the top ten worst hit songs of 2011 (VIDEO)

Can't believe I nearly forgot to post this mess... enjoy!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - october 19, 2019

I did not expect this week to be that tumultuous. Granted, a major part of this comes from the minor album bomb courtesy of Summer Walker - which is just under the cutoff which means I'll be covering every entry in detail, which I don't mind given my curiosity into all the hype there - but there was a surprising amount of movement on the Hot 100, which makes for the sort of busy week that I'm actually intrigued to cover... so yeah, strap in, there's a lot here!

the top ten worst hit songs of 2011

So something every music critic loves to do is craft a 'narrative' surrounding the sound of a specific year, especially with the benefit of hindsight allowing one to track trends or make predictions of what was to come, write a little history along the way.

2011 is not one of those years where that comes easily. On the surface you could make the argument this is where the club boom hit over-saturation and began collapsing in upon itself, with the success stories this year telling what was to come. But while this year would foretell the success of some individual acts and trends - you can argue the popular seeds of bro-country were planted this year, as was Adele's decade-long run and a fondness for retro tones that would eventually be co-opted by artists looking for identity outside their own - hi, Bruno Mars, who got his major push this year - it also feels weirdly ossified in time. For one, 2011 was a year of massive pop diva competition, where most would see their careers fly in wildly different directions by the decade's end or implode entirely. You could argue that 2011 was also the year of Young Money as Lil Wayne, Drake, and Nicki Minaj began notching consistent crossover success... and many could argue that was a mixed blessing at best. And that's not even counting the string of acts that would achieve chart success in 2011 and little else - and what's bizarre is that they weren't part of any one consistent trend or level of quality, which means even in hindsight you can't really draw clear predictions on where anyone was going to go. And here's the strangest thing: for the most part that diversity played to the year's strengths, and wound up just having less bad hits than many years ahead - years like 2013 and 2017 might have hit greater heights, but they also had far deeper lows. Like with 2012, most of the bad stuff in 2011 was more annoying and badly made than offensive, but unlike that year it was a struggle for me to even pin down the worst of what we got... but I did pull something together anyway. You all know the rules, the songs had to debut on this year-end Hot 100 chart, so let's untangle the worst of this messy year, starting with...

video review: 'a boat on the sea' by moron police

And this was pretty damn special - huge thanks to Crash Thompson for pushing this out the door to me.

But now for a top ten on the docket... stay tuned!

album review: 'a boat on the sea' by moron police

I think the general reaction from everyone who has heard this has been, 'Where the hell did this come from' - closely followed by 'Wait, those guys? Are you serious?!'

And that's a fair reaction here - for those of you who recognize the name Moron Police at all, you probably know them more for some Norwegian progressive metal that was more in the comedy scene... a scene I don't normally touch as a rule, because comedy music is incredibly subjective and I have strange tastes in comedy. And going back to Moron Police's first two albums... well, their debut had promise and showed a band who could split progressive heaviness with real hooks and some wit, but it seemed to curdle on their second album Defenders of the Small Yard into something darker with an odd, unpleasant sourness to it - this is a band that released a single called 'T-Bag Your Grandma', that should give you a rough idea where the humour was going. Coupled with a math rock side that was very much not my thing, after going through those first two albums in preparation for this one, I seriously questioned would it all be worth it... but those people who have heard A Boat On The Sea have not stopped raving about it and the recommendations only stepped up after my Tool review where I professed I liked my progressive rock and metal to have more melody. So with all of that mind, what is A Boat On The Sea?

video review: 'all mirrors' by angel olsen

Yeah, this one was tough... really wanted to love this album too, I really did, but it just didn't pan out. Eh, it happens.

Anyway, next up is an album that absolutely panned out and that I'm really excited to talk about, so stay tuned!

album review: 'all mirrors' by angel olsen

It feels like I've been struggling to get onboard with Angel Olsen for years now.

And what's frustrating is that it always feels like there's just one or two elements that get in the way of things really clicking. She's a terrific singer, but sometimes she's stuck with production that doesn't flatter her unique timbre or style. The production can often swell with portentous presence and purpose... and wind up dragging if the climax doesn't connect. She's a strong songwriter, but I often run into quibbles of nuance and framing that just don't pay off as strongly as I hoped. And all of this is surrounded by the fact that in the lo-fi, alternative country-adjacent scene, she is surrounded by acts that might not have her unique pipes but can stick the landing a little more strongly.

