Not a great deal happened on the charts in August, but we did wind up with a very manageable group of songs and the highest average score in a while, so perhaps that was a good thing. With Kanye West and Drake album bombs set to hit back to back, September is already looking like a far more chaotic month which will probably delay the top 40 arrival of various rising hits. We go again.
“If I Didn’t Love You” by Jason Aldean & Carrie Underwood
Peak #15, Current #44
Two of country music’s biggest names from the last fifteen years team up here for an intense power ballad that will serve as the lead single for Jason’s forthcoming 10th studio album. On paper, this is a song that executes everything that you would want for this sort of duet. The tune is solid, the production is surprisingly strong with the drums and guitars carrying some real weight behind them, and both vocalists give excellent vocal performances, with surprisingly strong chemistry. It’s sensibly structured, the parts are equal, there’s some simmering darkness in the verses that explodes into that robust chorus, it feels as if it checks all the boxes.
So why does this still not do that much for me? Well the main reason is probably because of how familiar this all feels. Yes it seems to do everything right, but that’s because it follows a well-worn duet formula and adds absolutely nothing original to it; this feels almost as it could’ve been written by a computer algorithm. Carrie and Jason themselves have trodden through this territory before with Remind Me and Don’t You Wanna Stay being hit duets for each of them respectively, leaving this collaboration feeling like something that was done for the sake of it rather than because either of them had something new to share. The lyrics don’t help matters. Both of them go on about how they would be perfectly happy on their own… if they didn’t love the other one! Wow, what a twist, would never have expected that.
Good production and performances do drag this into decent territory, and it will probably be enough to ensure that this is a monster radio and sales hit in the months to come, but I just wish there was any kind of unique ingredient to really make me care.
6/10
“INDUSTRY BABY” by Lil Nas X ft. Jack Harlow
Peak #2, Current #5
Following the surprisingly long-lasting Montero (Call Me By Your Name), Lil Nas X is back with another arsenal of self-fulfilling hype, high-concept music videos and mildly cringy memes to promote his latest single.
Credit where it is due, this is his best effort to date. The main improvement is that this track feels more anthemic and energetic. For as much as he’s used humour and colourful imagery to promote his work, so far all of the actual music has been quite dry and bleak. But the horns presumably brought in by co-producer Kanye West make a pretty large difference on their own towards making the track brighter and more fun. This is also a much more fully-formed song than the rest of his releases, with a full two verses and recurring chorus giving the song enough length to actually give it a shot at being anthemic in a way that Panini or Montero never could be. Speaking of which, Jack Harlow, who seemed like a bit of an odd inclusion, turned out to be in my opinion the star of the show. I know I didn’t get a great first impression from him on Whats Poppin, but I think I’m going to end up liking him the more I hear him. He has a fairly unique presence in hip-hop right now, and something about his super laid-back delivery is really clicking for me here even if his actual bars are nothing special.
With that being said, I’m still only partly won over. For one, some of my longstanding issues with Lil Nas X’s music haven’t gone away here. The horns add more volume but they can’t disguise how cheap and rattly the main percussion sounds; I think I’m just not a fan of Take a Daytrip’s production style at all. Nas himself still sounds like very flat and un-human, and whilst his heavily layered singing on the hook is not bad, his rapped verse still sounds comically weak. Furthermore, this is still quite a flat-sounding song overall. All the horns and vocal layers go some way to atoning for it, but at it’s core this is still a very melodically limited composition, and it does get rather monotonous after a while. This doesn’t feel like Nas taking a big step forward or change of direction in terms of his musical style, rather just masking the existing flaws by the use of fuller production and vocal layering.
Lyrically it’s essentially a big celebratory brag song, a bit of a lap of honour for Lil Nas. This might be of interest to people who’ve been rooting hard for him all the way, but as somebody who has been pretty sceptical of his marketing methods and artistic persona, and generally indifferent to his actual music it all just rings rather hollow. A victory lap that feels not exactly undeserved, but certainly not that appealing either, and like I say the accompanying music is not really the 10/10 jubilant anthem that it tries to be.
