billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - october 12, 2019 (VIDEO)

Well, that was a bit quicker to get online than I otherwise expected. Short week, y'all.

Anyway, next up is Danny Brown, so stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - october 12, 2019

So last week I said that I expected an album bomb from DaBaby - I did not expect one of this size, I'll admit that! Yeah, while the majority of it fell below the top 40, all of DaBaby's KIRK hit the Hot 100 this week, and given that's comfortably over eight new songs, the album bomb rules are in effect. Shame it's about the only thing interesting to happen to the Hot 100 this week, but since I wasn't really planning to review the album at length, this'll give me a good opportunity to get caught up, I guess.

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - september 21, 2019 (VIDEO)

Yeah, long and tough episode, messy situation.

Anyway, next up is Alex Cameron, so stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - september 21, 2019

So I'll be honest: when I created my album bomb rules, there inevitably were going to be projects that just skirt around them - it hasn't been a perfect process, and one that I'll probably revisit for the next Billboard year, just taking the data I have into account. Normally it has been the albums that have a full six or seven songs released - just under my eight song cut-off - and in those cases it's normally the full swathe of other releases that leads to a lengthy episode. Of course, the other factor comes when the artist is so big that the vast majority of his new entries hit in the top 40, and given this happened with Post Malone... yeah, album bomb rules are in effect, but I'm still going to wind up covering the majority of the album anyway, so mission accomplished, I guess?

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - september 14, 2019 (VIDEO)

Yeah, rough episode... it happens.

Next up, I'm finally going to talk about The Highwomen, then probably Lower Dens - stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - september 14, 2019

This week does not matter. Now the natural expansion of that is saying, 'look, the Billboard Hot 100 is a badly constructed fugazi of contradictions and payola, none of it really matters', but let's focus on this week here, because next week Post Malone is going to bulldoze through here with a full Hollywood's Bleeding album bomb, and most of what showed up here will be gone: you've been warned.

video review: 'hollywood's bleeding' by post malone

Okay, this was... actually surprisingly easy to assemble, Post Malone is like that for me.

Next up is a big one and the most pleasant of surprises... stay tuned!

album review: 'hollywood's bleeding' by post malone

It's weird thinking about how my opinions have evolved on Post Malone over the past four years. Through 2015 and 2016 I couldn't stand him on the back of a badly produced, slapdash debut called Stoney that to this day features some of my least favourite songs of the decade. Then 2017 happened and despite some of the asinine public remarks from him on hip-hop culture, we got 'Candy Paint', which when included onto his sophomore album beerbongs & bentleys wound up being one of my favourite songs of the following year. Then I wound up seeing him live at a festival in 2018... and then seeing him live again in 2019. 

And the strange thing is that many of my lingering issues hadn't faded - I still couldn't stand his warble, his lyrics could stray into ugly or outright stupid territory, his choice in guest stars was questionable - and it was always a crapshoot if they bothered to care - and it was hard to shake the feeling he was leveraging hip-hop culture for crossover success while never quite fitting as well as he should. And yet as the production brought thicker atmosphere to cushion his vocals, as he picked rougher and more organic grooves behind him to lean into a pop-trap sound that increasingly flattered him, and worked to crank up his live presence with surprisingly raw intensity, he stuck around and picked up more fame and hype with every release. And while I'm not going to say he won me over at any point... I was genuinely curious how Hollywood's Bleeding would turn out. The guest stars certainly seemed intriguing and lead-off singles like 'Wow.' and 'Goodbyes' had promise - as well including 'Sunflower' on the project, a song that I've never loved but also have never gotten tired of the entire year - so fine, how is Hollywood's Bleeding?

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - july 20, 2019 (VIDEO)

Okay, so a bit of a rough episode, but it resolved alright enough...

Anyway, back to disappointments - stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - july 20, 2019

So am I the only one who feels like all the album bombs I've been predicting just are not happening in the same way they used to? Maybe it's a matter of diminished hype or maybe the charts hitting equilibrium surrounding streaming so that larger numbers are demanded to break through, or hell, maybe it's just a lack of the truly big names shaking up the charts, but I was expecting impact from Dreamville and while we got a couple of songs, it really wasn't that many, which led to another slow week this summer for which I'm not complaining, but still seems bizarre.

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - june 1, 2019 (VIDEO)

Frankly I'm surprised this video is holding up as well as it is... well, we'll see where everything lands as I work on Resonators and that Flying Lotus album - stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - june 1, 2019

So I'll admit I didn't quite predict this. I knew that Tyler, The Creator would have his album bomb - and with just enough songs to squeak into my qualifying rules, for the record - but I'll admit I did not expect DJ Khaled to do as well as he did. Now part of that is the suspicion that DJ Khaled didn't have the blowout single ready to hit beyond a song like 'No Brainer' - which was released last year, packaged on the album, and didn't re-enter the Hot 100 here - but he did see enough measurable chart success that I have to pay attention... even if I have less than zero interest in reviewing the album and it'll probably wind up on the Trailing Edge at best.

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

Yeah, I was late posting this in multiple places... vacation happened, folks, dunno what to say. Enjoy?

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 - november 3, 2018 (VIDEO)

Well, damn, that took way too long...

And judging what's coming up on Resonators, that might take way too long as well... as well as whatever's next on the schedule. Okay, might get tricky balancing what comes next, so stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - november 3, 2018

So this wasn't what I was expecting. I mean, sure, I knew there'd be some traction coming from Juice WRLD and Future's collaboration, but beyond that I'll freely admit that I wasn't expecting the same level of success from Khalid and Lil Yachty, or that none of them would result in the biggest new arrival this week! Again, it's impossible to see how much of this will last, but it does make for a slightly busier week than I was expecting.

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - july 21, 2018 (VIDEO)

Sorry this is late, folks - fell asleep while the damn thing was rendering, whoops. 

Anyway, next is Dirty Projectors, so stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - july 21, 2018

Okay look, I knew that any cooldown week coming out of an album bomb like Drake's would not be small, if only for the massive shifts within the Hot 100 itself... and then I remembered that both Future and Meek Mill dropped projects that so happened to get some traction within their circles - two projects that I'll freely admit I forgot about because nobody cared to request either of them. And when you factor in the twenty one pilots breakthrough that's likely to get pretty big pretty fast... yeah, this week wound up busier than I thought, go figure.

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - may 12, 2018 (VIDEO)

So I thought I was going to be ahead of schedule getting this up last night... and then goddamn WMG claimed a clip and blocked it in all countries, so I had to rerender this shit and do it all again.

Anyway, it's Iceage next - stay tuned!