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

So it might not be obvious, but I've had a fucking miserable night trying to get all of this put together. Jesus Fucking CHRIST, YouTube can fellate several shotgun barrels, their horrible UI design and worthless back-end deserves all the scorn in the world and every developer and QA tester should be fired into the goddamn sun.

ANYWAY, I have no idea what I'm going to review next, so stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - december 7, 2019

So regardless of any scattered tidbits of information we might get the next week or two, I'm at least confident that this week is in the 2020 Billboard year - a pretty busy week too, mostly thanks to the abortive mini-album bomb of Trippie Redd and the return of Christmas music, but I guess I'll take what I can get here as the charts continue to slow down as we head deeper into the holidays?

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - may 4, 2019 (VIDEO)

And here we are... messy and mostly not good week, but it'll be entertaining at least? Ehh, I have no idea these days...

Anyway, next up is ScHoolboy Q, and then I want to get this episode of Resonators done... oh wait, what's that? You want an AJR review? Well, that will be done when it's done, so stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - may 4, 2019

So this week was... weird. I had the suspicion it'd be more transitional because the big album drop that made my life a lot more hectic occurred last Friday - seriously, eight albums that I'd otherwise want to cover, a situation not helped by me getting sick and what's depressing is that most of them aren't close to good - and for the most part, it is. But I get the impression this is a week that buries its biggest lead, and the sharper changes will take effect next week based off of what happens here.

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - april 27, 2019 (VIDEO)

Kind of crappy episode here, to be honest - not a lot to really be said with these, unfortunately. 

Now time to tidy up some old business before I get to the eight (!!!) albums I want to talk about all dropping this Friday, so stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - april 27, 2019

I get the funny feeling that a lot of folks are going to forget this week pretty quickly, the sort of Billboard BREAKDOWN probably more notable for what's not happening than what is. No album bomb, no significant chart shakeups that seem like they're going to last - and yes, I know for some either the BTS arrival or Lil Uzi Vert's continued attempts to get something to stick will contradict me, but while I've been wrong predicting what will last, I get the feeling I'm not going to be that wrong with this one.

video review: 'pray for the wicked' by panic! at the disco

Well, this was a complete disappointment... but hey, you were going to hate me for this review anyway, so enjoy!

Next up, what looks to be a pretty miserable episode of Billboard BREAKDOWN, so stay tuned!

album review: 'pray for the wicked' by panic! at the disco

So the fact that I have to cover this album is a no-win situation for me. 

I might as well lay this out right now just to establish where the discourse is going to be when talking about this album regardless of its quality, and considering I somehow wound up in the situation when posting reviews makes me lose subscribers in the short term, I really have nowhere to go but down here. And if this all sounds sardonic and defeatist... well, it is the former, but the larger truth is that I know regardless of what I say there'll be a diehard fanbase that'll stick up for whatever Panic! At The Disco does. So even if I say how much A Fever You Can't Sweat Out has real gems, and Pretty Odd. is legitimately great and Vices & Virtues and Too Weird To Live, Too Rare To Die are both underrated, and how 'Crazy = Genius' made my year-end list of the best songs of 2016 and I think there's at least something to Brendon Urie being compared to Brian Wilson... it ultimately does not matter to them.

But frankly, given how I reviewed Death Of A Bachelor two years ago you should all know this by now, so let's focus on Pray For The Wicked, where I covered a few of their lead-off singles on Billboard BREAKDOWN but I can't say I remember all that much of them. I remember the production sounding overblown and thin - not remotely a good sign and about the last thing Brendon Urie would want to carry over from Broadway productions - and I remember the lyrics feeling underweight, and the buzz was suggesting that was pretty commonplace across the record, but Panic! At The Disco in every incarnation has found ways to surprise me, and I was genuinely hoping that Pray For The Wicked would hit that point, so how's the album?

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...

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - april 7, 2018 (VIDEO)

And here we go - but it's not the only video dropping tonight, so stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - april 7, 2018

And now we get a cooldown week... whew. Sort of what I was expecting, given that there wasn't really any big crossover releases outside of some scattered singles - and really, there are some songs that are lingering longer than I'm personally comfortable - but hey, given how busy I have been, I will take what I can get.

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - august 27, 2016 (VIDEO)

Overall an interesting week, can't say I'm wild about Suicide Squad but overall pretty solid all around.

