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voodoochili · 7 years ago

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A Special, EXTRA BIG Edition of Reviewing the Hits (2016/2017)

It’s that time again! It’s time to review every song that topped the Billboard Hot 100 in 2016. Wait, you’re saying “that time again” passed sometime in December, or at the very least January, when people still gave a shit about reviewing the year that was? Fair enough. In my defense, I like to let the dust settle a bit on these hits before I review them to try to get a big picture on the previous year’s pop trends. Either that, or I am unforgivably lazy. Probably a combination of the two. My apologies to my three or so loyal readers who look forward to this column every year!

As a special treat, and so people might actually want to read this in May 2017, I’m not only gonna review all of last year’s number ones, but review all of the current year′s number ones up to this point as well. Relevance!

Just gonna do a quick rundown of 2016 (and I guess 2017), because it already feels like a billion years ago, but the most important trend on the charts in 2016 was the appropriation of Caribbean styles of music, particularly dancehall, into mainstream pop music. Hooray! Another fun, vibrant style of music for the pop charts to chew up and spit out until Ed Sheeran thinks it’s ok to use it.

The parallel story was the resurgence of Hip-Hop, the biggest beneficiary of new Billboard methodology that rewards stream counts as much as radio play. There are still many issues about Billboard methodology and the weighting and averaging of certain metrics over others, but the inclusion of streaming seems to me to be a positive development. Despite the surge in popularity of Hip-Hop in recent years, Top 40 radio is as segregated as it ever has been. Radio programmers are completely stuck in their ways, and less willing than they once were to shift genre or format boundaries to accommodate a rising hit song. The influence of streaming forces programmers hands, but they often don’t succumb to the popularity of the latest Hip-Hop or dance track until well after many genre fans are sick of it. Still, radio programmers still have control over what they play, and this can create a weird incongruity between the top song on the Billboard charts and the top song on the airplay chart--”Panda” and “Black Beatles” topped the charts, but you weren’t exactly hearing those tracks at shopping malls.

I guess what I’m getting at is this: Billboard is the culture now! Songs that would peaked in the outer reaches of the top 40 five years ago routinely reach the top ten--”Broccoli,” “2 Phones,””Don’t Mind,” “XO Tour Llif3″etc. Sometimes when I look at the charts these days, it feels like Billboard charts 80 of the most popular songs in America and leaves it to Complex and The FADER to pick the rest.

Edited to add: Can’t believe I forgot to mention this the first time around, but we are currently amidst a record run of men topping the Billboard chart. It’s been nearly a year since Sia topped the charts with “Cheap Thrills” and since The Chainsmokers’ and Halsey’s “Closer” came off the number one spot, there haven’t even been any female featured artists. I honestly have no idea what to make of this, and I have to think that it’s a blip. Hopefully, this will change soon and it won’t take another Taylor Swift or Adele to wrest the Billboard charts away from the grubby hands of Drake and Ed Sheeran and the rest of their male friends.

Anyway, onto the hits.

2016 - Pirates of the Caribbean

“Hello” – Adele; 11/14/15-1/16/16 (10 weeks)

Wrote about this song in last year’s recap! Here’s what I said (I still agree with most of it, though I probably would dock a point off the final score):

“Adele is the biggest star in music. It’s taken as a given nowadays, but let’s take a moment to contemplate how strange this is. Taylor Swift, Rihanna and Beyoncé have bigger Internet cults of personality and maybe more “cultural relevance,” but Adele is the only true four-quadrant star in today’s music business. Adele is treated like a unicorn by the music press—“so she sold 3 million albums, but Adele is the exception.” Well, yeah, she’s the exception now, but she didn’t magically fall from the sky on a pile of platinum albums. She developed. She stopped being that Amy Winehouse-imitator that many pegged her as when she first came to America in 2009, and developed her own take on that retro-style, foregoing the brassy horns of ‘60s soul in favor of the revealing songwriting and acoustic bombast of ‘70s singer/songwriters like Carole King. People these days seem to forget that Tapestry sold more albums than Off The Wall. Adele’s unique combination of affable and engaging personality, polished songcraft and unmistakable voice got her to the top of the music world, but she’s no unicorn. There can and probably will be another Adele, but only if they can belt out choruses as memorable as “Hello.”

