Rap, Not Rap, Jam: Hot 100 Roundup—10/24/15
Dej Loaf Featuring Big Sean “Back Up” #83 With her insinuating voice and realist attitude, Dej Loaf deserves to ride a beat and a hook as good as these for as long as she wants, even if she doesn’t go...
View ArticleBottom, Top, In-between: Hot 100 Roundup—10/31/15
Jana Kramer “I Got The Boy” #92 The song is fine, but Kramer is an awful singer, stiff and lifeless. And if she thinks dialing up her southern accent is going to save her, she needs to think a lot...
View ArticlePentatoxic: Hot 100 Roundup—11/7/15
One Direction “Perfect”, #10 “Home”, #97 People complain about “Perfect” sounding like Taylor Swift’s “Style” as if they’d never heard an answer-record before. If the music isn’t explicit enough, how...
View ArticleMonuments and Squiggles: Hot 100 Roundup—11/14/15
Adele “Hello” #1 Adele’s voice, already a force of nature in the days of 19 and 21, has deepened and grown richer in the intervening years. So much so that she sounds like she’s making the transition...
View ArticleDrugs and Whiskey: Hot 100 Roundup—11/21/15
Ariana Grande “Focus” #7 Trying to be Mariah Carey didn’t pan out, so now Grande sets her sights a little lower and aims for Christina Aguilera. But guess what, she doesn’t have Aguilera’s vocal power...
View ArticleHistory! Travel! Adventure! WTF? Hot 100 Roundup—11/28/15
Coldplay “Adventure Of A Lifetime” #55 The lyrics start with some semblance of specificity, but quickly degrade into the vague universalisms that Chris Martin and his fans mistake for profundity. The...
View ArticleBieberland: Hot 100 Roundup—12/5/15
Justin Bieber “Love Yourself”, #4 “The Feeling” (featuring Halsey), #31 “Mark My Words”, #42 “Purpose”, #43 “No Pressure” (featuring Big Sean), #49 “Company”, #53 “No Sense” (featuring Travi$ Scott),...
View ArticleWallow Under the Bridge: Hot 100 Roundup—12/12/15
Adele “When We Were Young”, #22 “Water Under The Bridge”, #70 “Send My Love (To Your New Lover)”, #79 “Remedy”, #87 Adele’s billions of fans (those that didn’t buy the album straight away, at least),...
View ArticleBMs, DMs, and Anons: Hot 100 Roundup—12/19/15
Jordan Smith “Hallelujah” #61 Yo Gotti “Down In The DM” #87 Gotti makes social media sound like a bottle service club, neon lit with a Twilight Zone vibe, where he spends his time checking out the...
View ArticleHands Down: Hot 100 Roundup—12/26/15
Jordan Smith “Somebody To Love” #21 Selena Gomez “Hands To Myself” #77 Gomez has become something of a mystery to me, one I find unsettling in some ways. Largely, the problem is her voice, which,...
View ArticleVoices Off: Hot 100 Roundup—1/2/16
Jordan Smith “Mary Did You Know” #24 Emily Ann Roberts “Burning House” #56 Chris Brown “Back To Sleep” #64 Mid-level Brown, meaning not bad, but forgettable as always. The clean version is actually...
View ArticleReally Really Really? Hot 100 Roundup—1/9/16
Chris Brown “Zero”, #80 “Little More (Royalty)”, #91 “Zero” is an attempted Daft Punk rip that sounds like Maroon 5 with vocoders, and is only half successful. That still makes it twice as good as...
View ArticleThat’s Mister, Not Little: Hot 100 Roundup—1/16/16
2 Chainz “Watch Out” #85 “Watch Out” sounds familiar, and I wish I could pinpoint exactly where I’ve heard it before. But heard it before I have, and in the back of my mind is a record that sounds more...
View ArticleUnderwhelmed: Hot 100 Roundup—1/23/16
Carrie Underwood “Heartbeat” #76 “Heartbeat” may not be Underwood’s worst record, but it’s certainly one of her blandest. It lacks the fierceness that’s filled her work since “Before He Cheats”. That...
View ArticleGhosts: Hot 100 Roundup—1/30/16
David Bowie “Lazarus”, #40 “Blackstar”, #78 You can hear it in his voice. The vocals are stronger than you might expect, defiantly so at times, but there’s a rasp, a wispiness, a transparency. It’s the...
View ArticleYears and Careers: Hot 100 Roundup—2/6/16
Mike Posner “I Took A Pill In Ibiza” #79 In 1970, the Denver-based band Sugarloaf had a top ten record with a song called “Green Eyed Lady”. Then, like so many others, they found themselves unable to...
View ArticleWhat Was That Again? I Have a Pillow in My Ear: Hot 100 Roundup—2/20/16
Zayn “Pillowtalk” #1 There are pleasurable and inspiring hooks, the ones that get you on your feet and make your heart soar. There are mediocre hooks, the ones you register and maybe even remember, but...
View ArticleDon’t Step On My Blue Suede Choo’s:Hot 100 Roundup—2/27/16
Future “Low Life” (featuring The Weeknd), #52 “Fly Shit Only”, #67 Future is still Future: moody and depressed but defiant and proud, using autotune and a lugubrious pace in an attempt to signify...
View ArticleSounds Like… Hot 100 Roundup—3/5/16
Gwen Stefani “Make Me Like You” #54 “Make Me Like You” would have sounded flat a decade ago, when Stefani was in her prime, mixing and matching genres and styles with abandon. It sounds even worse now....
View ArticleLost Pandas and Other Wild Things: Hot 100 Roundup—3/12/16
Ruth B “Lost Boy” #75 I have a hard time understanding the hatred directed toward “Lost Boy”. Yes, it’s the worst sort of high-school sophomore poetry, self-congratulatory and self-pitying at the same...
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