But there were two things that prompted me to check this album out anyway, the first being that in 2017, she teamed up with Alex Cameron for the song 'Stranger's Kiss', which showed that with a potent groove beneath her and some punchy synths she could ride an absolutely terrific song, one of the best of that year. And I kept thinking about that song when for #2, I heard that her newest album All Mirrors was not just going to be a pivot towards baroque pop with huge, lush string arrangements, but also an embrace of synthesizers. Which... alright, I didn't love how she utilized them on MY WOMAN but maybe there'd be a little more focus and clarity this time, especially given how much the music press has slung critical acclaim at her this year - although given the recent avalanche of critical acclaim at baroque pop acts spanning from Lana Del Rey to Julia Holter to Weyes Blood in the past year, I do take that with a grain of salt. But fine, I still really wanted to like this, so what did we get with All Mirrors?

video review: 'uknowhatimsayin¿' by danny brown

Yeah, really wanted to love this one... shame I don't, but it's not bad all the same...

Anyway, next up I think I'm going to tackle Angel Olsen next - stay tuned!

album review: 'uknowhatimsayin¿' by danny brown

In his series Whatever Happened To Alternative Nation, music critic Steven Hyden once identified Alice In Chains' sophomore album Dirt as a 'unrelentingly grim collection of songs about how people should never, ever shoot heroin' - and he's not wrong. That album, for as potent as it is, might be one of the most nightmarish grunge albums ever made that describes that form of drug addiction in utterly harrowing terms... and in 2016, Danny Brown followed in that tradition with Atrocity Exhibition. His previous two projects may have reinforced the garish juxtaposition between how much escapist fun drugs could be opposite the grimy, poverty-stricken life he was trying to escape, but Atrocity Exhibition went further, embracing a howling nightmare of experimental production and wild delivery that was looking to drag you into the roots of how horrifying addiction and the underlying depression could be. It's not an album I precisely love - tonally it's all over the place and not all the experimentation in production sticks the landing - but there hasn't really been anything like it in the 2010s in hip-hop, and it absolutely set a new high water mark for Danny Brown as a rapper and artist - I'd never really been a huge fan before, but Atrocity Exhibition definitely brought me on-board in a big way.

Flash forward to 2019, and Danny Brown seems to be in a very different place: he's older, a little more restrained and cleaned-up, he's got a pretty good show on VICELAND that might have its weird moments but isn't really embracing the shock in the same way his albums have. And thus I didn't really expect him to go further down the rabbit hole for his new project uknowhatimsayin¿ - sure, names like JPEGMAFIA and Run The Jewels and Thundercat and Blood Orange attached to production did suggest this was going to be weird, but likely a more controlled, focused brand of weird. Still, I was fascinated to see where Danny Brown would land, and it was hard to not be excited about that set of collaborators, so what did we get with uknowhatimsayin¿?

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.

video review: 'ghosteen' by nick cave & the bad seeds

And here we are. First big review of the week, and man, this was a beauty to get through...

Anyway, up next is Billboard BREAKDOWN, and then Danny Brown - stay tuned!

album review: 'ghosteen' by nick cave & the bad seeds

I had a surprising amount of trepidation approaching this album.

And I feel it's important to admit that before going in because if you know my history surrounding Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, you might find that surprising. This is an act I can convincingly argue has made some of the best albums of the past forty years spanning a half dozen different genres, fiercely literate but not at the expense of striking melodies and dynamic performances. I still hold they have at least two bonafide 10/10 classic albums, the first being 1990's The Good Son, the latter you all should know as 2016's Skeleton Tree, which very nearly was my top album of that year if it wasn't for Dave Cobb's country compilation masterpiece Southern Family. But for a project that wracked with grief, both in the passing of his son and an exploration of the failure of narrative and art to encapsulate it... how in the Nine Hells do you follow it?

