billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - september 7, 2019 (VIDEO)

Okay, here we go, lot of Taylor Swift this week - and for a change, it actually made this pretty easy to handle, go figure.

Anyway... yeah, the week of frustrations doesn't end, because we're going to be talking about Lana Del Rey next - stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - september 7, 2019

So here we go: album bomb from Taylor Swift, where all eighteen songs from Lover has broken onto the Hot 100... and honestly, it just feels like a net positive for the Hot 100 overall, which is always the bizarre feeling I have when we get a good album bomb. Sure, it reflects a skewed anomaly on the Hot 100 that isn't healthy... but I can argue that this one didn't even inflict much collateral damage after Young Thug last week, just sweeping away the wreckage! No, the real turmoil will come in two weeks when Post Malone crashes in, but that's a different conversation entirely...

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - january 12, 2019

So this is one of those weeks on Billboard BREAKDOWN that can be draining to talk about, mostly because it's easy but time-consuming to explain at length. To put it simply, if you look at the Hot 100 a full half of it advanced ten positions or more, we have a ton of returning entries, and a full slate of fourteen new arrivals - and no, there wasn't an album bomb. No, as I said, I can explain this fairly easily: along with the album bomb from 21 Savage drying up, all the Christmas music exited the chart and a lot of older music this week picked up radio spins thanks to year-end countdowns, and given that there was no big releases to plug in the gap, the flood of music to replace it is all over the damn place and really shows no indication of what could last long term.

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - july 14, 2018 (VIDEO)

Not gonna lie, I've had more fun engaging with folks in the comments and my random chicanery around this whole endeavor than I did making the episode. Heh, maybe I should keep that in mind going forward.

Also, by some miracle this avoided copyright bullshit, so next up... I feel like something languid and weird, so stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - july 14, 2018

...no, I'm not happy about this. Really, if you consider the long term, nobody should be happy about this week, where every single song from Drake's Scorpion impacted the charts. That meant twenty-two new arrivals from that album alone, which broke all kinds of records for Drake and surely cements his dominance in popular culture... but does it really? I've seen more critics pan the record than praise it - and not receive backlash for doing so - and when you hear that Spotify is having to issue refunds to paying customers for the Scorpion spam - I'm sorry, custom graphics package that of course Spotify made out of the goodness of their hearts and premium playlist placement that surely wasn't paid for by the label directly or otherwise we'd have the modern version of payola, right? But the ugly truth is that Drake might be the one who suffers the worst out of this in the long run - cultural overexposure is very much a thing, and considering the goodwill he still had with 'Nice For What', you'd have to wonder if he'd have been better off holding back, especially when the product is overwhelmingly mediocre at best. Hell, even becoming the quintessential silent majority act doesn't look good overexposed.

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.

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - june 17, 2017 (VIDEO)

Well, this was a rough week. But eh, I got through it. Next up... well, it's Dua Lipa, but after that, I need to tackle some old business - enjoy!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - june 17, 2017

So I was predicting that this week would actually be a little slower going in - after all, it didn't look like the top ten was shifting at all, there wasn't any major album releases on the horizon, we'd have another week in a holding pattern... and yet that's not what we got, pretty much thanks to the record that never hit my schedule and that I would have had no interest in covering if it had. Yep, folks: this is the week of Bryson Tiller, accounting for half of the new arrivals... joy.

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - october 15, 2016 (VIDEO)

Pretty short week here - actually skipped World Hit altogether mostly because there was so little to talk about (and you couldn't pay me to talk about James Arthur, someone who got booted from Syco because even SImon Cowell couldn't stand him - WOW).

Beyond that, though... Bon Iver. Stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - october 15, 2016

So after this week we're now in the final seven weeks of the Billboard year - which yes, ends in November - the last chances for songs to snag spots on the year-end Billboard Hot 100 list, which like it or not can serve as a pretty definitive historical record of this year in pop music. And thus for me, who uses that year-end chart as a strict guideline for tracking my best and worst hits of the year, this is where the horse race starts to get tight indeed. And given that 2016 has been such a dumpster fire of a year for pop music, it's more of a desperate hope that a few long gone songs hold their place and a few new arrivals rack up enough presence fast enough.

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - february 13, 2016 (VIDEO)

As I said, better late than never.

Next up, Dream Theater - stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - february 13, 2016

So you know how I've been predicting things were going to get seriously unstable on the Hot 100 for a while now? Well, we've got a big one this week - major shifts in the Top 10 including a new number one, a ton of major shifts up and down, and a big crop of new entries... a shame more of them aren't better, but we'll get to that. Of course, Billboard also exacerbated the situation with a choice to shift their chart formula to better temper the impact of streaming, which they did by slightly shifting the balance in favour of sales. So how did that turn out?

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - july 25, 2015 (VIDEO)

Man, this one actually turned out pretty well - with the exception of whatever the hell is up with my hair. God, that swoop on the right looks terrible...

Anyway, Years & Years, Jason Isbell, and Ghostface Killah coming up, so stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - july 25, 2015

Yes, I'm going up a Tuesday - no, not like that. What sort of rampant insanity is this?