We close out the latest installment of ‘What the Kids Are Listening To’ with a mellow love song by the country duo Dan + Shay, featuring Justin Bieber. ‘10,000 Hours’ is a good fit for #10 this week, as pretty much the whole Top Ten has been low-key and positive.
Maybe it’s the time of year? Or have musical tastes mellowed after the hip-hop domination of the past few years? Is this a phase or a lasting trend? Guess we’ll check back in early 2020 to learn the answer.
Happy Thanksgiving, everybody! Hope you are all able to enjoy this day with family and friends.
Today’s song lines up nicely with the holiday, as the #9 Billboard hit this week is Maroon 5’s ‘Memories,’ a gentle tune about holding on to the memories of the people we’ve loved. It’s in keeping with the band’s shift into more mellow territory on recent releases. Its chorus even nods to Pachelbel’s classical staple ‘Canon in D.’
Lil Nas X made Billboard history earlier this year when his unlikely country-rap mashup ‘Old Town Road’ became the longest-running #1 song in the history of the Hot 100.
He made history again a couple of weeks ago when he became the first openly gay artist to win a Country Music Award.
That’s a lot of history-making for a weird little two-minute track. And talk about a hard act to follow.
I’ve been feeling really good about the Billboard Top Ten in this installment of ‘What the Kids Are Listening To.’ The songs have been listenable, the artists have been likable. Overall, a very chill and positive vibe.
Then comes an ugly bump in the road in the form of the abusive pig Chris Brown. How is it that in the Cancel Culture era, when artists can be written off for an offensive tweet, this convicted felon continues to release hit songs? Here’s a guy who isn’t allowed into the UK, Australia or New Zealand because of his criminal record, but American fans (many of them female) put his latest song at #7 on the Hot 100.
Like the other Lizzo song on this week’s Billboard Top Ten, ‘Good As Hell’ found its success a few years after its initial release.
This track, which currently sits at #6 on the Hot 100, was included on the soundtrack of the 2016 film Barbershop: The Next Cut and failed to find a wider audience at the time. But the mega-success of ‘Truth Hurts’ put a spotlight on Lizzo’s earlier singles and this song found new life.
Today’s track is from Mary Chapin Carpenter’s 1990 album Shooting Straight in the Dark, the country artist’s third album and first to go platinum.
She followed this album with 1992’s Come On Come On, by far her most popular album, then the double platinum Stones in the Road in 1994.
When the Random iTunes Fairy first served up ‘Shaky Town,’ from Jackson Browne’s 1977 classic Running On Empty, I had no idea what it was. I figured it was a track on that album that I’d somehow always skipped, because the title seemed completely new to me.
Once the first verse started, though, I knew it very well. Guess I just never looked at the tracklist.