Now for “Hello”: It’s alright. The chorus is great and ridiculously fun to sing along to and the song and the production perfectly build until the chorus explodes. Still, is this a song or just a chorus? The verse lyrics do not add much to the chorus and they don’t provide a coherent emotional arc and too often it seems like Adele and her backing band are biding time until the chorus comes again. Still, what a chorus!”

7/10

Justin Bieber - “Sorry”; 1/23-2/6 (3 Weeks)

A deceptively simple pop song with three chords, a dancehall beat, lots of cool sounds courtesy of Skrillex, and a maddeningly catchy chorus, “Sorry” feels like it should be better than it is. After a quatrain of massive hits in ‘15 and ‘16, Bieber enjoyed something of a critical rehabilitation, especially since most of pop radio seems engineered to recreate the hitmaking magic of “Sorry.” If you haven’t heard yet, Justin is an adult now, who likes to sing about “mature” subjects without any emotional maturity. I’ll give props to the man for trendspotting, but I’m not quite sold on his transformation. The superficially earnest and skin-deep faux-introspective lyrics are a bigger problem in his follow up hit, but the main thing that sidelines “Sorry” is Justin’ vocal, which is overly breathy, melodramatic, and often irritating. Still, it��s hard to deny the chorus melody and the production by Skrillex and Blood strikes an impressive balance between bubblegum pop and the harder-edged sounds for which Skrillex is famous. I don’t need to hear this song ever again, but it doesn’t make me mad.

5/10

Justin Bieber - “Love Yourself”; 2/13, 2/27 (2 Weeks)

“Love Yourself,” co-written by Ed Sheeran and produced with admirable restraint by Benny Blanco, recently won “Best Lyrics” in the 2017 IHeartRadio awards. Leaving aside award-winning couplets like “You think you broke my heart, oh girl for goodness sake/You think I'm crying on my own, well I ain't” and the censored title insult, “Love Yourself” is a cripplingly, hopelessly petulant song. It’s “methinks the lady doth protest too much” in musical form. To his credit, the Biebs does a decent job selling the performance--whatever sweetness there is comes from his voice not the composition. The stripped down arrangement, with amateurish, whispy electric guitar and a trumpet teleported in from a happier song, shines a spotlight on the nasty and vindictive words. I’m thinking that whomever Justin is singing about isn’t missing him too much.

2/10

Zayn - “Pillowtalk”; 2/20 (1 Week)

For a minute there it felt like 2016 would be dominated by former teen stars who are now all-too-proud to boast “Hey, I’m having sex now!” through their music. "Pillowtalk” is an oversung, oversexed, overproduced slog--clocking in at 3:25 that feels like an eternity. It aims for “Climax,” by Usher, but it barely reaches “Radioactive” by Imagine Dragons. The song is called “Pillowtalk,” Zayn, so please stop shouting at me!

2/10

Rihanna - “Work” ft. Drake; 3/5-4/30 (9 Weeks)

A refreshingly minimalist, slinky slice of music box dancehall from the best damn pop star working. Nobody stood out on the radio in 2016 like Rihanna. The songs that tried to imitate “Work”--oh and there were plenty--failed to capture the confident spontaneity, effortless melodicism, and sheer force of personality exhibited by RiRi on the track. Most importantly, and the thing that makes “Work” such a radio standout, the producers know to stay out of Rihanna’s way, barely embellishing the original “Sail Away” riddim and letting the diva do her thing. “Work” sails towards a 10, but then Drake shows up to talk his favorite subject: what the object of his affection “used to” do. Ease up, man.

