billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - march 23, 2024

So I reckon this episode is probably late going live - just my luck for an album bomb week from Ariana Grande that against all odds managed to do a lot better than I personally expected. We’ll get into those details later on, but suffice to say if I lose several hours of writing time because Billboard can’t get things in order on schedule… well, y’all are accustomed to handling this with some grace, especially on a week where I already talked at length about the album in question on my main channel, highly recommend you go check that out first.

But now to the matter at hand: the top 10, and a new #1: ‘we can’t be friends (wait for your love)’ by Ariana Grande… and honestly, this surprised me; she’s on Republic, which rolls under UMG, there goes the Tiktok promo… or at least I would say that if it didn’t get chipmunked and spliced and bootlegged all over the platform, which doesn’t count towards the charts but does operate as its own form of promo alongside strong sales, getting shipped to radio, and utter dominance on streaming and YouTube. But this was by no means guaranteed, which takes us to our #2 and probably the cause of why the charts were late: ‘Lose Control’ by Teddy Swims - I’ve already mentioned that he and Warner pushed a bunch of versions of this song to capitalize on sales and radio as much as possible, especially facing an uphill battle on streaming, but it turns out there may have been dubious behaviour around said sales, so reportedly some had been disqualified or clawed back. I’m a little bewildered as to the strategy here - Ariana Grande is an a-lister, this is Teddy Swims’ first hit, and next week she’ll be facing a much steeper streaming battle, so why try the tricks now? Well, it probably has a lot to do with our #3: ‘Beautiful Things’ by Benson Boone, which lags significantly on the radio but has better streaming and the sales are there as well - it’s probably going to compete with ‘Lose Control’ for the top spot next week… god help us all. But hey, it at least knocked off ‘Carnival’ by Kanye West, Ty Dolla $ign, Rich The Kid and Playboi Carti to #4 - turns out when all you have is streaming and radio is very reticent to get onboard, that margin shrinks fast! It did hold over ‘Lovin On Me’ by Jack Harlow at #5 - down across the board even lingering at the top on radio - and ‘Texas Hold Em’ by Beyonce at #6, where despite one hell of a radio push, the streaming was down, although with an album coming in a few weeks, it’ll probably rebound. Then we have the first big new arrival in the top ten: ‘act ii: date @ 8’ by 4batz, thanks to a big remix from Drake at #7. I didn’t like this song when it dropped, Drake’s remix feels like a separate song stapled onto it and it’s pretty damn bad, but it got a ton of streaming so we’ll see how long it lasts. It vaulted over ‘greedy’ by Tate McRae at #8, where a decent radio week could not hold over all the streaming losses, where speaking of which, ‘I Remember Everything’ by Zach Bryan and Kacey Musgraves slid to #9; when you’re reliant on one channel, fluctuations like album bombs can hit you a lot harder. And on that note, as predicted ‘yes, and’ by Ariana Grande rebounded big to #10, but given how much radio has been dumping this song, I can’t imagine it lasting long here.

