Showing posts with label zara larsson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label zara larsson. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 9, 2019

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


Man alive, this took so damn long to finish... oh well, let's see what I can do next - stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - january 12, 2019

So this is one of those weeks on Billboard BREAKDOWN that can be draining to talk about, mostly because it's easy but time-consuming to explain at length. To put it simply, if you look at the Hot 100 a full half of it advanced ten positions or more, we have a ton of returning entries, and a full slate of fourteen new arrivals - and no, there wasn't an album bomb. No, as I said, I can explain this fairly easily: along with the album bomb from 21 Savage drying up, all the Christmas music exited the chart and a lot of older music this week picked up radio spins thanks to year-end countdowns, and given that there was no big releases to plug in the gap, the flood of music to replace it is all over the damn place and really shows no indication of what could last long term.

Wednesday, May 17, 2017

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - may 27, 2017 (VIDEO)


Yeah, pretty short week overall, but not a bad one in my books.

Next up, Zac Brown Band and followed by one of the worst records I've covered thus far this year - stay tuned!

Tuesday, May 16, 2017

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - may 27, 2017

So we're now at the halfway point of the Billboard year - and wow, 2017 has been something, that's for damn sure. I'm still not quite sure how to evaluate it as a whole. One thing's for sure is that it's been a turbulent year thus far - Ed Sheeran might have held the top for a measurable time, but ever since then it has been song after song seizing the #1, showing the sort of turnover that you'd more expect on the UK charts than the United States.

Wednesday, March 22, 2017

video review: 'so good' by zara larsson


So, this wasn't quite as good as I was hoping, but overall, not bad at all, interesting listen.

But next up, it's going to be one that missed I while back - stay tuned!

album review: 'so good' by zara larsson

So let's talk about music distribution. Now to pretext this I don't have a background when it comes to the licensing and publishing of music, so if there's additional legal bulwarks that come up when a record is to be released internationally, please let me know - but that being said, in the internet age, there should be no good reason why any music shouldn't be available worldwide from the drop. Now when it comes to marketing, I can see it making a certain amount of sense if you're looking to stagger your sales push, but when I start doing research and I discover that the record wasn't even released digitally outside of the home country, it seems like a blown opportunity. 

So when I discovered that Zara Larsson's actually had a debut album released in her native Sweden in 2014, I had to reach out to my secret European contacts in order to somehow snag a copy. And the more I listened to it, the more I was utterly confused why this was never released - because as a pop debut, it's pretty great. I've tended in the past to place Zara Larsson in the same category as the pop upstarts launched in the wave of Lorde, but a more apt comparison, especially on that first release, might actually be Ariana Grande, because Larsson can hit those whistle notes too and she arguably had more consistent and interesting production that Ariana had on her first two releases. I wouldn't say the writing was spectacular or that Zara Larsson was more expressive than Ariana - she could tend to be a little more curt and aggressive, which narrowed her range but she could thankfully back it up - but it was a tight little project that unfortunately lags in the final third. 

And then came 'Never Forget You' and 'Lush Life' and I was onboard with Zara Larsson... yeah, 'Ain't My Fault' wasn't particularly great, but her production team had good instincts and she had writing credits on over half the album, I had hopes that in terms of pure pop music So Good would connect - was I right?

Thursday, December 29, 2016

the top ten best hit songs of 2016 (VIDEO)


Well, this was certainly fun to make - genuinely curious if it ends up blowing up as much as it did last year, given how wonky this year was, so we'll see!

Next up, working on that big top 50 list, so stay tuned!

Wednesday, December 28, 2016

the top ten best hit songs of 2016

So for those of you who saw my last list, you might have caught my general assertion that 2016 was not good for the Hot 100. And here's the deeper truth: the bad songs, while there were more of them, they weren't the sort of atrocious that keeps you up at night, at least not as a whole. Despite how angry I got, I can think back to a few other years that had far more contemptible songs that would inspire a lot more rage - I think society as a whole has pretty much forgotten that in 2013 Rick Ross teamed up with Rocko and Future to release a song with a verse endorsing date rape - yeah, that was a thing.

