going to wind up pissing people off. And while I'd normally be able to skate by such thoughts on Billboard BREAKDOWN, given that it's in its own separate, equally annoying ecosystem... yeah, a quick glance at our new arrivals is telling me everything I need to know, there's no getting out of the stupid here.

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - december 15, 2018 (VIDEO)

And here we go - man, I look exhausted filming this, but thank god I got some sleep coming through.

Next up... ugh, this'll be frustrating to handle, so just stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - december 15, 2018

...you know, I'd call it funny if I was anyone else. See, I predicted last week that Meek Mill would have have something of an album bomb - he's had two already just in the course of me covering the charts, and I expected given the hype there'd be another one here, especially given some of his critical acclaim... but the Spotify numbers didn't seem that huge and it's not like he'd get sales or much radio. So imagine my extreme exasperation when not only did we get fourteen new Meek Mill songs, we also got a mini album bomb from Lil Baby - an artist I thought we could leave behind, preferably by the side of an abandoned road - and a sizable set of new arrivals, bringing our round total up to twenty-seven new songs for this week. All right before the holidays while I still work fulltime in the middle of trying to wrap up multiple year-end lists with a tighter schedule than any other year prior because of real life constraints. So yeah, screw it, album bomb rules are in effect, albeit revised from their original outing from Tha Carter V given that I'm not reviewing Meek Mill's new album formally - as if there'll be much to say - but with the suggestion taken from you all that the only songs I cover are his breakthroughs in the top 40 and any that would wind up as the Best/Worst of the week. That still comfortably gives me over a dozen new entries, and if anyone wants to complain about that, especially given Meek Mill is under Atlantic which is under Warner and that means this video will likely wind up copyright claimed and I won't get a dime from it, you go produce 200+ episodes of a twenty minute weekly series with a day's turnaround time on your own for over four years, and then get back to me. 

video review: 'younger now' by miley cyrus

So this happened... joy, I guess? Ugh, let's move on to something much more compelling...

album review: 'younger now' by miley cyrus

You know, on some level... didn't we all see this coming?

Okay, maybe not everybody, but when I saw people genuinely surprised that Miley Cyrus was returning to country music - note the word 'return', that's going to be important here - I just had to sigh and shake my head. Right from the very beginning Miley has always played as the L.A. outsider from Nashville - hell, it's the entire premise behind 'Party In The USA' - and with her thicker accent and twang inherited from her country singer father Billy Ray Cyrus, there was a part of me that deep down knew a country pivot was coming.

Granted, if you consider her career over the past decade I can see why some might not have expected it, from electro-pop at the beginning of the club boom to the awkward trap sounds of 2013, a year where her fame was at its unsteady peak, all the way to the nightmarish mess of psychedelia that plagued her disaster of a 2015 record Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz. Because there were some consistent throughlines - reckless provocation without much weighty content to back it up, production that tried and mostly failed to support her, and in her trap-leaning years an approach to hip-hop that all kinds of tasteless and raised some ugly questions about white pop stars pilfering black culture. And now that she got all the partying out of her system, she can leave that job for Post Malone and go back home to a nice, safe, whitebread sound. And as such, I had very little interest in this: if I wanted a pop star dabbling in country I'd stick with Kesha, who at least seemed to care about her art and who I could easily see fitting with those experimenting in the genre, whereas a disheartened Miley after the election last year was claiming she could reach out to a conservative demographic with this new image and genre shift. Now there are all sorts of problems with the assertion without even getting into the optics, but all of it would be irrelevant if we didn't talk about the music, so what did I find on Younger Now?

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - september 9, 2017 (VIDEO)

Well, this was a rough week... but overall, pretty pleased with how it turned out. Enjoy!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - may 27, 2017 (VIDEO)

Yeah, pretty short week overall, but not a bad one in my books.

Next up, Zac Brown Band and followed by one of the worst records I've covered thus far this year - stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - may 27, 2017

So we're now at the halfway point of the Billboard year - and wow, 2017 has been something, that's for damn sure. I'm still not quite sure how to evaluate it as a whole. One thing's for sure is that it's been a turbulent year thus far - Ed Sheeran might have held the top for a measurable time, but ever since then it has been song after song seizing the #1, showing the sort of turnover that you'd more expect on the UK charts than the United States.

the top ten worst hit songs of 2008 (VIDEO) (ft. thedoubleagent)

Well, this happened. This is why there was a bit of a drought of videos at MAGFest a few weeks back, I was working on this! Thanks a lot to Ethan for joining me here, it was a ton of fun!