8/10

Desiigner - “Panda”; 5/7-5/14 (2 Weeks)

A bombastic trap anthem from an excitable Brooklyn teenager on the mic and a former Mancunian cell phone salesman behind the boards, “Panda” is one of the more unlikely number ones in a while. Desiigner bought the beat that eventually became “Panda” from producer Menace for the low low price of $200, after discovering the beat on YouTube. The track quickly caught fire, reaching the ear of Kanye West, who slapped his own version onto The Life of Pablo. Strangely enough, “Panda” caught more heat than any of Kanye’s solo tracks, climbing up the charts to become first solo rap hit to reach the top of the Hot 100 since 2011 (Wiz Khalifa, “Black & Yellow).

All that stuff is super cool and all, but besides the origin story, I'm fairly conflicted about this song. There are some truly unique aspects to the track that help me understand why it caught on so quickly. In an era where artists are encouraged to throw a hook at you right off the bat, it takes some balls for Desiigner to let the beat build--holding back for the first 40 or so seconds of the track, letting the natural contours of the instrumental and his wild ad-libs do the work. Did I say natural contours of the instrumental? Yeah, the beat is great. At first blush, it seems a bit rudimentary, but so few radio rap tracks actually have any dynamics--they’re all full steam ahead all the time. It’s refreshing and kinda weird to hear the LOUDquietLOUD formula that’s been done to death in alt-rock in a trap song.

But overall, despite the more interesting aspects, the whole of “Panda” is just garden-variety trap, but without the hook that makes trap music interesting--a unique personality. Desiigner can’t help if his rhythmic baritone sounds similar in timbre to Future, but he uses the EXACT SAME FLOW as Future as well. In fact, I bet there are STILL people out there who think that “Panda” is a Future song and the fact that it topped the charts before any real Future song feels a little bit like Pat Boone’s “Tutti Frutti” outselling Little Richard’s.

6/10

Drake - “One Dance” ft. Wizkid & Kyla: 5/14, 6/4-7/30 (10 weeks)

Leave it Drake to litter a scorching sample and piano loop with his atonal ramblings, magically transforming a potential banger into a Pavlovian stimulus to change the station. Do me a favor and listen to the original instead.

3/10

Justin Timberlake - “Can’t Stop The Feeling”: 5/21 (1 Week)

Like Pharrell’s “Happy,” JT’s “Can’t Stop The Feeling” is a feel-good cash grab from the soundtrack to a kids’ movie. Also like “Happy,” it’s a song that sounds a lot more like a jingle from a Coca-Cola commercial than a pop song that has any business near the radio. JT is a more engaging performer than Pharrell, so this has some sterile charm (and I dig the finger snaps), but mostly, this song is the sound of a once-great pop star grasping for a niche in today’s crowded marketplace now that the other Justin captured his sex appeal and Bruno Mars eclipsed him as the most beloved translator of ‘80s R&B slickness.

4/10

Sia - “Cheap Thrills” ft. Sean Paul: 8/6-8/27 (4 Weeks)

The second catchiest dancehall-influenced track to top the charts in 2016! (Due respect to “Work,” get lost “One Dance”). With the sound of pop music ever drifting toward the Caribbean, it was inevitable that one of pop music’s biggest dancehall crossover stars would rear his head for a comeback. And voila! Here is Sean-a Paul bringing back his bi-di-bam-bam to the pop charts, livening up an otherwise blah track. Sia, as usual, delivers a solid melody and a strong vocal, but the backing track is punchless with no memorable instrumental hooks and a barely noticeable rhythm section.

5/10

The Chainsmokers - “Closer” ft. Halsey: 9/3-11/19 (12 weeks)

When future social scientists study the popular music of America in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, they will find that a single turning point plunged the quality of the artform into an irreversible decline: the moment that one dude from the Chainsmokers psyched himself up in the mirror and convinced himself he could sing.

