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deadcactuswalking · 11 months ago

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REVIEWING THE CHARTS: 10/02/2024

Noah Kahan’s “Stick Season” is still #1, it’s a short episode, you really probably should skip it - there's nothing of value discussed here... welcome back to REVIEWING THE CHARTS.

Rundown

This is not a good week. You could call it a stale week, it’s probably accurate, because there’s not much of interest and what is here is mostly utter garbage. Potentially, up there with the worst weeks ever in terms of new arrivals to the UK Top 75, which is what I cover, and speaking of what I cover, notable dropouts are songs exiting said top 75 after five weeks in the region or a peak in the top 40, and this week, we bid adieu to: “Skin and Bones” by David Kushner, “neé-nah” by 21 Savage, Travis Scott and Metro Boomin, “Practice” by Drake, “Pink Friday Girls” and “Everybody” featuring Lil Uzi Vert by Nicki Minaj and finally, “Paint the Town Red” by Doja Cat. One highlight of this dire week is that I’m not really complaining about any of that.

Lewis Capaldi’s “Someone You Loved” returns to #67, what a joy, as well as “Anti-Hero” by Taylor Swift at #62 and “Flowers” by Miley Cyrus at #51. Can’t help but think the GRAMMYs had some influence on these. As for notable gains, we see boosts for Taylor’s “Is it Over Now?” at #68, “MY EYES” by Travis Scott at #65, “What Was I Made For?” by Billie Eilish at #58, “Would You (go to bed with me?)” by Campbell and Alcemist at #52, “Perfect (Exceeder)” by Mason vs. Princess Superstar at #39, “Runaway” by Ye featuring Pusha T at #35, seemingly because well, there may or may not be an album coming because that’s what we needed: more discourse. Then we have “Scared to Start” by Michael Marcagi at #31, “Selfish” by Justin Timberlake at #29 (why are we doing this?), “exes” by Tate McRae at #23, “Alibi” by Ella Henderson featuring Rudimental at #16 (Christ), and we end with two positives at least, as YG Marley and Benson Boone both get their first top 10s with pretty damn good songs, in my opinion: “Praise Jah in the Moonlight” at #9 and “Beautiful Things” at #5, which brings us to that top five, which is otherwise completely the same as last week. Jack Harlow’s at #4, Teddy Swims at #3, Sophie Ellis-Bextor at #2 and for a sixth week, Noah Kahan at #1. You know the song names off by heart by now, and I need some time to let off a deep sigh before rattling off the new songs. Oh, boy, the new songs.

New Entries

#75 - “Out for Love” - Andrew Underberg, Sam Haft and Daphne Rubin-Vega

Produced by Andrew Underberg and Sam Haft

So, Hazbin Hotel was a web pilot by Vivienne Medrano or “ViziePop” that was later picked up by Amazon as a television series this year. It is a musical animated series hence has several soundtrack singles, and given the weak charts and viral nature of the show, some of them have ended up here. I watched the pilot and first four episodes of the series, and found it genuinely quite difficult to stomach - I love adult animation, I love musicals, I actually even like the art style - it was the narrative elements of the show that killed it for me, and this is not a TV review blog, it’s a music review blog. I knew at least one song would debut as the midweek update showed one song at #73, I figured that would be the only song and it could potentially not even appear, so I wrote a very tersely-worded review for that song in particular. It’s a bit… not all that useful anymore, for lack of a better phrase. So I’m largely not going to be covering these. This is from the seventh episode, which I haven’t seen. Song doesn’t make any Goddamn sense to me. Journalism.

#74 - “Thank You (Not So Bad)” - Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike, Tiesto, Dido and W&W

Produced by Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike, Tiesto, W&W, Bassjackers and Renze Michels

Okay, if you’re going to credit a grand total of five EDM producers, why not go the full mile and have all eight pick out a lead? Also, I would ask how eight people were involved in producing this if I had any doubts that it wasn’t just an uncredited guy who got paid to sell this lazy sample flip off to people with actual star power. A sample flip of what, you may ask? Sigh… well, if there’s anything vaguely positive I can say about “Alibi” is that it’s influential. This is somehow even lazier, however, so I guess let’s start with some kind of history.