In other words, it’s no Can’t Hold Us, but coming from Lil Nas X it is probably his best single to date. Decent piece of pop-rap.
6/10
“Volví” by Aventura & Bad Bunny
Peak #22, Current #55
Time for me to demonstrate more ignorance about Latin music. Aventura were a very popular bachata group of the 2000s, who had a number of hits on the Latin charts until their breakup in 2011. They reformed in 2019 and now have by far their highest charting single on the Hot 100 via this collaboration with fellow Puerto Rican Bad Bunny.
Due to my lack of understanding of Spanish, as well as the tendency for most modern popular Latin songs to sound quite similar, I don’t have a very wide scale of quality to place this on, but it does rank somewhere towards the upper end. I quite simply like the way it sounds. The percussion sound is completely standard, but somehow the tune goes over a lot smoother than usual, and the chorus is actually really pretty with the guitar touches and really nice singing. If I’m going to mark it down for anything it would be Bad Bunny’s unnecessarily aggressive sounding delivery on the verses, which I’ve never been a fan of and does slightly hurt the atmosphere created by the rest of the track. Still, in terms of production and hook this works just about as well for me as any Latin track I’ve reviewed so far, so I’m still giving it a thumbs up.
6/10
“Waves” by Luke Bryan
Peak #24, Current #24
New Luke Bryan single, which means that it’s time for a game of “Cringe or boring?”. We’ll either get Luke shaking his ass and making some party song which will inevitably suck balls, or a mediocre love song. In this case it’s the latter.
There’s really nothing to say here as Luke just goes through the motions of a very generic summer song with average production, his usual competent but stiff performance, and a hugely derivative tune that you will quite literally forget the moment that it ends.
5/10
“Skate” by Silk Sonic
Peak #14, Current #38
Well it’s about time. Following the instant critical and commercial success of Leave the Door Open, I was anticipating a year of Silk Sonic-dominated throwbacks, but instead we’ve been made to wait five months for a follow-up single, with the album itself pushed back to next January. Not that I’m really complaining, I’d rather the record arrived later if it means giving more singles like this a chance to become hits, because I like this song a lot, even more so than the lead.
Whereas Leave the Door Open was aiming for classic slow-jam territory with the steady tempo and all the oooohhhhs and la-la-las, Skate is a much tighter and more energetic affair. Set in a roller rink for maximum 1970s nostalgia, it’s a fairly ridiculous flirting song where Anderson and Bruno bring out all the corny lines you’d expect, with “If being fine way a crime girl they’d lock your fine ass up in a tower” and “You smell better than a barbecue” being particular highlights. It’s such a wonderfully over-the-top and non-serious song that’s concerned with nothing other than being the most fun possible. Both men sound great delivering it, but again the star of the show is the flawless production.
The soft drum sound is just so damn good, effortlessly smooth and propulsive as the little guitar accents jingle around it. And then when the string section comes in I feel like I’m being transported right back to Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On and the heart of the soul era that they’re imitating. This may be something of a copycat, but modern production and mastering capabilities mean that this style has really never sounded better. Personally I wasn’t quite as bowled over by LTDO as many others were since I found the song at the core of it to be slightly lacking, but Skate is in my opinion a much stronger tune, and this is a track I could see myself coming back to far more frequently. Great song, really hope this era doesn’t fizzle out.
8/10
“Happier Than Ever” by Billie Eilish
Peak #11, Current #22
So Billie Eilish released her sophomore album at the end of July and I wasn’t much of a fan of it. The simplest reason for this is that I found it quite boring. Most of the songs start out in the same way where Billie whispers into the microphone from what sounds like extremely close range, over some hushed acoustics and other minimalist effects, and then we basically wait around to see if something interesting will happen with the song or not. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t. I don’t know why every song seems to start like this, because she never used to do this. Why not open a track with a killer bassline like Bad Guy, or a wall of vocals like Ocean Eyes or some creepy noises like Bury a Friend or You Should See Me in a Crown? The way the songs on this album are structured gives me the impression that they were almost improvised, like she just started riffing and waited to see if it turned into a song.