2/10

Rae Sremmurd - “Black Beatles” ft. Gucci Mane: 11/26-12/31; 1/14/17 (7 Weeks)

I’M A FUCKIN’ BLACK BEATLE CREAM SEATS IN THE REGAL ROCKIN’ JOHN LENNON LENSES LIKE TO SEE ‘EM SPREAD EAGLE...

ahem. excuse me.

It’s hard for me to retain my critical faculties when listening to this song, but I’ll try my hardest to succinctly describe why I think "Black Beatles” is one of the greatest rap songs of the past decade or so.

First, Mike WiLL’s beat--with those strange, Eastern-style modal ascending fourths, the Glass-like arpeggiated synth riff that hangs in the air, the brilliant use of negative space in the bottom that transforms any room into a haze-filled cavern, those hi-hats that sound like a million monkeys crafting a masterpiece on a million typewriters...I can go on and on.

Second, I would like to congratulate Swae Lee and company for creating a five minute long song where nearly every moment is a hook. Seriously, there are at least seven or eight lines in Swae’s verse that could be the key line in a massive single (”New day, new money to be made,” “Like clockwork, I blow it all” “She think she love me, I think she trollin’”).

Third, while this might feel like a participation trophy for Gucci Mane and Slim Jxmmi, it’s not. Slim’s absurd lyrics and crazy high energy provide the perfect anchor lap, and Gucci’s verse provides some twisty wordplay as the cream filling the Rae Sremmurd oreo.

Are Rae Sremmurd the next Beatles? Probably not. Are they the trap N’Sync? Warmer. Either way, here’s to many more number one hits and trashed hotel rooms for these crazy kids, who hopefully never grow up.

9/10

2017 - THE YEAR THAT IS NOW

The Weeknd - “Starboy” ft. Daft Punk: 1/7 (1 Week)

In which Abel Tesfaye chops off his famous ‘do and magically transforms into Tears For Fears. Three-and-a-half minutes of build-up that never quite resolves into a climax. I’m not sure what Abel was going for with that chorus--”starboy” is a silly phrase that the song demands you take very seriously. I’m sorry--to me a “starboy” calls to mind the “Star Child” from the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey or a superhero’s sidekick. Maybe he’s trying evoke David Bowie (”staaaarmaaan”), but this is a lot more Starship than Stardust.

5/10

Migos - “Bad and Boujee” ft. Lil Uzi Vert: 1/21, 2/4-2/11 (3 Weeks)

A sinister, cavernous, evil trap banger like this topping the Billboard charts?--momma we made it. This year, people finally realized that putting three uniquely talented, rappin’-ass-rappin’ emcees who finish each others sentences and help each other out with absurd ad-libs on every track was a very good idea. Failing that, just grab Quavo and let him sang. As great as Quavo is on everything, and he comes through here with a brilliant secondary hook (”yeah..dat way”), the real star of “Bad and Boujee” is Offset, who peppers Metro Boomin’s track with rhythmic witticisms and provides the year’s most memeable chorus. As for Lil Uzi Vert (eyeaaah)...well... it would have been nice to hear Takeoff on this track, but no matter, he shines on the follow-up hit, and our nation’s new national anthem, “T-Shirt.”

Is Migos better than The Beatles? No. Is “Bad and Boujee” better than “Black Beatles”? Almost.

9/10.

Ed Sheeran - “Shape of You”: 1/28, 2/18-4/29 (12 Weeks)

RIP Dancehall (1985-2017) -- Killed by a charmless, rhythmically challenged chia pet and the tinniest, rinky-dinkiest production to ever top the charts.

1/10

Kendrick Lamar - “HUMBLE.”: 5/6 (1 Week)

Considering all that Kendrick Lamar has done in the past five years, it’s kind of remarkable that people were concerned that Kendrick Lamar might have to sand off his rougher edges to achieve mainstream acceptance. Well, here he is in 2017, the biggest pure rap star in the world, and he gets his first number one, not with an attempted crossover but with a lyrical exercise, with a spare, pounding, piano beat by Mike WiLL Made It. Kendrick’s long-awaited successor to “Backseat Freestyle,” “HUMBLE.” is a bracing listen with the rapper delivering memorable line after memorable line in lockstep with the beat. “HUMBLE.” doesn’t quite have the emotional range or level of detail as some of the better songs on DAMN., but then again, I can’t think of a number one hit since the heyday of B.I.G. that has this level of pure, athletic rapping.