Which naturally takes us to our losers and dropouts, and boy in the latter group we’ve got some long-running tracks finally pushed out: ‘Need A Favor’ by Jelly Rolly, ‘On My Mama’ by Victoria Monet, ‘Rich Baby Daddy’ by Drake, SZA and Sexyy Red, and the real big one: ‘Flowers’ by Miley Cyrus. Now as expected, we’re in an album bomb week and there’s a lot of losers… albeit maybe fewer than you might thing, because the album bomb landed predominantly in the top 40, so the disruption feels more concentrated. Let’s start with a few scattered outliers first: ‘Like What (Freestyle)’ by Cardi B collapses off the debut to 84 - though she’s got a big single coming next week, it won’t matter much - ‘Holy Smokes’ by Bailey Zimmerman continues to tank at 87, and ‘MY EYES’ by Travis Scott lost all of his gains at 95. Now from there… kind of all over the place, because we don’t know how much publishing Universal owns for these acts, so I’m going to start with the songs that probably have a shot of clinching year-end positions that I know are seriously impacted: ‘Is It Over Now?’ by Taylor Swift at 27, ‘La Diabla’ and ‘La Victima’ by Xavi at 44 and 76 respectively - he’s on Interscope at the worst possible time - ‘vampire’ by Olivia Rodrigo at 48, ‘Burn It Down’ by Parker McCollum at 53, ‘Everybody’ by Nicki Minaj and Lil Uzi Vert at 59, ‘You Broke My Heart’ by Drake at 66, and most distressingly, ‘Surround Sound’ by JID ft. 21 Savage and Baby Tate - given how much of his traction came from streaming and TikTok in particular, that’s bad news. But you’re also going to see tracks impacted simply because of streaming and a regular album bomb, like ‘redrum’ by 21 Savage at 22, ‘Praise Jah In The Moonlight’ by YG Marley at 57, ‘Get In With Me’ by Bossman Dlow at 63, ‘Breathe’ by Yeat at 65, and ‘One Call’ by Rich Amiri at 70. Finally we have the country that is more impacted on position placement than the song’s own strengths: ‘Pretty Little Poison’ by Warren Zeiders slid to 42, ‘Where The Wild Things Are’ by Luke Combs fell to 46, and ‘The Painter’ by Cody Johnson hit 49, although they all did see radio losses this week too.

So now for gains and returns… and I don’t know what I’m even supposed to say, I already mentioned both gains in the top 10 and the one return is ‘Tourniquet’ by Zach Bryan clawing back to 97 yet again. To make matters worse, Ariana Grande only charted eleven songs this week, which places her in the midrange for my album bomb rules and only one new song is outside of the top 40. So screw it, we’re going to be late anyways and I might as well handle the whole thing with some level of brevity, but we’re also not starting there in our new arrivals…

98. ‘Outskirts’ by Sam Hunt - …you know that this year will make it a decade since Sam Hunt put out his debut album? Hasn’t it felt like mainstream country has changed so much but also not much at all the past ten years, including for some reason a Sam Hunt single getting pushed a year after its initial release even though he’s on MCA Nashville which rolls up under Universal? I guess we should count ourselves lucky that Sam Hunt largely missed TikTok - I can imagine his sound working more on that app than many would think - but whatever, here’s a single from an album where no release date is in sight… and look, by Sam Hunt standards, this is passable, in that in sounds like what Jordan Davis was ripping off a number of years ago. The piano and guitar interplay is decently warm, and Sam Hunt is an okay enough singer, trying to sell some heartbreak that while he’s in the city he’s so busy that it’s not until he gets to the outskirts of town he thinks about this failed relationship. It’s a shame that everything else around this song is incredibly clunky: the percussion is leaden and provides no groove, there’s whooshing effects everywhere in place of atmosphere, and even the backing vocals feel weirdly synthetic and close around Hunt’s voice, it’s really distracting on the verses away from the hook. And look, this is minor, but it’s hard to ignore that the most pertinent detail Hunt provides about this girl is that in his mind she shot his proposed baby names down while they were building a place - the song seems more interested in geography references than his ex - and then on the final verse he references hanging out with ‘Hailey from Toronto’; he’s already confirmed this isn’t a real person but ‘someone he imagines from somewhere very far away’. A flight from Toronto to Nashville is just over two hours, whereas a flight to LA is nearly five, so not only is your explanation bad, you gave more information about her than your ex! Yes, I know I’m nitpicking, but the overarranged production and odd points of focus in the writing cause a harmless song to sink into weird mediocrity. This should be better than it is, next!