The other thing with this album is that it’s very depressing. A lot of the tracks on her debut came with a winking sense of humour, as well as some more upbeat grooves that nicely punctuated the more emotional moments. Happier Than Ever doesn’t really have that at all. Other than Therefore I Am, a track that I wasn’t that big of a fan of, there’s virtually no light relief at all, we’re basically just listening to Billie sounding depressed as fuck for almost a full hour. I’m not going to criticize her for making the record sound that way if that’s just how she feels, but it’s not really something that I want to listen to because relentless misery isn’t that enjoyable when the music sounds equally depressing. Honestly I just find it kind of sad coming from someone who’s only 19.
Anyhow, given those reservations that I have, this is probably the sort of record that’s more enjoyable in shorter passages so how is the title track? Well the thing with this song is that it suffers from the problem that I just mentioned in that it starts out really fucking dull. The first two and a half minutes is just her mumble-singing over some very faint guitar playing. It’s really boring and basic, there’s nothing else to say here. It doesn’t even build anticipation for the second half because it doesn’t actually lead up to it. Instead the first song just stops and we get a different song in its place.
Fortunately the second song is far superior. It’s one of the few moments of genuine release on the record as Billie shouts her way through a barrage of very cathartic lines “YOU MADE ME HATE THIS CITY”, “JUST FUCKING LEAVE ME ALONE” as Finneas abandons his usual ultra-pristine production for a load of massively blown out drum and guitar noise. With this being the penultimate song on the album it does feel like 50 minutes worth of worry and frustration being let out in two minutes and would’ve made for a great closer if it weren’t for the tedious and dull “Male Fantasy” that actually occupies that spot.
So essentially it’s a boring song followed by a great song and I’m just left wishing that the rest of the album took after the second half rather than the first. If I do ever go back to this I’ll be starting it midway through.
7/10
“Things a Man Oughta Know” by Lainey Wilson
Peak #32, Current #32
As I bitched about last month, 2021 has been a painful year for country music on the Hot 100 (or at least those songs breaking the top 40) so I was excited to listen to this track. Lainey Wilson is originally from Louisiana but moved to Nashville to pursue a country music career and has now achieved her breakthrough moment with this sleeper airplay hit. Given the gender bias that exists on country radio, when a female act achieves this sort of penetration it usually means the song has to be something special so I was hopeful for this to be 2021’s More Hearts Than Mine/One Night Standards and really blow me away.
The song starts out with Lainey describing how she can do things typically associated with men like changing a tyre and catching fish. I don’t really understand what the point in this is, it’s 2021 I don’t think anybody thinks these tasks are limited to men, especially if you live in the country. Anyhow, these lyrics in the verses are basically just filling time as we get to the key point in the chorus that she knows how to not mess up a relationship, unlike this guy she’s singing about. It’s all pretty heartfelt stuff, well delivered and with really tasteful, restrained instrumentation.
However, it doesn’t do much to wow me. It’s all very linear how every line in the verses begins “I can…” and in the chorus begins “How to…”. It sounds nice and intimate, but as such it never really rises to any sort of crescendo and instead merely meanders onwards whilst staying in second gear. Lainey has a nice voice, but she’s not especially expressive or distinctive. And the lyrics are clearly authentic and heartfelt, but there isn’t much to this concept and no particular lines really stand out and strike me.
So all in all, yes it is a good, minimalist modern country ballad, but if I was hoping that this would be the saviour of country music’s 2021, it isn’t delivering that. I have heard better.