No, the bigger problem with the year-end Hot 100 in 2016 is that there was a lot less good songs - we always get a lot of mediocrity but this was a year where the pickings were very slim. On the one hand, it makes this list pretty easy - very little to cut - but at the same time in stronger years, like 2012 or even 2015, I'm not sure how much of this list would have measured up. Many people made that same observation back in 2014 - I didn't, mostly because I genuinely found a lot to like about my list that year - but I'm not denying it for 2016, especially because the majority of songs that will make this list were originally released in 2015 and only became hits this year. If that's not the most glaring indictment on pop in 2016, I don't know what is, and what gets all the more infuriating is that the mediocrity clogging the arteries of this year kept otherwise great songs from catching on, especially in country music which despite big improvements even on the Hot 100 practically disappeared for the year end. 

But again, it had to land on that list, and it's a thin list indeed... but still, it wouldn't have made this list if I couldn't defend it being here, so let's start with our Honourable Mentions!

Wednesday, October 19, 2016

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - october 29, 2016 (VIDEO)


So this was way too much fun. No joke, I had more fun editing the 'meme' segment of this review than any other time I've edited a video - it was weird and zany and fun, I dug it! Might see more of it if more memes chart, I could do this Fantano homage pretty regularly (and yes, he did give me permission).

Next up, JoJo, and then Blackberry Smoke, so stay tuned!

Tuesday, October 18, 2016

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - october 29, 2016

So this week was weird. I'm not going to say it was a bad week - it definitely wasn't, there's enough quality coming up new that I'm not going to call this precisely bad - but there are both shifts and new arrivals that extend all the way to the top ten that deserve some investigation, so this episode might run long, for as strange as things are...

Wednesday, July 20, 2016

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - july 30, 2016 (VIDEO)


Well, this was an interesting episode to make. Took a little longer than I expected, but overall a better week, I think, especially before Britney and Katy make their big returns.

Next up, I think it's finally time I talk about Fates Warning, so stay tuned!

Tuesday, July 19, 2016

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - july 30, 2016


I have mixed feelings about the Hot 100 this week. On the one hand, our new entries look pretty promising for the first time in a while, and I have to hope that a few of these tracks will actually stick around for a bit... but on the other hand, I also have to take a look at our gains and realize that even they start to gain traction, they've got a ways to go to overtake the tidal wave of garbage that's ascending up the charts when the summer lull blocks out most competition. Joy.

Thursday, July 7, 2016

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - july 16, 2016 (VIDEO)


This was... well, an interesting week to say the least. I genuinely hope we get a shakeup instead of a summer lull, because I don't have much patience for the rest of this. In the mean time, though, I've got Weval, then probably Grace and a few others coming soon, so stay tuned!

Wednesday, July 6, 2016

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - july 16, 2016

So here's the thing about the summer lull period with the charts: you get out of it basically what you put in. If you have good songs primed to go live in May or June that'll have some momentum, you'll basically have your summer lineup providing there's no big shakeup or surprises. But if you don't... well, basically you're left with most of the Hot 100 right now, which isn't so much outright awful but full of tracks that engender barely a reaction at all. Fellow music critic Todd In The Shadows described these tracks as fragments, but I'd prefer the term hollow: they fill time on the radio, but you're left feeling like nothing sticks in the way some years have, which is bad even for pop.

Tuesday, February 23, 2016

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - march 5, 2016

I was expecting this week to be busier than it is. I mean sure, it wasn't exactly a quiet week - new number one, a bunch of new arrivals and some considerable jumps around the chart - but I was oddly expecting more. Turns out one of the biggest factors that I was expecting - Kanye's big release - actually made no impact, because he kept it TIDAL exclusive, which Billboard doesn't count. And as for the Grammys... well, maybe it's just me, but with a few exceptions, it actually seemed more reasonable.