Unfortunately, the second review going out is far worse... so stay tuned...

video review: 'miley cyrus & her dead petz' by miley cyrus

Yeah, I know you guys all like it when I tear a record like this to shreds, but this was not a fun experience. So yeah, it'd be nice to some quality coming down the pipe...

Oh, look, I can talk about Maddie & Tae next! Stay tuned!

album review: 'miley cyrus & her dead petz' by miley cyrus

None of you should be surprised this happened.

Think about it, the signs were all there. From the VMA performance in 2013 that catapulted Miley Cyrus back into the public eye for better or worse to the album Bangerz, a record that was really all over the place to be salvaged beyond a few genuine gems, to the uneasy collaborations with hip-hop artists that created abortions like '23'. For a solid six months on the back half of 2013, Miley was dominant in the cultural conversation, for better or worse, and then it all fizzled out. In my opinion, she crippled her own momentum by releasing 'Adore You' under the delusion that song had any hope of being a hit instead of the near guaranteed smash and genuinely awesome song 'FU'.

And then came the rumours leaking out that Miley had gone back into the studio to work and do drugs with Wayne Coyne and later showed up on his Beatles tribute album With A Little Help From My Fwends, so you knew the favour was bound to be returned in full. It became even more evident when Miley severed her ties to Dr. Luke - the same producer who prevented Kesha's collaboration album with The Flaming Lips from getting released - because apparently he hates free festival publicity - amongst more horrid accusations that has seemed to stall Kesha's career indefinitely in lawsuits. And the parallel is important here: sure, both Kesha and Miley worked with Wayne Coyne, but Kesha always had a level of raw tightness and restraint and imagination in her compositions that balanced her ragged instincts against excess. Miley has never had that restraint, considering the massive overcompensation that has come with the burning of her child star image and her appropriation of whatever she can to flesh out an artistic identity.

So fast-forward to the annual craziness that was the VMAs, where Nicki Minaj buried the hatchet with Taylor and Kanye tried to filter through incoherent honesty... and through the entire show, trying to outshine everyone and prove she was still relevant, was Miley Cyrus. It cast her infamous 2013 performance into sharp relief - the shock might have worked twerking against Robin Thicke, but with no momentum, her attempts to throw herself into the drama of Nicki Minaj and Taylor Swift or squeal raucously after Kanye's polemic, it reeked of desperation. And then she announced an album from out of nowhere and it made way too much sense - she needed something to boost the hype behind an album with no lead off single, no momentum, and the only shock value coming from the fact it was mainly produced by the Flaming Lips and had Phantogram and Ariel Pink on it! Not only that, it was over ninety minutes long over twenty-three tracks, all the more proof that there had been no restraint in its creation. In other words, I had zero expectations this would be good, but I knew it'd make for something interesting, so I dug into Miley Cyrus And Her Dead Petz - what madness did we find?

the top ten worst hit songs of 2014 (VIDEO)

First of our year-end lists, and sadly the one that will probably get the most traffic. Go figure.

Next up is the list of the best hit songs - stay tuned!

the top ten worst hit songs of 2014

So, another year, another Billboard Year-End list, another assorted collection of hits and misses, and another year end list from me where I take a long hard look at the biggest charting songs of the year and pick out the best and worst.

Now for those of you who aren't familiar, let's go over the rules. A song can only make this list if it first landed on the Billboard Hot 100 Year-End chart for 2014. There may be songs from last year that qualify - I can think of a few - but it needs to hit the list this year. And of course there were worse songs that I heard this year on albums that could easily outstrip huge chunks of this list - I'm not going to mention them, they don't deserve more attention - but I want to make the point that we're looking at the hits that got under my skin and annoyed or angered me. Songs that are just excruciatingly boring don't really make the cut here - 'boring' can be a factor, but there needs to be something aggressively wrong with the song to join this august company.

The other important thing to mention is that 2014 has, on average, been a stronger year than 2013, or at least more consistent. Up until the frantic reshuffling at the end of the year, this has been a pretty stodgy year with a few absolutely massive hits that wouldn't go away and prevented a lot of turnover. What this has meant is that many of the songs that have landed on this list don't inspire the same amount of real anger from me - of the majority I wouldn't say they are as deserving of vitriol as some of the really terrible tracks from last year.

That said, I think it's time for our dishonourable mentions!

the top 50 best songs of 2013 (PART ONE: 50-26)

Part One, songs 50-26! Enjoy, and stay tuned for part two!

video review: 'bangerz' by miley cyrus

This review took a bit longer than I expected, but it's out. Finally.

Next week will be insane - five or six new albums dropping, plus I'm going to try and knock off a few retrospectives. A life, what's that? Stay tuned!