billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - november 19, 2016

First, a bit of housekeeping. As some fans are probably very much aware, the episode of Billboard BREAKDOWN from last week is blocked in all countries because Sony decided they didn't like my usage of Little Mix, even though I gave it Best of the Week. I was tempted to drop and reupload it, but at the moment I also have the entire script and attached videos on my blog for that episode, so you can head over to spectrum-pulse.ca, check it out there, and just imagine my dulcet tones saying all of it.

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - march 19, 2016 (VIDEO)

Ugh, this week really blew. God, I hope that next week gets better with Kendrick, 'cause this was rough.

But speaking of Kendrick... well, stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - march 19, 2016

So remember last year when there was a major push behind songs that were linked to the Academy Awards and John Legend and Common rode 'Glory' to some reasonable chart success? Yeah, this year served as the rebuttal to that on the charts, because while the Academy Awards had some impact on the Hot 100, they didn't nearly have as much impact as last year, mostly because 'Writing On The Wall' has been generally panned by everyone except the Academy. But much like everyone else, I'm choosing to ignore Sam Smith and that song... but unfortunately the option is instead to focus on this week, and yikes, it's been a while since I've seen things this bad. Strap in, folks, this gets ugly.

video review: 'tangled up' by thomas rhett

God, I'm not a fan of this review. It's a mess, my hair looks terrible, and the bitterness really does sour me on it - even though it was like the fifteenth take and I really wasn't feeling pretty well. It's me pushing myself too hard in one night - all the more evidence I need to better manage my time.

Okay, Billboard BREAKDOWN next - stay tuned!

album review: 'tangled up' by thomas rhett

There's no easy way to do this review.

See, this is the problem with being one of the few critics who covers country on YouTube and one of the only ones who covers mainstream country. I feel I've got an obligation to show off the best stuff, mostly because I want to see it get more traction, but for the bad stuff... well, who wants this review? Certainly not me because as I've said in the past, negative reviews aren't often that fun, and you guys mostly come for recommendations. I know there's a certain visceral catharsis watching someone tear into a terrible record, but there's a hollowness to it for me - if there was ill intent, I could feel righteous, but this is just taking out the trash.

Now some of you have realized this is all predicated on the album being bad, which is not an assumption you ever want to enter into when it comes to art. The big problem was that almost every factor going into this record screamed of outright disaster. I covered Thomas Rhett's debut album back in 2013 when bro-country was near its peak, and that album sucked. And it did so in perhaps one of the worst possible ways: by being so forgettably sterile and limp its production and melodies that the only things that stood out were Thomas Rhett's obnoxious voice and even more obnoxious personality. Let me put it like this: when you owe your industry career to your dad being an average-at-best songwriter and you make songs like the cheating song 'Take You Home' and 'All-American Middle Class White Boy', and frame them both as glorification rather than commentary, there's nothing I can remotely respect about it. 

So I'll give Thomas Rhett the slightest bit of credit when he announced he was taking his new album Tangled Up in a different direction, more towards a metropolitan pop country sound. The problem was putting aside that he needed over twenty additional songwriters to do this, the lead-off single was 'Crash And Burn', a slice of bad pseudo-vintage pop that outright stole from Sam Cooke's 'Chain Gang', made Thomas Rhett look and sound like a braying asshole, and was cowritten by Chris Stapleton, which just makes me feel really, really sad. The presence of LunchMoney Lewis and Jordin Sparks on the features list only made me feel worse - more talented people completely wasting their time. That said, the ballad 'Die A Happy Man' actually seemed decent, and right now, this album has nowhere to go but up - is there anything that can save it?

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

So this should have gone up last night, but apparently my upload freezes when the file is grotesquely massive or when my computer goes to sleep. Go figure.