96. ‘Back Then Right Now’ by Tyler Hubbard - So it looks like Tyler Hubbard’s solo country career is proceeding steadily - he’s had some actual hits in the 2020s away from Florida Georgia Line, and now this is a single tied to his next album targeted for this year; it first came out last September but that sort of radio timeline is apparently something Nashville is attached to in the age of streaming for some stupid reason. And… look, I like Hubbard’s drawl more than most even as processed as it is, and this has a slick guitar rollick that when paired with some propulsive percussion and some nice touches of pedal steel… at least until the bridge goes for more whooshing in a breakdown that’s not really needed nor fitting to the song, which is basically an extended nostalgia trip. And that’s… fine, I guess - a lot of the details are superficial and I definitely raised my eyebrows at the lines about ‘not talking about politics’ and ‘we didn’t worry bout what we didn’t know’, but given how Florida Georgia Line broke up over politics, I get the resigned regret when you lose your friend and bandmate because he went hard right. I dunno, I get why it’s getting airplay, but I’m not sure this is what folks want to hear from Florida Georgia Line, it doesn’t play to his strengths and it never has. Not bad… not especially good either.

74. ‘Austin’ by Dasha - …the buzz around this track has been weird to me. I first heard about it as an artist who blew up on TikTok and who was pivoting into country in order to pick up mainstream traction after the pop album she made in LA signed to Warner didn’t go anywhere. But that doesn’t have to be a bad thing - Lucy Hale of all people cut a country album a decade ago and it was great, and apparently Dasha liked country as a kid, fell back in love with it, and this is the song that got traction from a project back in February. And honestly, this is okay - definitely pulling on modern folk with the stomp clap percussion and brittle western acoustics, but they actually bring out of a fiddle and there’s a patter to the song that I don’t mind at all, especially as they were trying to make plans and chase their dreams and this guy wound up drowning himself in liquor so she had to go on alone. I actually kind of like how it’s not precisely clear why he ran off - and a part of me likes to imagine this as the flipside to cuts like ‘More Than My Hometown’ - but the angry results are going on alone, and there’s pathos in that. Now given that it’s built for TikTok it feels short to me - a song like this needs a bridge, perhaps one more twist or really let the fiddle loose - but even as it’s very obviously pop country, I don’t mind it; pretty good stuff.

55. ‘ordinary things’ by Ariana Grande ft. Nonna - we have a lot of Ariana Grande songs coming up next - again, I’ve already reviewed the album, I’m going to try and keep this brief, and we’re going to start with one I like as the album closer: the horns welling up around the bass and faint trap percussion, where she croons about the little things that will never be ordinary as long as they’re with her new paramour, where as her grandmother advises on the final monologue, she talks about the little things that kept their love going, where if the kiss goodnight ever starts feeling truly uncomfortable to get the hell out. I think the placement of the monologue is a little odd, with more focus on Ariana’s previous breakup than the new love going forward, but that’s minor - interesting that ‘Nonna’ is now the oldest person to ever chart on the Hot 100 in her mid-90s; neat detail, good song.

39. ‘i wish i hated you’ by Ariana Grande - Ah, one of my favourites on the album, handily. I love the blubbery synth touches that come along the subtle taps of the bass and the utterly gorgeous vocal arrangement, it’s subtle and intimate and captures the complicated feelings of wishing you hated your ex but really can’t - sometimes at the end of a breakup of a long relationship you have too many good or complex emotions that direct hatred doesn’t feel like enough. It’s easy to demonize an ex, it takes a lot of maturity to realize that you can’t hate him, you wish he was worse than he was, and that would drive more introspection and closure. I wish more of the album continued down this line of thought - really frustrating that it doesn’t - but this song is excellent, check it out.