8/10

Bruno Mars - “That’s What I Like”: 5/13 (1 Week)

I’ve been doing this post every year for over a decade, and in that time, Bruno Mars has had SEVEN number one hits. So I’ve had plenty of chances to write about Bruno and I’ve made my opinion on him very clear: dude is a skilled craftsman and talented performer who’s never had an original idea in his oft-fedora’d head. In the past, I’ve levied that as a criticism, but now...I kinda like the dude. All it took for me to change my opinion was for Bruno to stop aping people like Billy Joel and start aping people like Zapp and Roger, or the Gap Band, or Teddy Pendergrass. “That’s What I Like” echoes the adult-oriented R&B of the ‘80s, but it doesn’t feel like as much of a retread as Bruno’s other big hits—borrowing stylistic elements but not in an obvious way. It’s a well-constructed song, written in 2/2 time with jazzy chords, endearingly dumb lyrics (“wake up with no jammies” “Julio cook that scampi”), and a big fat ‘80s-style analog synth on the bridge. What’s not to like?

8/10

DJ Khaled – “I’m The One” ft. Justin Bieber, Quavo, Chance The Rapper, and Lil Wayne: 5/20 (1 Week)

Ever the master of A-List posse cuts, DJ Khaled built upon his recent Snapchat celebrity and earned his first number one hit with this beach bbq-ready slice of summer. This is possibly the most impressive combination of talent that Khaled has ever assembled on a song...so why is this so boring? I like most of the individual parts in the song, though I could really do without Bieber’s Caribbean patois at the end, but they come together to form this overlong mish mash. The main culprit, unfortunately, is the instrumental from Nic Nac, who I normally like a lot, which uses and abuses the ‘50s doo wop chord progression without dressing it up with sounds to make it more novel or interesting. I’m happy for Chance and Khaled for earning a #1, and I won’t change the station when it comes on, but “I’m The One” is overstuffed, brimming with wasted potential.

5/10

Luis Fonsi – “Despacito” (Remix) ft. Daddy Yankee & Justin Bieber: 5/27-6/10 (3 Weeks [so far])

The first Spanish-language track to top the Billboard charts since the “Macarena” propelled Bill Clinton to victory over Bob Dole in 1996, “Despacito” is an infectious, if rote, slice of Latin Pop, anchored by Puerto Rican cuatro and an expressive vocal from Luis Fonsi (who I’d embarrassingly never heard of before hearing this song). As the American monoculture fragments into dozens of competing scenes and genres vying for attention, the Billboard reign of “Despacito” demonstrates the positive effects of putting the charts in the hands of streamers instead of radio programmers.

Then again, those dastardly programmers had to sully this with a Justin Bieber intro. I understand that adding Justin Bieber to “Despacito” was the only way to convince English-speaking radio to play it, but its melody is plenty strong enough to stand on its own. The original version benefits from the counterweight between Fonsi’s verse and Daddy Yankee’s rap, which the Bieber intro throws out of whack. Add the fact that Bieber seems to lack respect for the original artists and it looks like a transparent cash grab from a guy who probably doesn’t need the cash. Still, 30 seconds at the beginning of the song can’t take away from the remarkable achievement from the two artists, nor the the Cuatro wizardry of Luis Fonsi.

6/10

BEST #1 of 2016: “Black Beatles”

WORST #1 of 2016: Lots of competition, but let’s go with “Pillowtalk,” narrowly edging “Closer”

BEST/WORST of 2017 coming at the end of the year--this is shaping up to become one of the best ever years for number 1 hits (no thanks to you, Ed).

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