Next up on a far lighter note, CHVRCHES! Stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - october 10, 2015

For all of you who wanted me to cover Drake & Future's surprise collaboration release, you're going to get your wish - because it effectively crushed everything in its path and for I think is the third time this year, turned the Hot 100 into the Drake show. And please tell me that I'm not the only one who's starting to get a little sick of it at this point. Coupled with my suspicions that Views From The 6 will probably still end up dropping this year - and the fact that Drake was responsible for cosigning The Weeknd and helping him become huge - the hip-hop story has been dominated by Drake this year, and yet he got there by making some of the least interesting music of his entire career. And given the somewhat mixed critical response I've seen for What A Time To Be Alive, I'm suspecting we're going to hit the backlash zone any time now, because Drake is reaching dangerous points of overexposure. But apparently the mainstream public disagrees, because we had seventeen new songs this week and nearly half of them had Drake on them.

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - june 6, 2015

Man, this was a harder episode to get online than I thought it'd be. Doesn't help the majority of the songs were hot garbage, but you get those weeks.

Next up, A$AP Rocky - stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - june 6, 2015

And just like that, Taylor Swift is back on top.

There's honestly more to this week - a shocking amount more, really, looking at the charts you'd think it was outright chaos - but really, so much of this story revolves around Taylor Swift and 'Bad Blood'. Yeah, Kendrick Lamar plays a pretty major part too, but his verse is peripheral, a part of the machine that gave a new #1 single, a precisely timed marketing push that sent the song surging up radio, sales, streaming, and YouTube to take the top spot. And keep in mind that Taylor's not on Spotify either - the growth of 'Bad Blood' is nothing short of a minor phenomenon, and it really does eclipse most of what happened beneath it - which is kind of a good thing, because of that kind of sucked.

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

I honest to God thought I couldn't get this done tonight. The filming was hell, I started late, and I was bleary-eyed and exhausted. Whew.

Okay, next is Tyler, and then I have a slew of reviews I shouldn't have any problem knocking out... plus I've got a surprise planned for this weekend. Stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - april 25, 2015

Well, it finally happened. Fourteen weeks into its run, just a scant few weeks from breaking a record held for nearly twenty years, it was unseated by a dark horse soundtrack hit by a subpar rapper and a YouTuber that nobody could have seen coming. Yes, the rest of the week happened and gave me a fair amount to actually talk about, but in a rare occurence on this show, it actually looks like our Top Ten might be more interesting - because this week, 'Uptown Funk' by Mark Ronson & Bruno Mars lost the #1 slot.

video review: 'it goes like this' by thomas rhett

Well, that went quickly enough. Man, that album sucked.

Next up is Toby Keith, followed by Avril and Celine - only then will I tackle Eminem (you can all wait). Stay tuned!

album review: 'it goes like this' by thomas rhett

We're back to country again, folks, and this time, I'd like to ask a question of you all: have you ever wondered how certain acts break into the music industry? How they get that connection, how they manage to get those contacts, how they manage to line up that major label contract? Well, there are a wealth of answers - the lucky demo breakthrough, the start through songwriting which catapults into a performing career, the reality show start, and, of course, nepotism! It's particularly interesting in the country music scene how many acts can be linked by family to their success - and the funny thing is that I'm not the kind of guy who will immediately condemn these acts. As with reality show winners, you occasionally get sparks of talent flying from anywhere, and the succession in the Hank Williams family presents plenty of evidence that differing musical styles and talents can be developed regardless of bloodline. And besides, the music industry is an insular world - sometimes you need to break in however you can.

That being said, I still have a healthy streak of skepticism and it ignited in a big way when I heard about Thomas Rhett. He's the son of Rhett Atkins, a mid-level country singer from the late-90s who had some serious critical acclaim and then joined a songwriting team with Dallas Davidson, one of the men responsible for some of the worst country songs of the past decade (fun fact: Dallas Davidson and Luke Bryan were roommates in college - shocker). So while it's clear his father is part of the Nashville songwriting machine that's been churning out bro-country this year, Thomas Rhett is actually the primary songwriter on the majority of this material (and he's 23, the same age as me). So to be honest, I was curious what sort of material Thomas Rhett would be looking to make with his major label debut. So, with that in mind, how did his new album It Goes Like This turn out?