38. ‘intro (end of the world)’ by Ariana Grande - there’s not a lot to say about a ninety second intro to the album, but the thematic setup is decent as the watery guitars rise alongside the strings as Ariana Grande second guesses an awkward moment that has prompted a lot of overthinking, and that alongside her general discomfort with all of it has her making the choice to end it; and I like the implication that if this is how it feels when it’s “normal”, what could she possibly expect if it was bad? Now again, this is an intro, honestly not a lot to it, but I do think it’s a good one… unlike…

37. ‘imperfect for you’ by Ariana Grande - look, I can appreciate Ariana Grande experimenting - she arguably doesn’t do enough of it on this album… but whoever told her a stab at watery psychedelia was a good idea was wrong. And it’s a shame because the lyrical sentiment is kind of good: she and her new partner are both in the aftermaths of failed relationships to be together, they’re still anxious about everything they left behind for this and intensely self-aware… but hey, they’ll be imperfect for each other, it’s why in a certain light the awkwardness of the song makes sense. Shame that the offkey guitar stolen from a bad late 90s pickup tested my patience alongside the fizzy drum machine with the clunky bass and awkward stuttering rattle, where even if the vocal flourish of the hook is intended to sound uncanny, it succeeds a little too well. I don’t even think this is bad, just a weird clunker near the end of the album, let’s move on.

30. ‘true story’ by Ariana Grande - This is another song I like because of its implications; as I said in my review, Ariana Grande sucks playing the ‘bad girl’, that sort of cold capriciousness is not something she can sell, and I think she knows that. So she’ll ‘play’ the bad guy for the ex, even though she can’t sell it and it’s not true to their experiences… and honestly, if they knew each other well enough, he would have recognized that. It helps that the twinkling gauzy synths around the minor key vocal line plays into a shuddering bassy synth warp that has some swing to it - feels very 2000s R&B in its underlying melody, which is not a sound that’s seen much nostalgia and probably could afford a little more, especially with Ariana nailing the dejected heartbreak in her vocal runs here. Of course, to complete that throwback it would need a bridge or actually run three minutes, but this is good enough to fill the gap.

28. ‘don’t wanna break up again’ by Ariana Grande - The more I reflect on this album, the more I pick up on the mature notes in the writing that usually comes when you hit your thirties if you’re lucky… because at this age, you don’t want to go through more breakups and heartbreak and have to start again, especially if you’ve had a marriage any length of time, and especially as Ariana Grande’s parents divorced and she really wanted this to work. Shame the production doesn’t do much for me here: a song like this could have afforded a greater sense of intimacy, not that chalky rattle passing as percussion over the gurgle of bass and faded synths, the twinkle on the hook feels weirdly tinny, and the vocal master is rougher than it should be. There’s a good sentiment at the core of this track, it needed better execution.

25. ‘bye’ by Ariana Grande - Ariana Grande tries her hand at nu-disco for the proper breakup song that opens after the intro… and I’m sorry, I think this is a metallic and gooey mess where no amount of new wave guitar rollick is winning me over. And it’s weird as hell that Max Martin is behind this - he was around in the late 90s when they reinvented that disco sound with more punch and verve the first time, why does the song have no impact in the percussion or any proper atmosphere, or a composition where the lyrics feel very stop-and-start, utterly unable to build any sense of groove? Honestly the song feels underwritten as a whole - just using ‘boy bye’ as the central term behind the hook feels like lazy songwriting, and yes, I know the sentiment is that she’s calling back to cycles of her mother’s divorce with the ‘return of Saturn’, where for me it feels more like something written in a half hour to set the tone of the album because you don’t have your obvious dance song to compete with Dua Lipa or Doja Cat. So no, not a fan of this one either.

23. ‘eternal sunshine’ by Ariana Grande - This is the song from the album that I expected to prompt more discourse than it got, the title track where it’s implied that Ariana’s ex is already in a new relationship that may be of suspicious timing, the deflection from much of what she’s seen in social media backlash. I’m not sure it worked, mostly because on the hook she brings up the new relationship where she’s totally now happy and has moved on and I don’t really buy it; you don’t claim your ex ‘played you like atari’ complete with video game sound effect… but that’s also part of the point, this is a song about dealing with feeling gaslit and second-guessing lies, which is why it’s trying to make the most direct callbacks to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. But man, I wish the production was remotely interesting beyond this fidgety, weedy trap percussion where the bass rumble gets more attention than any actual melody which remains washed out midway back. Again, it’s not bad… but it should be better. Speaking of which…

