billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - march 11, 2017 (VIDEO)

Man, this was a week of surprises - half songs I didn't think I'd like as much as I do, half because there wasn't a single damn Future song that I liked (and believe me, I tried).

Eh, anyway, next up we have something I wanted to talk about that's a little on the weirder side, so stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - march 11, 2017

So I didn't have a good feeling about this week going in, mostly because I knew what was coming. I knew that we were getting the first half of Future's 'two albums in two weeks' mistake, and when you follow it with The Chainsmokers working with Coldplay, Linkin Park working with Kiiara, and Lana Del Rey, I was gearing up for a disaster... and that's before I found out about our biggest new arrival, but we'll get to that.

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - february 4, 2017 (VIDEO)

Well, this was absolute hell to put together. True facts, you never want to review or cover material, much less edit something, when you feel sick as a dog. And while things are getting better, this was still a miserable shoot all things considered.

And on that topic - okay, maybe not that bad, but still - stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - february 4, 2017

...look, they can't all be good weeks. But to quote a favourite critic of mine, often times the worst kind of bad is the absence of good, and the more I looked through the charts this week, the less I found that was all that promising, not just in our new arrivals but in the songs that took measurable hits. Now don't get me wrong, the Billboard Hot 100 has had worse - look to most of last year - but if 2017 has been characterized by a noticeable positive uptick on the charts, which I'd argue it has, this is not a good sign.

the top ten worst hit songs of 2016 (VIDEO)

So this happened... awful songs on a pretty horrible year-end list, but hey, it happens.

Next up, though, is the best hits of 2016 - man, looking forward to that one, so stay tuned!

the top ten worst hit songs of 2016

I'm going to try and maintain a level composure for as long as possible with this list. I know so many of you will want me to get good and furious - after all, it's the Worst Hits of 2016, this is when you're supposed to deliver the killing blow with righteous fury. This is your chance to exile the dregs to whatever just punishment they deserve, take a blowtorch to the rectum of a year that so many music critics have already branded as one of the worst in recent memory, certainly this decade. And if you look at the year-end Hot 100...

Well, here's the thing: due to my stipulation that I can only choose songs from that list, and the fact that I have my weekly show Billboard BREAKDOWN discussing all of these changes in detail, I've been acutely aware of this disaster for months now - I've seen it happen in slow motion. The calls of '2016 is the worst' picked up in the summer and exploded this fall - not helped by cultural forces beyond the charts themselves - but it becomes disheartening when you've been coping with it week after week and you can explain in excruciating detail why this happened. What it reminds me of most are the charts in the very early 90s - replacing Paula Abdul ripoffs for Rihanna ripoffs, an embrace of tepid tropical or adult contemporary sounds in pop that stank of non-effort, and when there were new acts on the horizon they looked to have no sustainable future in sight - or at the very least you hoped they didn't. Hell, even country in the early 90s was on the upswing thanks to the neotraditional sound like the Americana revival today, but whereas we could look to shifting trends in hip-hop and rock to revitalize that decade going forward... well, in rap we somehow managed to get the dregs of an otherwise promising year and the most 'rock' getting airplay was twenty one pilots and X Ambassadors. As I said, every critic has already told you this year was dreck, now it's time to go deeper and count out the worst of the worst. Fair warning, this is going to get ugly, so let's start with Dishonourable Mentions!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - november 26, 2016 (VIDEO)

And that's two years of Billboard BREAKDOWN... and we end with a Rae Sremmurd song at #1. Oh... oh boy.

Now odds are I'll continue this series - I'd be a fool not to - but I've got some plans over the course of the next week that'll play out, so we'll see where this goes next. Until then, though, I've got Saor and Kungs coming up soon, so stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - november 26, 2016

Seems like the end of a Billboard year can still surprise you, eh? If you had asked me six months or a year ago if I had wanted 2016's godawful year on the Hot 100 to end like this, I would have justifiably called you crazy. But here we are... seems like a lot of things have changed in this past week, and this Hot 100 is a prime example - the sort of week with a lot of change, including a new #1... and yet we had more returning entries than new arrivals. The more things change, the more they stay the same...

video review: 'collage' by the chainsmokers

Well, this was junk - but to be fair, I wasn't expecting this to be good. But on the other hand, I wasn't expecting something this cynically mediocre, so I'm not exactly surprised here...

Next up, though, something great that I missed from earlier this year, so stay tuned!

album review: 'collage' by the chainsmokers

There will be no way to talk about pop music in 2016 without talking about The Chainsmokers - even if you desperately don't want to talk about The Chainsmokers.