7/10
“Take My Breath” by The Weeknd
Peak #6, Current #16
The Weeknd’s new era is upon us. The frankly absurd longevity of Blinding Lights and Save Your Tears has made it feel as if After Hours is a recent release, but that was nearly 18 months ago now so you can’t blame him for wanting to move onto his new stuff, even if the old singles are somehow still charting.
Based on this track it doesn’t seem as though he’s going through too much of a stylistic evolution, but if that means we get more synth-pop bangers then I’m generally alright with that. The sound here is very familiar but with slightly more disco-esque touches and also a bit of an early 2000s thing going on with some of the synth work. The tune is pretty strong although for a song with this title I do wish it ramped up the intensity a little more, especially for the chorus which is weirdly the flattest part of the song.
Still, damn catchy, very cleanly produced; it doesn’t reinvent the wheel but it works nonetheless.
7.5/10
“Arcade” by Duncan Laurence
Peak #30, Current #30
Now this is a real rarity. Arcade by Duncan Laurence was the winning entry for The Netherlands at the 2019 Eurovision Song Contest, and now two and a bit years later it’s a Hot 100 hit via TikTok and Adult Contemporary radio.
To stress how unusual it is for a Eurovision entry to cross over to the US we have to dust off the history books. This is only the third Eurovision-winning song ever to chart on the Hot 100 after Abba’s Waterloo (1974) and Brotherhood of Man’s Save Your Kisses For Me (1976). Furthermore, among all Eurovision entries this is still the first to chart Stateside since Gina G’s Ooh Aah… Just a Little Bit (which finished 8th), way back in 1997. Of course we do have Måneskin charting on the Hot 100 at this very moment, although not with their winning song, so perhaps in the social media age the European/US borders are finally ready to crumble.
Anyrate, I actually missed Eurovision 2019 because I was working and so I only have faint memories of this song from watching the results come in and the subsequent winner’s performance. To be honest though, I’m not sure that I would’ve remembered this song either way since Arcade is easily the least memorable winner of entire 2010s. Seriously I feel like I have to stress to Americans that usually Eurovision is much more interesting than this. It’s usually wacky and colourful and nationalistic and deeply cultural, with eye-catching staging and pristine Euro-pop. But this is just… a really average ballad. I mean I’m not surprised that AC/HAC radio wants to play this to death because it certainly fits right in there but there’s just nothing to say about it.
The best thing I can say is that there is a reasonable attempt at creating a dark and imposing atmosphere, but beyond that the tune, performance and songwriting is all totally unremarkable. Not a bad song, but of all the Eurovision songs that could’ve crosses over in the last decade, this is perhaps the most pointless as it adds precisely nothing to the existing American music scene.
5/10
“Pepas” by Farruko
Peak #26, Current #26
Part two of me chatting uninformed bollocks about Latin music. Apparently this is part of a genre called tribal guarachero, some sort of fusion of Mexican and electronic music. Well to me that sounds like a good description of what’s going on here and the result is a very lively song that certainly marks itself out from the rest of the Spanish-language music I end up reviewing.
The most immediately impressive thing is the cacophonous build-ups that occur throughout the song with a really excellent group vocal and spare drum beats creating a huge sounding climax. Then for the drop we get a nasal synth lead that sounds like it was taken from that coffin dance meme, which I honestly don’t mind, then giving way to trumpets and some really driving percussion. This is a club song more than anything but it can still work outside of that as pretty fun music to chill to and I dare say that a remix with at least three featured artists is virtually inevitable, and would probably make for a more fully-formed song overall.
Still, in its present state this is quite a unique and dynamic song to have around, pretty cool track all in all.
6.5/10
“Essence” by WizKid ft. Justin Bieber & Tems
Peak #13, Current #13
I cannot tell you how surprised I was to learn that this is Wizkid’s first song to chart on the Hot 100. I think a combination of the enormous popularity of Drake’s One Dance on which he was featured, plus his bizarrely huge online fanbase had convinced me that he had achieved at least a few minor hits, but no this is finally his breakthrough, featuring fellow Nigerian singer Tems.