17. ‘supernatural’ by Ariana Grande - I was really happy to see this - my favourite song on the album - chart this high, mostly because it’s one of the better choices as a follow-up pop single and the most straightforward love song on the album. That might make it an odd fit amidst all the emotional drama, but the hazy atmospherics with the better percussion balance before the jagged synths warp across the hook and some of her most ethereal vocal layering on the album nails that slightly offkilter vibe in the best way possible, especially as the bridge bends across that melody and she actually belts on the final hook! It’s pop diva Ariana Grande, which for the past ten years I usually like; I think if you push this as a third or fourth single, especially to radio, this could work. Certainly a lot better than…

16. ‘the boy is mine’ by Ariana Grande - Look, with that title, and the cultural metatext going into this album, I’m not at all surprised this got so much attention, very obviously drawing a parallel to the classic Brandy & Monica duet ‘The Boy Is Mine’, which at the time was drawing reference to the somewhat forgotten Paul McCartney / Michael Jackson song ‘The Girl Is Mine’ but became something much bigger in R&B in the late 90s, with the tabloids playing up the bad relationship between Brandy and Monica. How much any of that was true is tough to prove - maybe not a boy between them but certainly animosity that’s lingered in some form for decades… and man, everything about this interpolation doesn’t work for me. For one, it’s not a duet, it’s just Ariana’s side of the story, it feels unbalanced and it doesn’t exactly play into culpability, and since Ariana isn’t good at playing ‘the bad girl’, the catty energy she can’t sell doesn’t work. And the arrangement isn’t good either - the choppy gauzy melody that often interferes with the chops and stutters they process her vocals through, the jerky prechorus, the dull trap percussion alongside the synth bass, the song is a mess and if this was attempting to add moral ambiguity to the album, it falls flat on its face. Every listen through this album and how it moves from this song into ‘yes, and?’ makes me dislike this more - I didn’t call this the worst on the album when I reviewed it, I think I will now.

1. ‘we can’t be friends (wait for your love)’ by Ariana Grande - and we end off with… well, I’m not surprised with how many nuggets of this song were chopped and pitch-shifted and bootlegged in some form for TikTok, but the more I think about it, the less I’m convinced it works. Now from a compositional standpoint, the vocal mixing is really pretty alongside the keyboard flourishes, the gentle pulsating synth that picks some nice grinding groove and those strings that swell up as the song concludes, the progression to get there is really nice! But the content… part of me hears chunks of the writing and knows immediately how they can be cropped out for TikTok, and Ariana Grande is smart enough to do that in a time where she had that official promo option. But this is also a song following ‘yes, and’, and while Ariana dodges any assertion it’s about the critics or fans giving her shit, it’s very obviously targeted to try and be magnanimous and win them back… because hey, despite all the shit, she still looks good, right? There’s an odd presumption that of course the love is coming back in her direction even if they can’t be friends, but the best moment of the song comes on the bridge where she recognizes how much the media has taken control of her narrative and she feels seen at the darkest of moments… but maybe if she can be alone in her own space, that’s what she needs… and you know what, that’s probably true, and it’s a shame the album doesn’t really continue down that line of introspection at all! I dunno, this song isn’t bad - as a simpler pop song, I think the composition is really quite good, even if I can see how each part of it will be purposefully remixed… I wish it felt less like a vehicle for that and got to something deeper, that’s all.

So that’s our week… again, it’s a long one, but that’s what happens when the charts are late and I’m writing as quick as I can to get something ready. Best and worst are all from Ariana Grande this time, with the worst going to ‘the boy is mine’ and Dishonourable Mention to ‘imperfect for you’, best with ‘supernatural’ and Honourable Mention for ‘i wish i hated you’. Next week… the fallout for all of this, it’s going to be fascinating, stay tuned…