Billboard Hot 100 Top Ten (2018)

Ed Sheeran "Perfect" might be my least favorite song this year. How pathetic is it that's No. 1.

every time I hear the intro to Havana I expect to hear Rob Thomas "man it's a hot one"

then they follow it up with "Wild Thoughts" and I feel time closing in on itself and struggle to remember my own name

i just think of "same old love" when i hear "havana" tbh. and sometimes jason derulo's "talk dirty" b/c of an approximately shared brief melodic turn it used in its verses to connote ~exoticism~, blech

she's cuban-american

'havana' is solidly 2nd tier starrah but thats still p good

to clarify i was bleching at "talk dirty" in general and am aware that camila cabello actually has cuban heritage

she's exotifying East Atlanta though

lol

Does ANYBODY on ILM like Ed Sheeran?

Shape of You is pretty good wannabe Bieber.

"thinking out loud" is a classic

Shape Of You is honestly the worst song I've ever heard, although some of the stuff on his first album was fine enough.

I actually don't mind Rockstar!

"thinking out loud" is the greatest richard marx song since "keep coming back"

i actually have a video all plotted out in my head for thinking out loud. (i have never seen the real video, don't even know if there is one) ed's a barback a little nightspot in the village. people are leaving, laughing, oh i forgot to mention this is all in black and white with a bluish tint (i'm probably getting this from a richard marx video). everybody's ignoring our man ed, who's picking up ashtrays and sweeping up. the owner throws ed the keys as he leaves with a tipsy date. ed looks around. the place is still a mess. aside from dim lights behind the bar, there's just a single spotlight, centered on the tiny stage in the corner. half the chairs are already up on the tables. the opening chords come in. who's playing them? it's non-diegetic, don't worry about it. or is it....? ed picks up an old acoustic guitar leaning against the stool. he sits down in the spotlight. he sings and plays the song. the camera gets more into it, swooping around, dolly shots, the works. the last chord rings out and ed leans the guitar back against the stool. he pauses, half a smile on his face. and picks up a dishrag. needs an ending but i think you get the idea

no no no no no we're not reassessing "thinking out loud' noooooo

"let's take 'let's get it on,' remove the sex, and replace it with red facial hair"

almost reassessed stevie wonder when he said from the grammys stage that he thought "thinking out loud" was a great song

(not really tho + wasn't particularly surprised that stevie likes it either)

10. Halsey "Bad At Love" - this is okay!

this song sucks

I usually prefer songs with people good at love, but all things considered that one has grown on me

"Havana" climbs a spot and "Bad At Love" climbed four. "Bodak Yellow" is back in the charts and Ed Sheeran still sits at the top. not much has changed... At least "Let You Down" by NF didn't move from 18, and Dua Lipa "New Rules" is on the cusp at 11.

xxxxxpost i really like rockstar :\

this week's chart reflects the data-tracking week straddling new year's day, which tends to be a pretty quiet time. if you peek below the top 10, you'll see a surprising number of the chart's older hits rising a bit or even a lot: "feel it still", "shape of you", "believer", "that's what i like", "attention" etc. my understanding is that this is largely because of the year-end countdown shows that many radio stations, esp top 40 ones, play around that time, which gives an airplay-fueled boost to whichever big radio hits from the year are still charting. new year's eve playlists i saw on spotify and such seem to have helped too. (itunes gift card redemptions post-christmas used to also make a big impact, but with fewer people buying singles on itunes these days i'm not sure it made much of a difference this year.)

next week things should shake up a bit with bruno mars's "finesse" remix (in at #35 this week) jumping toward the top + the debut of justin timberlake's latest. the latter has not launched as stratospherically as one might expect from jt (his trolls soundtrack song debuted at #1 on the back of massive download sales in 2016) but maybe it'll be able to hold on until he performs at the super bowl in a few weeks.

that explains a lot!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LfJnj66HVQ

The Justin Timberlake song is good.