Well, this takes us to Ghosteen, the new double album that was promising to lean even further into the fractured electronic and ambient textures that have coloured his work in the 2010s, and could very well be even more touched by grief - many people forget that much of his work on Skeleton Tree was written before his son's tragic passing in 2015. And thus I was preparing for the sort of overwhelming emotional experience that was listening to Skeleton Tree, an album I can rarely listen to in public... but I also knew the odds of replicating such an experience was impossibly steep, so I was preparing for a project just a little less than what we got in 2016, especially across a double album that many were saying was even more spare and abstract in its poetry. So okay, what did Ghosteen bring?

video review: 'hey, i'm just like you' by tegan and sara

Really welcome surprise with this one - really happy it came together, definitely check this out!

Next up... hmm, I want to knock something off my backlog that I've been liking for some time, so stay tuned!

album review: 'hey, i'm just like you' by tegan and sara

So I'll admit this was a swerve I didn't expect from Tegan and Sara. When this duo went outright synthpop on Heartthrob in 2013 and followed it up with Love You To Death three years later, I assumed their path had been set, especially given how much crossover success they found in the mean time. Sure, some of the diehard rock set were a little alienated by the pivot, but it seemed like a lot of them were more forgiving in the end, especially if they remembered how they started very early in their career with songs that flirted with pop structures.

But I won't deny that I was among the people who were both surprised and a little encouraged that the duo was going to bring back their electric guitars for their newest project Hey, I'm Just Like You. More to the point, it would be revisiting and tweaking many cuts they had written or cut as demos in their teenage years but given the benefit of twenty years in the industry, a little more refinement. And to me this seemed like a fascinating but smart choice: I've long held the opinion that their pop pivot did wonders for tightening up their writing and easing the strained stabs at indie rock obliqueness that left me more frustrated with their work in the 2000s than I'd normally like to admit. Now granted, I had no idea how this would translate to 2019 - going back to So Jealous and The Con, those are two records with structures and tones that are inextricably linked to the 2000s, and a quick relisten to both projects reminded me precisely how hit-and-miss they could be, especially on the more twee side - but I did see the potential, so what did we get on Hey, I'm Just Like You?

video review: 'heartache medication' by jon pardi

Huh, I honestly thought this would attract more interest... eh, makes my plans for 2020 all the more valid, I guess.

Anyway, I feel like some jaunty pop rock, so Tegan and Sara are next; stay tuned!

album review: 'heartache medication' by jon pardi

Okay, I'll just say it: in my reviews of Jon Pardi up to this point, the majority of the problem is me.

And this is one of those utterly exasperating issues as a music critic where yes, to the mainstream Nashville listener Pardi represents a sound that is entirely up my alley and should be getting all the praise in the world in the current subset of neotraditional revivalists we're seeing, especially in his choice of production. And I can see on the surface how Jon Pardi basically answers all of my major complaints about the corporate, pop-pandering side of Nashville by delivering a rich, vintage timbre that could have been imported straight from the early 90s... and yet I've been lukewarm on him at best, right from when I covered his debut in 2014. Don't get me wrong, I like that his success is nudging Nashville in that organic, neotraditional direction, but between never quite liking his vocal timbre and songwriting that just feels a bit underwhelming - plus the wealth of indie country acts that just do this sort of sound better - I know how it makes me come across like a country music hipster not getting onboard, even though I'd argue that just because you have a neotraditional sound doesn't mean the delivery or songs hold up. And while the country music hipster part is probably true, I actually did have some hope that with his mainstream niche firmly established he'd be able to double down and not have to rely on consistently his most generic songs as singles, so I really did want to like what he was going to deliver with Heartache Medication - it really did seem like Jon Pardi was going in the right direction, so did his album deliver?

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

Bit of a slow episode, but it happens. Hope you all enjoy it, regardless!

video review: 'hot motion' by temples

And here we go - a little disappointed with this one as a whole, but we'll see if maybe a few moments linger.

Next up, I'm feeling like some country, so stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - october 5, 2019

The prediction I made last week was that this week would be relatively quiet - I was not expecting it to be this quiet. Sure, next week could well see a small album bomb from DaBaby or maybe a smattering of Kevin Gates, but this week? Yeah, one of the fewest numbers of new arrivals I've seen in 2019... and yet I'm not really all that thrilled about it, given that the current Hot 100 feels kind of shaky to mediocre on average, and I'm not seeing what's going to make it better.