We have two more repeats at #11 and #12 on this week’s Billboard Hot 100.
Morgan Wallen has his second track in the top 11 with ‘You Proof,’ a bro country anthem that predates his 36-track opus.
And Harry Styles’ ‘As It Was‘ continues its chart dominance, still hanging on at #12 a full year after it debuted at #1. This song spent a total of 15 weeks in the top spot, becoming the fourth longest-running #1 in Hot 100 history, and the longest-running by a solo artist.
At #9 on the Billboard Hot 100 we have the first song I’ve already featured on the blog — Taylor Swift’s ‘Anti-Hero.’ I didn’t do the song any justice at the time, sliding it in without comment as a last-minute substitution during a disrupted theme week. I did give it another mention during my countdown of all the tracks on Swift’s Midnight.
Moving on, the #10 song on this week’s chart is the delightful ‘Players’ by singer/rapper Coi Leray. This song samples Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s 1982 hip-hop classic ‘The Message‘ to deliver a very different sort of message, namely that “girls is players too.”
Remixes are the order of the day on the back half of the top ten this week on the Billboard Hot 100. In the eighth spot, Nigerian singer Rema is joined by Selena Gomez for a new take on his song ‘Calm Down.’
In its original form, this song did well in Europe in early 2022, prompting the team-up with Gomez to attract an American audience. The new version was released last August and has spent 30 weeks on the chart, peaking at its current position.
Like yesterday’s track, the song in the #7 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 is a remix duet that owes much of its popularity to TikTok.
British pop singer PinkPantheress scored a modest hit with ‘Boys a Liar’ in late 2022, but it was a remixed version featuring New York rapper Ice Spice that soundtracked a million TikToks and sailed up the charts, eventually peaking at #3.
Returning to my look at a recent edition of the Billboard Hot 100, today’s track is a collaboration between The Weeknd and Ariana Grande that sits at #6.
‘Die For You’ is a perfect example of how TikTok has reshaped the music industry. This song first appeared on The Weeknd’s 2016 album Starboy and was released as that album’s sixth single. It peaked at #43 on this chart back then and had seemingly run its course.
Meet Me In Montauk 