First of all, Dido’s “Thank You” is a perfectly fine, honest song that peaked at #3 in 2001 - “Do You Really Like It?” by DJ Pied Piper & the Masters of Ceremonies rightfully took #1 that week - and whilst I’ve never been a big fan, I can definitely see why the melancholy downtempo ballad resonates with people, and on a bad day, I can definitely throw this on and feel a little hope. This is a bad chart day, and if “Thank You” were to chart in its original form, it could perhaps be a reminder that things are, despite everything, it’s not so bad. So I imagine rap fans will know one of if not both of the uses of this song in popular hip hop, the first being Eminem’s classic “Stan”, probably my second favourite of his. It actually did #1 for one week in 2000, before the original had charted. It’s a stark and incredibly clever recontextualisation of the song that I’m pretty sure has already been discussed as much as possible, there’s a reason why many consider it Em’s crowning moment. Rae Sremmurd, “Lean’s Gone Cold”… maybe not so much. That one didn’t chart, but it’s funny.

Now there is precedent for house remixes of “Thank You”, and whilst I’m willing to consider interpretations and reimaginings of practically any song as any different style, I feel like making “Thank You” more danceable than just a vague nodding of the head skews some of the narrative’s tone? It definitely makes for a weirder, more dissonant listen, and whilst the Deep Dish remix, actually a GRAMMY Award-winning remix, does its best to maintain the atmosphere in its nine minutes, turning “not so bad” into a faint, looping mantra under a constantly developing house groove, to the point where it is a genuinely pretty great house song production wise… it still doesn’t feel like a great adaptation of “Thank You”, just a different product entirely, which makes sense and honestly makes for a better song. It doesn’t try and be “Thank You”, despite not even registering itself as an original song, just a remix of the original still credited solely to Dido. In 2016, European electro house duos Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike and W&W made a song called “Arcade”, it’s a loud, compressed smorgasboard of cheap synth sounds made for a live festival setting and being practically unlistenable outside of that context. In 2020, German producers Felix Jaehn and VIZE made a much more conventional and, at least in terms of how much it cribs from the original, a more faithful rendition of “Thank You”, subtitled “Not So Bad”. It’s a flavourless tropical house riff that I think the world would be better off not hearing, it’s like “Thank You” by Dido if she was commissioned to make it by an advertising company looking for a soundtrack to gym commercials.

Somewhere across the line, I guess it must have been Tiesto who said, “What if we made a version of that Felix Jaehn song but basically in the soundfont of “Arcade”?” - the latter even being directly listed as a sample on Genius. I mean, otherwise, I don’t know what the Hell Tiesto is doing here but, generally, you have to be shitting me, right? This is two minutes and 20 seconds constructed out of bits and pieces of songs I may not like but had a lot more purposeful artistic intent to them, if that’s a correct way of phrasing it. This is a vaguely functional crap-shoot molded from genuine song ideas, starting with a gentle singer-songwriter track that actually means a Hell of a lot to millions of people. I’d believe that to many fans, that Rae Sremmurd rendition means a lot to them. What does this mean to anybody?

#63 - “Bandit” - Don Toliver

Produced by ReidMD

I don’t like Don Toliver, really, or Tame Impala for that record, but there’s a level of inherent quality here, right? Don can sing, Tame Impala can construct a vibe and the sample here is “One More Hour” from their 2020 album The Slow Rush, it’s completely serviceable, could make for a good song. So why the sample is rendered in such low quality screeching is beyond me, but hey, maybe a powerful beat could work? Oh, the trap skitter is not only completely rote and overdone, it’s really high in the mix and distracts from the bass, which could really help make this song work? Okay, well, what’s Don doing? Being basically a cartoon character with his flows and incessant ad-libs? Well, that could be fun - oh, he’s comparing himself to Marilyn Manson? Barely rhyming? Catching a good, intense flow only to mumble repeated lines mostly about having sex that make up much of the song, with a tiny verse in the middle? Well, maybe the outro can make up for it - oh, he’s doing a Cookie Monster impression. Welp, all hope is lost.

#55 - “Poison” - Blake Roman, Sam Haft and Andrew Underberg

Produced by Sam Haft and Andrew Underberg

This is an upbeat synthpop jam that soundtracks a sex slavery montage. It sounds like a song by The Weeknd covered by a SpongeBob AI voice model. Next.