it peaked at #12 but i haven't seen anyone on ilx talk about the absurdly awful "Gummo" by horrific child-porn-posting dumbass 6ix9ine

sorry: child-porn-producing dumbass, apparently

i actually think it's pretty good as far as the knowingly-abrasive-'shock'-singles things tend to go

don't like 6ix9ine tho and don't see the appeal of any of the other songs he's managed to get on the charts

drake #1 debut is shaping up to be a massive hit, i've only heard it a few times on the radio and don't like it enough to actively seek it out so it doesn't really ~feel~ huge yet but numbers are numbers!

https://slate.com/culture/2018/01/why-camila-cabellos-havana-is-no-1-on-the-hot-100.html

Molanphy take. I like song and his analysis, and the video for this song too

is the JT track you're repping Filthy? Because that's bad.

i will rep for "filthy"! not a patch on his more essential work but much better than the other singles he has put out from the album. it is eyeroll-inducing and dad-ish but its awkwardness works somehow for me lol. like, i want to groan at him for starting the song with 'haters gonna say it's fake!' the way i do at every #brand trying to use hip slang that twitter denizens were using ages ago, but it is pretty amusing in the context of all the handwringing about a 'country album' being forthcoming that was going on before we had even heard anything.

Filthy video reminds me of GM's "Freeek", a similarly disappointing attempt at a comeback

Dang "Filthy" is already out of the top ten.

the JT/stapleton track is taking its place. it's a much better song, i wouldn't change the station if it came on.

i'll also sorta rep for "filthy." the hook feels like something i might hear on an electro r&b song as well as last train to paris, aka it's extremely fauntleroy. helps me overlook the brief sections of the song that are like my least favorite timbaland modes overlapping (shitty-sounding polygonal horns a la "4 minutes," his sense of what arena rock is a la the chris cornell record)

i find the horns super distracting! the first time hearing the song, *horns -> "haters gonna say it's fake..."* had me cringing, but now it's okay I can deal with a little noise

and "filthy" is now off the hot 100 entirely after 6 weeks on the chart. in related news, taylor swift's "end game" nosedives 26 rungs to #91 -- it was at its #18 peak just 5 weeks ago, but has spent the last few weeks declining at an alarming rate in airplay, which was its only strong charting metric. barring the unexpected, next week there will be no reputation songs left on the chart. (timberlake still has his chris stapleton collab "say something", which is shaping up to be a solid pop/adult radio hit.)

one of the less musically interesting but more surprising top 10 entries in recent weeks is bebe rexha's "meant to be" featuring florida georgia line. it's a pretty straightforward tune with some lightweight hi-hats and harmonies sprinkled here-n-there -- hardly the sort of thing you'd expect to be pulling heavy streams. but it actually is streaming, and especially selling, surprisingly well, and has managed to coast nearly effortlessly into the top tier off of that and some gradually building airplay not only at pop and adult but also country radio. (the way it's been parked at #1 on billboard's country songs chart ever since billboard suddenly decided it counted as country is surely eliciting some groans.)

given good prospects for timberlake/stapleton, rexha/fgl and now zedd/maren morris (already at #13 just 4 weeks in), i'm tempted to surmise that these bizarre-on-paper-but-predictable-in-sound collabos (the zedd single is basically a carbon copy of previous hit "stay") will be more the norm in the near future as pop adjusts to find its new down-the-middle style.

drake's massive smash, which will probably be the hot 100's #1 for a while longer, will probably make a solid cross to pop radio, but otherwise 'urban' tracks are still struggling to find themselves accepted as 'pop' even as they perform so well on the big chart. kendrick's "love.", arguably the pop-friendliest cut he's ever made, is sputtering around in the lower end of the pop radio top 20 with khalid's "young dumb & broke", which has been making its slow climb for ages. (top 40 playlists are so tight these days that songs below the top 10 at the format are often not even being played during daytime hours by most stations.)

the exceptions to pop's resistance to rap, of course, are with the pallid rappers mentioned earlier in the thread. nf's "let you down" is probably going to break the hot 100's top 10 soon enough (#12 now) and is about to rise to #1 on pop radio. g-eazy's halsey duet "him & uy" is also top 10 at pop radio (#14 hot 100) and don't look now, but this bazzi fellow is surely next. (i imagine some marketing agency received a fat check for this cringey excuse for a 'meme' going 'viral'.)

next week should see a splashy debut from post malone near the top of the chart.

