Hot 100 Reviews

The Top Ten Best Hit Songs of 2025

Surprise! Yes, I’m reviving this blog to bring you the traditional countdown of my favourite hits of the year. First of all, I have to apologize for abruptly ending Billboard Roundup with no explanation. I just didn’t feel a desire to keep writing them, for a few reasons. Firstly, general fatigue. I know they weren’t…

Taylor Swift – The Life of a Showgirl

Just writing up some scattered thoughts on the album here because the alternative is a 50-tweet thread. Can’t be bothered to format it as a proper review so I’ll just go track by track and then talk about some other nonsense at the end. The Fate of Ophelia What an opener. Punchy production, amazing melodies,…

The Top Ten Best Hit Songs of 2024

2024 is over, and honestly it felt like a fairly decent year for popular music as a whole. Taylor Swift’s continued domination was a welcome sight, whilst Eras Tour openers Sabrina Carpenter and Gracie Abrams, as well as Chappell Roan, were all appreciated breakout stars this year. Add to those the slightly less interesting Billie…

Billboard Roundup: 2024 Extras

Back again with my usual end of year roundup for those songs that I never talked about but I can’t let slip through the cracks. Best list to follow in due course. Part One: Missing Hits “FE!N” by Travis Scott ft. Playboi Carti Peak #5, Year-end #97 It is remarkable, and on a personal note…

Billboard Roundup: November 2024

Year-end list season is very much upon us, whilst Christmas songs have begun to trickle back onto the Hot 100. November’s collection is a suitably small and random assortment for the time of year; I’d only put money on one of these surviving the Christmas freeze, especially with Kendrick’s album set to dominate December. Kicking…

Billboard Roundup: October 2024

Thanks to Billboard’s odd interpretation of the Gregorian calendar, the 2024 chart year is already over, and this month’s selection marks 2025’s first offerings. It was a relatively quiet month all in all but there were a few gems from unexpected sources. This edition also marks five years of me writing this series. Truly incredible…

Billboard Roundup: September 2024

September marks the beginning of the end of the chart year, and this year that felt truer than ever. A paltry eight songs breached the top 40 this month, with only one of those having any chance of squeaking onto 2024’s year-end list. Still, makes my job easier since I’d forgotten that the last chart…

Billboard Roundup: August 2024

2024’s slowdown continued with a barren and mostly unremarkable August. Having had a preliminary flick through the building year-end list for 2024, I noted more songs that I like than I was expecting so I have enjoyed the year overall, but we’ve definitely slowed right down in the second half. Still, August provided three acts…

Billboard Roundup: July 2024

After a flurry of activity in late spring/early summer, I think it’s fair to say that 2024 has hit something of a brick wall lately. The current top ten has been largely unchanged for two months now, and whilst we did get quite a large number of new top 40 arrivals in July, I’d struggle…

Billboard Roundup: June 2024

June provided something of a breather month after the hectic back-to-back of April and May. Our top 40 breakthroughs mainly consist of hip-hop and country, plus the emergence of Chappell Roan, and the continued ascendance of Sabrina Carpenter. No real stinkers and a decent crop of enjoyable tunes, let’s begin… “Bulletproof” by Nate Smith Peak…

Billboard Roundup: May 2024

May didn’t quite have the sheer quantity of new hits that April delivered, but it added several more really huge ones. The result of that is that the charts right now are the strongest they’ve been in ages, to the point where literally any of the current top ten would’ve been a worthy number one…

Billboard Roundup: April 2024

April looked poised to be the month where 2024 really took off, and that came true in stronger fashion than most would have imagined. Not only did three expected album bombs cause a major impact, but several big hits popped up from unexpected sources. Add to that the biggest rap beef in years and the…

Billboard Roundup: March 2024

March was a relatively quiet month, with only eight new songs cracking the top 40. However it did produce a couple of big hits, and with Metro Boomin, Beyoncé and Taylor Swift around the corner in April, 2024 feels as if it’s off to a relatively fresh start. Certainly that’s true compared to the charts…

Billboard Roundup: February 2024

February continued the steady start of the chart year, with a batch of new songs gradually working their way in whilst 2023’s leftovers stubbornly hold firm. Most of these songs are either big debuts that fell off, or songs that seem like they might pan out as minor hits, but we did get a big…

Billboard Roundup: January 2024

January always provides a bumper crop of songs as those that were prevented from entering the top 40 last month by all the Christmas music cascade in. Not everything here is ancient though, there are a few fresh hits and fresh faces to work through, for better and also for worse. A whopping fifteen songs…

Billboard Roundup: December 2023

December is always extremely dead for new top 40 arrivals due to the lack of new releases, and all the Christmas music making it much harder to chart high. In fact the current #40 on the Hot 100 would be #12 without the Xmas stuff. So two songs it is, but they both give me…

The Top Ten Best Hit Songs of 2023

How was 2023 as a year in popular music? Well the first word that comes to mind is probably uneventful. The year was really dominated by the album bombs and associated single runs of Taylor Swift, Sza and Morgan Wallen, two of which came out last year, with Morgan’s album dropping in early March. These…

Billboard Roundup: 2023 Extras

You know what time it is! Songs that made the year-end list that I didn’t cover in Billboard Roundup, remixes, and then some shout-outs to songs that should’ve been proper hits. Part One: Missing Hits “Bloody Mary” by Lady Gaga Peak #41, Year-end #99 TikTok! Somebody on that app decided that a sped-up version of…

Billboard Roundup: November 2023

Following Billboard’s recent epiphany that the calendar year actually ends in mid-October, their year-end charts for 2023 are now already out. My usual bonus roundup and best hits list will therefore be out before December’s Roundup, all being well. I guess that makes this batch the start of 2024, and November did serve up a…

Billboard Roundup: October 2023

I was expecting to say that we now have just a couple of weeks of the chart year to go, but Billboard had other ideas. According to a memo in their own press release concerning the upcoming Billboard Music Awards, that nobody cares about, the chart year already ended in mid-October. I’m in agreement with…

Billboard Roundup: September 2023

September normally gives us the last big musical events of the chart year, as everything released past this point will have much more impact in 2024. To that effect we did get two big album bombs that look like they’ll each produce a hit single, one being significantly better than the other. Elsewhere, pop had…

Billboard Roundup: August 2023

August didn’t quite have the explosion of musical storylines that July did, but it kept things ticking over nicely enough. Travis Scott dominated the album charts all month whilst making a modest impact on the Hot 100, and country music continued it’s mega year with another unexpected chart topper. Most of what ended up breaking…

Billboard Roundup: July 2023

Finally, the year has begun. Close number one races, controversy, lead singles from returning pop stars, huge album bombs, a soundtrack takeover; July had it all. Furthermore, we also got some actual quality which was a nice upset. It wasn’t all good but it was at least interesting and eventful which aren’t words I would…

Billboard Roundup: June 2023

Another month comes and goes without a whole lot of action, so much so that people have turned back to 2019 to find the biggest rising hit of the month. With a new Olivia Rodrigo single and incoming album bombs from Lil Uzi Vert and Taylor Swift, July is already guaranteed to be more interesting…

Billboard Roundup: May 2023

My prediction of the charts exploding into life in April and May didn’t exactly go to plan. Instead we’ve got a few country songs, some more foreign stuff, and three singles from established big acts, none of which are exactly setting the world on fire. Oh well, hopefully the law of averages means we’ll get…

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