#53 - “Loser, Baby” - Andrew Underberg, Sam Haft, Keith David and Blake Roman

Produced by Sam Haft and Andrew Underberg

This was the song that made me turn the fourth episode off in disgust. I had a massive review prepared, covering its treatment of sexual abuse, which probably gave it a higher degree of nuance and generosity than many others are willing to give it, but I’m not compelled to rant about cartoons in this series. I want to write about animation more often but preferably animation I like or actually find compelling. With all respect to those who enjoy it and power to them, Hazbin Hotel was not something I would like to grant any more attention than the brief necessity of my format. Thanks for understanding.

#40 - “Home” - Good Neighbours

Produced by Good Scott and Oli Fox

I was very much willing to give this one a good shake because, I mean, what else do we have? Scott and Fox teased this on TikTok months prior before releasijng this as their official debut single together, after malformed, quickly aborted solo runs a few years ago. Sounds like a recipe for chart success and oh, the song’s terrible. It has a whistle about as charming as the American Authors’ milennial whoops, really insufferably screeching vocal tones that remind me of Passion Pit more than anything - that isn’t really a good thing - and sentimental lyrics about what home means to him, which would be completely serviceable without the stiff, grooveless splodge of grey matter that calls itself a chorus. Oh, and you know those sentimental lyrics? They’re gone by this point, it’s an incredibly manipulative breakup song with some really gross attempts at poetry - “wrap my name across your mouth when I let my feelings down”? Ew, man, Charlie Puth is less contrived than this. Naturally, the song goes nowhere and sadly, that probably won’t be its chart trajectory. Yet, once again, this song is practically unlistenable.

Conclusion

…Don Toliver gets Best of the Week. Somehow. Thanks for reading, I guess? See you next whenever.

#uk singles chart

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radioeuroextasis · 6 months ago

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Bzars, Luciana & Jowell - Mona Lisa

Con un puñado de lanzamientos sólidos en su haber ya en 2024, Bzars está de regreso y mejor que nunca con este nuevo himno de house latino que incluye a 'La Reina del Electro' Luciana, la leyenda del reggaetón Jowell y el próximo selector mexicano Marcos Jungle. Con influencias de un puñado de sonidos diferentes, incluyendo tech house, latin house, reggaeton y moombahton, 'Mona Lisa' es un tema funky, groovy y, sobre todo, listo para la pista de baile, uno de los productores más buscados de México en los zares. Haciendo equipo con algunos de los más grandes y mejores en las escenas de las que esta canción toma influencia, Bzars, Jowell y Marcos Jungle son capaces de crear un paisaje sonoro contagioso, que luego se suma a Luciana y su voz de fama mundial. Lo que te queda es un éxito de verano certificado de Bzars y su equipo, que expresa una energía ilimitada y una actitud latina desde el principio y en todo momento. Bzars es un DJ conocido en todo el mundo por su mezcla única de influencias latinas y tech house, uniendo los dos sonidos en un perfil sonoro coherente y enfocado que se ha convertido en una gran razón de su éxito. Con más de 40 millones de reproducciones en Spotify en países como México, España, Argentina, Estados Unidos y Colombia, Bzars está ascendiendo rápidamente en las filas de la escena EDM. La irrupción de Bzars se produjo cuando lanzó 'Blue Dreams' junto a su compatriota mexicano Mr. Pig en 2020 y desde entonces el seleccionador mexicano no ha mirado atrás, lanzando sólida música tech house para sus fans de todo el mundo. A esta fiesta especial de la 'Mona Lisa' se une la mismísima 'La Reina del Electro', la legendaria Luciana. Desde que la icónica vocalista se mudó a círculos más preocupados por el EDM, Luciana se ha mantenido a la vanguardia de la industria musical, ya que la cantante británica pasó a trabajar con artistas como Tiesto, 3LAU, Hardwell, KHSMR, Will Sparks, Bassjackers, Joel Fletcher y Moguai, por nombrar solo algunos. También se une a la fiesta la leyenda del reggaetón y la mitad del icónico dúo Jowell & Randy, Jowell. Originalmente se hizo un nombre como parte del dúo, que se convirtió en uno de los actos más importantes dentro de la escena. Ahora, probando suerte en el trabajo en solitario, Jowell tiene como objetivo llevar su energía contagiosa a cada producción que toca: ¡definitivamente puedes escuchar su influencia alto y claro en 'Mona Lisa'! ¡Asegúrate de escuchar la nueva canción de Bzars, Jowell & Luciana 'Mona Lisa' con Marcos Jungle cuando se lance el 30 de mayo, exclusivamente en Amplify / Universal Romania! Read the full article

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