Next up Young The Giant, so stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - august 27, 2016

So let me tell you a bit about my previous weekend. Had a party with friends on Friday, went to a bachelor party on Saturday, and most of Sunday recovering and working my way through a bunch of records in my backlog to cover my schedule this week... all of which meant that I have not yet had a chance to see Suicide Squad. Which, if you're judging by its second week numbers, if you didn't see it opening weekend you likely didn't see it at all - and yet it doesn't mean I'm not talking about the movie, because it was the biggest impact to the charts, with considerable gains, a few new arrivals, one returning entry, and even a new top five track! Frankly, I'm a little bewildered the soundtrack has had so much staying power, but popular phenomenon pop up all the time - I just wished I liked more of it.

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - february 6, 2016 (VIDEO)

So, not quite as good as last week, but still not all that bad either. Let hope for better next week... because with this Megadeth album, we sure aren't getting better right now. Stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - february 6, 2016

Well, it finally looks like we're out of the January lull and into the weeks where the charts get a little busier - and sure, some of that was bound to happen thanks to the new Panic! At The Disco album doing a lot better than I'd argue anyone expected, but more of it is the feeling that things are starting to change up in force, with the chart instability of the past few weeks only further indicative of that.

video review: 'death of a bachelor' by panic! at the disco

Wow, five hundred video reviews... and still, got a whole slew left on the horizon. Ty Segall, Savages, Randy Rogers Band, Brothers Osborne, and plenty more, so stay tuned!

album review: 'death of a bachelor' by panic! at the disco

I'm going to admit right out of the gate I was worried about this album.

And really, that's something you could have said about every Panic! At The Disco album from their sophomore album onwards, especially as a fan. Their first record may have fit reasonably easy within the overwritten theatrical framework of emo-tinged pop rock, but just like their closest parallel in Marianas Trench, Panic! At The Disco had bigger ambitions, with their second album being an attempt to fuse in 60s-inspired psychedelic pop that won them a lot of well-deserved critical acclaim but also alienated a significant tract of their fanbase, especially when pop music was going in a very different direction at the time. So when they tried to pivot back with the underrated Vices & Virtues towards a simpler, more accessible template, they might have won back some of that crowd but at the cost of their primary songwriter and guitarist Ryan Ross, who left along with the bassist. Now to frontman Brendon Urie's credit, he did manage to work with drummer Spencer Smith for that album and their 2013 album Too Weird To Live, Too Rare To Die! - which again was another hard genre shift, this time towards much more electronic synthpop, which I'd argue they pulled off pretty damn well - but when I heard that he had left as well, I had the sinking feeling that Brendon Urie's attempt to carry the name forward with session players and minus producer Butch Walker smacked of desperation.

And thus can anyone blame me for being cautious when I started hearing mixed buzz about Death Of A Bachelor, primarily written, composed, performed, and produced by Brendon Urie himself? While there have been critics - including myself - who have made the Brian Wilson comparison to Urie for his genre-bending brand of pop and knack for heartfelt hooks, this was starting to look a lot more like a frontman who had alienated his entire band away and was trying to push his unique solo vision - which in this case was described as 'Queen meets Sinatra'. And look, I like bombast, I love pop music with ambition to go for pompous pretentiousness and the heart to make it rise above it - there's a reason Marianas Trench's Astoria was my favourite record of 2015, also the brainchild of a genius pop frontman, songwriter, and producer in Josh Ramsay - but at the end of the day Marianas Trench was still a band that always had a strong foundational sound, whereas Panic! At The Disco is a glorified solo project that even at their best was rarely consistent. But hey, I'll give him credit for somehow pushing this past the label to market - clearly somebody had enough faith to put money behind it, even if it is being dropped in mid-January, so how did Death Of A Bachelor turn out?

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - november 14, 2015 (VIDEO)

Well, this was late, but eh, it happens.

Okay, we've got a lot coming, let's see if I can handle some old business quickly. Stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - november 14, 2015

Well, I'd like to say that I called it... but let me be honest here: I didn't call all of it. And really, if you had seen any of the sales data or streams or just simply checked YouTube, you could have predicted this. What caught me a bit off guard wasn't just that we got our new #1, but that we got a new #2 right behind it, a one-two punch we haven't seen this year!