Post Malone sits at Billboard’s #12 spot with ‘Better Now,’ the fifth single from his album Beerbongs & Bentleys. This is the third single from that album — following ‘Rockstar’ and ‘Psycho’ — to reach the top ten.
It’s probably the best of the three, though I’ll admit ‘Rockstar’ gets stuck in my head every time I hear it, for better or worse. This one is inoffensive, except in its use of AutoTune.
At #11 on this week’s Billboard Hot 100 is Drake, with his fourth song on the list (spoiler: it won’t be his last).
‘Nonstop’ is a little more rap heavy than Drake’s usual material. Apparently it’s a trap song, which reminds me that I still don’t know exactly what constitutes trap. I do know a whole lot of it is being made right now.
In the eighth and ninth spots on the latest Billboard Hot 100 are two songs I’ve already featured: Ariana Grande’s ‘No Tears Left to Cry‘ and Post Malone’s ‘Psycho.’ The Grande track is, of course, a banger.
Rounding out the top ten is a song that made a huge leap on the charts for a not-so-great reason. Rapper XXXTENTACION’s ‘Sad!’ jumped from #52 to #1 after his murder by two masked men on June 18. He became the first artist to score a #1 hit posthumously since the Notorious B.I.G. did it in 1997 with ‘Mo’ Money Mo’ Problems.’
Harry Nilsson’s Son of Schmilsson was released in 1972, a follow-up to the prior year’s Nilsson Schmilsson, his biggest commercial hit. This album was more experimental and risky than its predecessor.
A case in point is today’s jaunty SOTD, ‘You’re Breakin’ My Heart,’ which could have been a hit had it not opened with the lines “You’re breaking my heart, you’re tearing it apart, so fuck you.” Nearly 40 years later, in a much different era, Cee-Lo Green found success with a similar sentiment.
‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ is a track from Elvis Costello’s 1993 album The Juliet Letters, a song cycle for voice and strings recorded with The Brodsky Quartet.
I try to imagine crowds watching Costello in his young punk days belting out ‘Pump It Up’ and then immediately fast-forwarding to this, or his classic country album, or his collaboration with Burt Bacharach. The man has certainly carved out a unique career path.
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