There’s no need for me to bore everyone by restating the same points, so I’ll just say that this is once again the sort of slow, drippy R&B that I find very tedious to listen to, especially when it’s more than four minutes long and really feels longer than that. Oh and what I’m technically reviewing here is the needless remix with Justin Bieber, whose vocal tone is so far removed from that of our two African performers that it really doesn’t fit and adds nothing to the song other than length. Not very interesting.
4/10
“Rumors” by Lizzo ft. Cardi B
Peak #4, Current #17
I don’t say this to be purposely rude, but I forgot that Lizzo existed. Her success in 2019 didn’t make that much sense at the time and I don’t think I’ve heard either of her hits a single time since then. Truth Hurts was a two year-old song that became huge off organic traction from young women, whilst Good As Hell sounded like your mum’s favourite radio anthem. Despite kind of seeming like a big deal at the time, the rest of her music didn’t really blow up and I just didn’t see a lot of hype for her, I still have no idea what a Lizzo fan looks like or if she even really has any.
Well here she returns with a new single that has taken a pretty steep second week dive leaving very open questions as to how stable her career actually is. As for the song itself, she seems to be positioning herself as the queen of girl boss fuck the haters energy. There is an audience for that type of stuff but it’s really not me. It’s hard to describe the feeling that I get listening to Lizzo, but it’s somewhere in between embarrassment and disinterest. I just find her slightly cringy, as if she tries a bit too hard at all times in a way that makes me want to roll my eyes and look the other way. She makes a lot of noise but none of it really amounts to anything and it leaves her sounding awfully bothered for somebody trying to convey carefree positivity. She’s really not relevant enough to be caring this much about what other people’s perception of her apparently is, and the result sounds like she’s trying way too hard to convince everyone that she doesn’t care. Just relax girl, I promise nobody is that bothered about you.
Cardi shows up for a more assured and enjoyable verse, actually sounding really good rapping at this sort of pace. Musically this is quite a poppy song which is fine, and it is catchy and flowing. But is it just me or is the production sort of terrible? Like what even is this beat, it sounds like wet plastic and the horns sound like flat garbage. Similar to Truth Hurts, this cheap production leaves the whole song sounding rather wonky and irritating, with Lizzo’s performance and attitude again not really appealing to me.
Like I say, there probably is an audience for this sort of thing but I think it’s a bit too lame to appeal to her target younger demographic, as the streaming fall-off and generally lukewarm reception demonstrates, but it’s probably a little too in-your-face for the mum crowd to eat it up either. As such it leaves me with no clearer idea of who Lizzo is really making music for or whether she will be able to maintain charting relevance beyond relying on features. I don’t really know what I was hoping for from her comeback, but this leaves me with as many questions as answers.
5/10
“Chasing After You” by Ryan Hurd & Maren Morris
Peak #34, Current #34
Wow what a boring note to end on. Normally we finish with the big new top ten debut but there wasn’t one this week so instead we have this slow-climbing country duet. Maren Morris should need no introduction, whilst Ryan Hurd is her husband, who is also a singer and songwriter.
Don’t really know anything about these two, and on this basis there isn’t much to know because God this song makes them look dull. If I thought that If I Didn’t Love You was a little formulaic and unoriginal, then I probably should’ve reserved those criticisms for this song because there is just nothing here, and unlike the earlier duet, the performances and production don’t make up for it. I don’t know how you perform a song with your spouse and sound this bored whilst doing it, fucking Gwen Stefani and Blake Shelton had more chemistry than this and she was only doing backing vocals! I’m sorry to go this hard because they’re probably nice people, but holy fuck you guys seem boring. They didn’t even write this, which I think officially makes this the single most pointless hit of the year. Congrats.
4/10
August average: 5.9/10
Worth listening to: “Skate”, “Take My Breath”
🙂
Hot 100 Reviews 