"(top 40 playlists are so tight these days that songs below the top 10 at the format are often not even being played during daytime hours by most stations.)"

I made a point of listening to pop radio in the car for a couple weeks earlier this year and it was incredible how few songs you'd hear.

idk if it's more "the new down-the-middle style" per se so much as Top 40 radio noticing country radio is getting a lot of airplay, wanting that audience, but being reluctant to play actual country hits. (that, and being so reluctant to play hip-hop and R&B that they're grasping at anything else)

that might be what you posted, just worded differently, idk

yeah that is what i was trying to say, just poor word choice on my part to call it a style :)

the other day i had "if it's meant to be, it'll be, it'll be, baby just let it be" & "in the kitchen, wrist twistin like it's stir fry" interchangeable stuck in my head

that bebe rexha / florida georgia line song is so bad. it's a gravitron that goes around and around and around and then you feel sorta sick and then it just... ends

also it's march 1 and there have only been 22 songs (including 8 2017 holdovers that include 'all i want for christmas is you') in the top 10

can iheart just have its loans called in already

i hate the way the florida georgia line dude sings so much

oh man i hadn't heard about this current iHeartMedia news, is that being talked about on any threads?

i wonder if all the stations are just going to be bought by some other company that will resume business-as-usual or if something substantive might actually change programming-wise. will be interesting to see.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-01/iheart-is-said-to-prepare-for-bankruptcy-as-soon-as-this-weekend

i am kinda surprised that 21 pilots had no big hits before releasing their album! like i am not surprised "jumps00t" et al didn't connect in the long run but i figured they would have at least one surefire hit up their sleeve given how much they blew up with their last album.

of all the potential edm crossovers to go pop that i mentioned in an earlier post, it looks like none of them is going to really take off. it turns out the winner is marshmello's "happier" w/ bastille. it's getting, only semi-surprisingly for 2018, a lot of alternative play in addition to top 40 play. its sentimental dying-dog video has given it a big boost too.

i guess that song and imagine dragons new screamer ("natural") will be the representatives for 'rock' in the upper echelons of pop culture this fall. sorry 21 pilots :(

trying to catch up on this. i think i've fallen out of step with pop - nothing in the top ten is really grabbing me. but i was one of those who similarly tried and failed to hear the chart-topping qualities of "bodak yellow." "uproar" at least has some energy but it's all borrowed from "special delivery."

Weird how TAKI TAKI is the top 50 global song on spotify but in the hot 100 it’s all the way down in 27.

I predict one or two songs from the “a star is born” soundtrack will break into the top 10 in the following weeks. Probably “shallow”. They’re very different to current top radio but the movie has been getting oscar buzz and it has been doing quite alright in the box office.

“Taki Taki” is great! I think we should decide on which thread it belongs in.

Latin / reggaeton?

Sure, you’d think that would be the most logical place for it, but that thread has never been very pop/reggaeton-oriented (and has barely seen 10 posts this year). Maybe that should change.

I was also thinking of Rolling Pop. Posting it in both then.

(The song’s video actually dropped today - it might hit the US top 10 yet)

How about just using the soca or dancehall thread for pop-oriented reggaeton?

Doesn’t seem very logical to me? They are different genres?

Unless you’re thinking of creating a Rolling pan-Caribbean Pop thread - was it you or rob who advocated merging the dancehall and soca threads next year?