March has come and gone, and it’s fair to say that the charts got absolutely Wallen’d. Eighteen of the tracks from his new album are still charting on the Hot 100 in their third week and he even managed one week at number one with Last Night, which is a pretty remarkable feat for a country artist regardless of how you feel about the music. Elsewhere, there wasn’t a lot going on but it’s usually April and May where the defining hits of the year break through so hey ho. Vamos.
“TQG” by Karol G & Shakira
Peak #7, Current #22
Fair play to Shakira for managing to drag a second hit out of her recent breakup, this time teaming up with Karol G for another round of cursing out her ex. As with Bzrp Music Sessions, the language barrier removes almost all of the cutting edge for me and musically this is a far less interesting song. Sorry but if this was any generic male reggaeton artist I’d be calling it recycled and forgettable and I’m not about to say otherwise here just because of who’s behind it. Blocky, lumbering, hookless, not for me.
5/10
“Red Ruby Da Sleeze” by Nicki Minaj
Peak #13, Current #47
I don’t know if there’s a popular artist with more haphazard promotion than Nicki Minaj. I mean every time she releases a single it’s like what is this, a lead single, a promotional track, a one-off? After Super Freaky Girl landed her a first proper hit in several years I thought she might be more keen to follow through with a cohesive album rollout, but no there’s no indication of whether a new LP is on its way, less so whether this track or any other from last year will be on it?
Anyhow, I do at least like elements of this track. It’s based off a sample of the 2003 hit Never Leave You by Lumidee, which is actually well used in the instrumental here to create quite a haunting backdrop which Nicki flows over well with some focused, braggadocios bars. Unfortunately it runs into a familiar problem with Nicki, which is her inability to deliver a good hook. Her stuttery singing just doesn’t do it at all for me and really kills any replay value this would’ve had. Still, as far as a more rappy single goes it’s certainly better than Do We Have a Problem?, so that’s something.
6/10
“Thinkin’ Bout Me” by Morgan Wallen
Peak #9, Current #20
Well that Morgan Wallen album went about how I expected. His music has shifted towards a more middling sound where he writes a lot of 5/10 and 6/10 mid-tempo tunes and little else. Comparisons to Drake have been floating around for a while but with this album he really skipped straight over Nothing Was the Same and If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late and went straight to Certified Lover Boy. Among the tracks that weren’t released beforehand I’d save Everything I Love, Man Made a Bar, ’98 Braves, and Last Drive Down Main; the rest I could take or leave.
Somewhat bizarrely, despite being buried twenty five songs into the tracklist, this song is the hit of the album tracks so far. It’s alright. Yet another medium pace tune with a haze of dense, circling guitars and a rattling trap beat as Morgan delivers another tight but monotonous melody. It’s very similar to Last Night just around 10% less catchy and with less likeable lyrics where Morgan is incessantly asking an ex whether she still thinks about him whilst she’s with her new partner.
Again, the Drake comparisons write themselves and whilst Morgan’s music is more pleasing to my ears, it doesn’t make stuff like this any less disposable. It just seems a shame that after all the drama he’s gone through and the almost unprecedented levels of popularity he’s reached for a country artist, that he would choose to use that to produce such low effort music. Just saying, he could’ve made a twelve track album with his best songs that would’ve potentially turned on more people to country music as a genre and completed some kind of critical redemption for him. Instead he chose to play the numbers game, and whilst it may pay dividends in the short term I seriously question if this is an album that anyone will really look back on fondly.
5/10
“Favorite Song” by Toosii
Peak #21, Current #21
Toosii is a North Carolina via New York rapper who I hadn’t heard of before this song, but he’s signed to Capitol and does have one album and a few mixtapes out already, including features from artists like DaBaby and Latto.
This song is viral on TikTok for no particular reason or trend as far as I can tell. It’s alright. Very much Rod Wave vibes with the wistful crooning against a backdrop of soft piano and blunt bass kicks, along with the vocal sample and lovestruck lyrics. It’s kind of cute but it doesn’t have the killer melody or lyric to connect on a deeper level than that. This type of song is always OK or it connects emotionally and it feels amazing, but this is a case of the former for me.
5/10
“River” by Miley Cyrus
Peak #32, Current #59
So Miley’s album came out and I’m unsure whether or not to be surprised that it didn’t do a little better. I mean on the one hand she doesn’t have that big of a fan base and frankly none of her albums have performed well before. But I don’t know, something about the way people have been talking about her lately and what seemed to be a significant amount of interest in the personal drama that inspired Flowers to become so huge made me think that enthusiasm would translate to greater numbers for the album than what it achieved.
Anyhow, the record itself is alright. It sounds like it was made to be her big, accessible pop album with a very broad dance-pop sound, a few bops, a few slower ones, you know how it is. But overall it doesn’t have a ton of standout moments so largely blends together into an agreeable but unremarkable listen.
River is one of the better songs. I really like the spare beat, low vocals and wiry synth of the verse, it weirdly reminds me of some early Killers songs. It also features one of Miley’s less annoying singing performances as she sounds passionate yet controlled here, and the pre-chorus is pretty tight as well. Unfortunately I do have a few nit-picks; the talking in the second verse is annoying; the central metaphor is weak; the chorus is merely decent, not amazing; and the ending was crying out for an extended instrumental outro with a thumping synth climax and fade out, but instead it ends early and underwhelmingly.
It wouldn’t surprise me if she gets a second radio hit with this and it’s pretty damn hard to make a bad synth-pop song in this lane, but let’s be honest, this could’ve been a bit better.
