Two songs I’ve previously featured show up at #3 and #4 on the Billboard Hot 100 this week: ‘Circles’ by Post Malone, and ‘Memories’ by Maroon 5. But #5 gives us a newcomer to the blog.
Tones And I is the stage name of Australian singer-songwriter Toni Watson, and her song ‘Dance Monkey’ has been on quite the tear. With 24 weeks at #1 on the Australian charts, it broke a record that stretched back 77 years to Bing Crosby’s recording of ‘White Christmas.’
At #2 on this week’s Billboard Hot 100 is ‘Life is Good,’ a collaboration between rappers Future and Drake. This is the highest Future has ever charted on the Hot 100, while it’s Drake’s 10,000th song in the top ten. OK, maybe that’s a slight exaggeration.
In fact, Drake has now had 207 songs on the Hot 100, including 36 in the Top Ten and six at the #1 spot. The man is a juggernaut. His 207 Hot 100 songs (all since 2009) tie him for the most ever with — you’ll never guess it — the cast of Glee. Given that Glee is no longer releasing new music, Drake is sure to own that record outright the next time he commits his voice to tape.
It’s been three months since my last installment of ‘What the Kids are Listening To,’ wherein I feature the top songs on the current Billboard Hot 100 chart and reveal how out of touch I am with the modern music scene.
As is typical around the holiday period, there hasn’t been a whole lot of turnaround on the charts. Five of the Top Ten songs I covered in mid-November are still on the charts in mid-February. We do have new entrants in the top two slots, however.
Like pretty much every song on Elliott Smith’s self-titled 1995 album, ‘Single File’ is about heroin. Or at least it is using heroin as both a subject and a metaphor.
In this case, the lyrics describe a visit to a methadone clinic, where you wait in a “single file” line to receive your treatment for heroin addiction.
This year’s final Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee is T. Rex, the brainchild of singer-songwriter Marc Bolan.
T. Rex has been eligible for Hall inclusion since 1994 but didn’t become a nominee until this year. Bolan was considered one of the most egregious oversights for the past 25 years, because he is widely credited with starting the glam movement and was otherwise a major influence on British rockers in particular. I’ve read that without Marc Bolan, there would be no David Bowie.
Meet Me In Montauk 