And here's the funny thing: I'm starting to get the impression that the people who don't want you talking about The Chainsmokers in deeper detail includes the duo themselves. They'd probably prefer that you don't reference their atrocious faux-ironic sketch comedy beginnings, or the fact they were responsible for inflicting that viral marketing trash 'hit' '#SELFIE' on the world in 2014. In other words, right from the start I had a certain distaste for these guys, especially in their attitudes towards pop music, which can be aptly summed up in a quote they made in an interview with Billboard: 'even before success, pussy was number one'. Fantastic, all the proof that the attitudes typically associated with the 'white guy with acoustic guitar' stereotype can cross over: the guys who never made music out of any sort of artistic impulse, just to pick up chicks. Follow it up with an awful live performance with Halsey at the VMAs, their slagging of the band Weezer as 'thirsty', and their much-covered insults at Lady Gaga and Rihanna for either sucking or having 'no work ethic', and you can see why legitimate artists both in and outside of EDM treat The Chainsmokers with at best disinterest and at worst outright contempt.

But look, we've had assholes in music forever, I'm not holding The Chainsmokers to any sort of moral standard. No, what I find more corrosive is how it feels like so much of their music feels like an extended con run on the mainstream public, abusing the pass that's now common for pop in the cultural conversation to make some of the most cynical and hollow music imaginable. You might not like Lady Gaga's artifice or The Weeknd's nhilism, you might think Taylor Swift is thin-skinned and vindictive and Drake is overexposed and creatively stagnating, that Meghan Trainor can't back up her ego and Shawn Mendes is way over his head, but when I listen to their music, there's an artistic impulse that I might not like but is at least there. Even will.i.am, who I used to loathe for his 'music-as-marketing savant' approach at least took the music with artistic integrity - even if he couldn't always execute, there was at least something. The Chainsmokers, meanwhile, freely admit in public to being inspired by Jeremy Piven's character from Entourage and seem to treat music more as a marketing gimmick to enable hedonism rather than any sort of art - so no wonder they've said they've never considered releasing a full-length debut album, because that would enable critics to drag them into a serious conversation they aren't prepared or willing to have. And that's the reason why I'm covering their second EP Collage in detail - call it a review, call it an expose, what did this Collage deliver?

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - october 22, 2016 (VIDEO)

Look, I don't need to say anything with this one beyond HOLY SHIT FALSE ALARM IS AWESOME and you all need to be listening it - okay, I'll stop.

On a different note, we've got Epica, Opeth, OneRepublic, and Daya on the way, so stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - october 22, 2016

So here's the other thing about the last weeks of a Billboard year - more than ever, it becomes a game of timing if you're looking to land a song on the year end list. Release the song early enough and it's no issue, but unless you've got a guaranteed smash hit heading for an inevitable #1, it might actually serve you better to release your songs a little later - keep in mind that most tracks will only ever stick around for twenty weeks on the charts, and the last thing you want is to release a track where midway through its lifespan the year shifts and you're only left with a portion of that time to rack up the accumulated sales, streaming, and airplay to get on the next year's list.

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - august 20, 2016 (VIDEO)

Bit of an odd, unstable week here. Guarantee it's going to be rough in upcoming weeks - I have that odd feeling we're on the precipice of a major shift, just watch.

Anyway, next up is Dinosaur Jr., so stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - august 20, 2016

So I can't be the only one who thinks that the charts are a little unstable right now, am I? Now that the summer lull has faded for good, we might not have gotten many new songs this week but it doesn't shake the feeling it's only a matter of time before everything is thrown into chaos. Keep in mind that we still have a solid fourteen weeks left - there are songs that could debut in the next few weeks that'll make the year end list, and if they debut higher they'll need even less time.

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - february 27, 2016

So after two weeks of pretty hectic movement, things seem to have finally settled down a bit on the Hot 100. Now this didn't mean we didn't get new debuts or a few big shifts, but with the resetting positions in the top ten, it looks like we got a week of calm before the aftermath of the Grammys and Kanye's release blows the chart into complete chaos. Eh, you take them when you can get them.

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - november 7, 2015 (VIDEO)

Yeah, I know it's late, but I fell asleep before I could post it, it happens. Overall, a decent week - though I expect next week to be absolutely bonkers busy, so stay tuned for that.

Next up, I've got a few busy days ahead, but I think I'm feeling ready to cover some Neon Indian, so stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - november 7, 2015

Before I start, if you're not already aware, my first full-length fantasy novel called To Kill A Dragon just dropped on Amazon - so if you're interested, I'd really appreciate if you took a look, the link's in the description below, maybe pick up a copy to drop a review. After all, if I dish it out, I need to be able to take it too.

...You see, Drake? What I did there just now is called 'marketing', and while it's on a far smaller scale and will probably lead to a far smaller return, I'd argue I didn't screw it up nearly as badly as you screwed up this week.