6/10
“What He Didn’t Do” by Carly Pearce
Peak #37, Current #37
I cannot say enough how happy I am that Carly Pearce’s 29:Written In Stone has actually seen some traction and a run of successful singles. It’s always nice to see quality get rewarded. What He Didn’t Do is perhaps not the most interesting track on the album on a compositional level, but contrarily that does make it a likely radio hit so I can’t complain.
It sees Carly taking the high road in the aftermath of her divorce by choosing to focus on the lack of care she received rather than the messy falling out. The list-driven nature of the songwriting along with the familiar melody do make for an unsurprising song, but undoubtedly a quality one nonetheless. Carly’s performance is great, the instrumentation is extremely well balanced, and her perspective strikes a nice balance between hurt and angry, but composed in the face of it all. Like I say, it’s far from the most potent song on the album but it is one of the most replayable and retains a high level of quality. A welcome hit.
7.5/10
“Set Me Free Pt.2” by Jimin
Peak #30, Current #30
BTS solo releases are presumably something we can expect a lot of in the next few years, brace yourselves. There have been a few already but aside from Jungkook’s appearance on Charlie Puth’s Left and Right, this is the first to make the top 40. You may have noticed that when it comes to foreign songs I tend to be very passive and generally score them down the middle along the lines of “it’s not great but I don’t fully understand it so maybe I’m missing something”. Happily, I feel comfortable in just straight up calling Set Me Free a bad song.
For starters this is actually in English, not that you would be able to tell that without having the lyrics in front of you thanks to an absolute disaster of vocal production going on here. The verse vocals are already utilizing quite annoying inflections but after all the autotune and whatnot is applied it sounds dreadful. Then my God, the second verse!!! What the fuck was that!? Sounds like he was having a fit in the recording booth and the engineers just went with it and slathered as much autotune over it as possible to try and salvage something. Didn’t work.
The chorus also hits like a hammer, just repeating “set me free-ee-ee” over and over. According to some nonsense people write online this is about Jimin overcoming his demons or something, but to me launching a solo career with a song where you celebrate being free over and over seems a little on the nose. Rightly or wrongly I’m getting flashbacks to Liam Payne’s infamous “Used to be in 1D, now I’m out free” which is not a reminder I want for two reasons. Firstly, Strip That Down is one of the worst pop songs I’ve ever heard and I never want to think about it again, and secondly the sour vibe of celebrating freedom doesn’t fit at all coming from a member of BTS since they’re supposedly all about brotherly love and how united they are.
Whilst we’re here I may as well give a cursory mention to the production, which also sucks. A murky trap beat, clattering percussion and totally flat horns, along with backing vocals which try to add bombast but only succeed in making this more of a headache. I feel like I hardly give any negative reviews lately and this may seem like a random song to go off on, but I’m sorry this is straight ass cheeks.
2/10
“Ella Baila Sola” by Eslabon Armado X Peso Pluma
Peak #26, Current #26
So is this a thing that’s just going to keep happening now? Regional Mexican music is a genre that I’m going to have to take seriously as a charting presence? Well good for those guys, it’s not something that’s charted in 65 years of Hot 100 history up to this point so I guess it’s about time.
I just wish that I had something meaningful to say about it. Um yeah, nice horns I guess. To be fair I do like this a bit more than Bebe Dame which I reviewed in January, but that is mainly just because it’s shorter and feels like more of an actual song as opposed to walking in on some Mexican background music. But yeah, I haven’t got a lot else to say.
5.5/10
“All of the Girls You Loved Before” by Taylor Swift
Peak #12, Current #12
The woman with the world’s greatest work ethic has spared some time around the launch of her record-breaking tour to tie up a few loose ends in her discography. Taylor has released her re-recorded versions of Eyes Open, Safe and Sound and If This Was a Movie, to make sure she has all bases covered when it comes to owning her work, before she moves on to the next full Taylor’s Version album. And whilst she was at it she dropped the official version of this rejected track from 2019’s Lover, which has a had a leaked version floating around the internet for a while. Taylor being Taylor, even a non-hyped B-side like this achieved a huge debut so here we are reviewing it.
I really like it! The reverby sound of Lover may not be everyone’s preference but personally I loved this era of Taylor in terms of vocal production and overall atmosphere. It’s a very sparse arrangement with a muffled beat allowing Taylor’s vocals to echo around the track in a way that perfectly emphasizes the melody, and handily both the verse and chorus melody are great. Better still is the bridge which provides just the right change of pace followed by an immensely satisfying transition into the final chorus that I have to belt out every time.
The writing is slightly odd and overworked in its obsession with how her partner’s previous relationships apparently moulded him into the man that she then met. However it is the sort of late night thinking that makes all the sense in the world coming from late-period Taylor and echoes similar sentiments from songs such as Invisible String, in terms of fixating on how a person’s past and present all link together. The only line that doesn’t quite hit the spot for me is the beat drop “But I love you more” which is redundant in my opinion, but not enough to really detract from the rest of the song.
All of this begs the question of should this have made the original tracklist? Honestly, hard to say. It would be easy to be like “Ooh how did this get cut but ME! made it” but realistically this wouldn’t have taken the place of a song like ME! It would’ve been in place of a similar sounding song like Cornelia Street or Afterglow, and those are really high bars to pass, and I’m not sure All of The Girls quite gets there. Nonetheless, this will go nicely into an edited Lover playlist for me with some of the weaker tracks removed leaving what would’ve been a pretty perfect album of twelve or so tracks. Grateful for an official release.
8/10
March average: 5.6/10
Worth listening to: “All of the Girls You Loved Before”, “What He Didn’t Do”
🙂
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