billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - june 25, 2016

So, in the business, this is what we call a slow week. Hell, it's the big reason why I could get away with covering a week of country music and not really have to worry about anything else - which meant that very little worth caring about landed on the Hot 100. But that's fine, I don't mind having a shorter week, and I might as well enjoy it before the end of June happens and happiness goes right out the window - and if you've seen the hip-hop releases scheduled for June 24, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about.

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - december 5, 2015 (VIDEO)

Well, this took way too long to finish.

So, now for a complete change of pace, that black metal that I said I was going to be talking about - stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - december 5, 2015

We are now beginning the second year of chronicling the Hot 100 charts in detail - starting in December because Billboard is weird like that. And even though this is the week I was prepared to unveil some new changes to the format, we also have to deal with one of the largest ever lists of new songs - because for some godawful choice to split their bases, One Direction and Justin Bieber released their new albums in the same damn week. Now sure enough a whole slew of these songs will be gone next week, but for now, given Bieber's shrewd promotional strategy to jack up streaming, we have a full list of twenty new songs. Now given that I already reviewed both new albums from Bieber and One Direction, I'll endeavour to keep these short unless it's a bonus track I hadn't otherwise covered, but strap in, folks, this'll probably be a long one.

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - june 13, 2015 (VIDEO)

Well, the computer crashed twice when uploading this thing, which might be a sign or something.

Next up, something special - stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - june 13, 2015

Well, that didn't last long. Almost as quickly as it took the top slot, Taylor Swift and Kendrick Lamar were elbowed off the top, and it's not exactly surprising that happened either. Once again, the fight over the top will likely be the biggest story this week, but it obscures what happened below, where a whole load of songs surged up the charts and we got another well-sized crop of new songs - and in a nice change of pace from last week, most of them are actually decent!

video review: 'handwritten' by shawn mendes

Ugh, I wanted this to be better. Can't all be winners, though.

No, if you want that... well, just wait, it's coming!

album review: 'handwritten' by shawn mendes

Now I may have said in my last episode of Billboard BREAKDOWN that Vine was one of the worst things in recent memory to happen to mainstream hip-hop, and I stand by that. But that's not to dismiss its growing impact on pop music as well, where certain acts, trending towards a younger demographic, have earned some success too. And you know, on some level it makes sense - as attention spans grow shorter and shorter with every generation, and pop music perpetually lodged at the age of early teens, it makes sense that Vine could spawn material perfectly tailored for that audience.

But that's not saying that music from these sources is essentially bad, or even tells the complete story. More of that comes through in the rising fortunes of Ed Sheeran, the singer-songwriting who is slowly taking more and more steps from dreary, white-guy-with-acoustic-guitar territory into tighter, more groove-heavy, more fiery material. And given how much he has dominated the charts over the past year and with singer-songwriters like Hozier pushing a more organic, rougher sound, it stands to reason that the music industry would look to cash in on this in the quickest way possible.

Thus we have Shawn Mendes, a Canadian teenager from just outside of Toronto who built a following on Vine and has been tearing a swathe through the Canadian charts. Keep in mind that our radio stations have to play a certain percentage of Canadian music, so I've heard of Shawn Mendes before this review - and honestly, I don't mind him. Sure, there are moments that could use some polish, but there was some raw talent here and he sure as hell sounds more ready for prime time than Justin Bieber ever did. And hell, if he's going to bite from Ed Sheeran's template and take the one element from Vine that I actually think could be a net positive - a sense of immediacy and pop-friend punch for his hooks - this debut could actually be worth a damn, even if he didn't write the whle record. So I checked out Handwritten - did it live up to expectations?

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - february 21, 2015 (VIDEO)

Bit late getting to this, but with a week this underwhelming, it kind of fits that it's this late.

Next up, I was going to cover Vulnicura, but I think I need to deal with this surprise Drake album... hoo boy...

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - february 21, 2015

Okay, we've got another busy week on Billboard BREAKDOWN here - multiple new entries into the top ten, a whole load of songs shuffling up and down the charts, and a slew of new chart arrivals, some that were easy enough to predict and some that did seem to come out of nowhere. More importantly to my American audience, the week chronicled by this Billboard Hot 100 corresponds with the Super Bowl, and that meant one artist performing at the Half Time show  managed to make a big impact with two singles surging back to the charts. Here are two clues: it wasn't the headliner, and it was one of the few things interesting about the whole experience before the mother of all bad calls courtesy of the Seahawks. I mean, wow - no matter how many bad songs show up this week, I don't think anything is beating that.

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - january 10, 2015 (VIDEO)

Man, that took way too long to release. Glad to finally get it out there.

Okay, next up is... oh god, Rae Sremmurd? Seriously, there's nothing else?

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - january 10, 2015

So one would think upon my return from vacation to take a look at the Hot 100 that things kind of went a little crazy this week. Not in the new arrivals to the charts - if anything, we have the least number of new entries to date, which hopefully means this episode will be a little shorter this week. No, the change was in what gained steam this week, because there were a ton of gains this week that seemingly came out of nowhere. Not only that, they were for songs that came out in 2014, some that had even fallen off the charts altogether! What gives?