Billboard Hot 100: 8/01/15 (1st week of new tracking period)

[Clauss]

Poor Taylor, Queen of getting songs stuck at 190-200M.

[wavey.]

Jul 15, 2015 11:50:35 GMT -5 Clauss said:

Poor Taylor, Queen of getting songs stuck at 190-200M.

I know, so horrible, right? :'(

[Deleted]

Such a close race between CFMF and Cheerleader! Who knows, 7/25 could have been its 1 and only week at #1! I'm ok with either one being #1 so long as CFMF doesn't end up getting blocked.

[Mikel Echarri]

Jul 15, 2015 14:28:35 GMT -5 @markg94 said:

Such a close race between CFMF and Cheerleader! Who knows, 7/25 could have been its 1 and only week at #1! I'm ok with either one being #1 so long as CFMF doesn't end up getting blocked.

In any case next week CFMF will reach the top 2 for sure, surpasing Earned It as his highest peak on the Hot 100. He only need to release the music video to guarantee the #1

[imbondz]

I still think it's weird how quick he blew up. I've never even really seen a pic of him other than iTunes covers. And why does he go by the Weeknd?

[Deleted]

Jul 15, 2015 22:10:54 GMT -5 imbondz said:

I still think it's weird how quick he blew up. I've never even really seen a pic of him other than iTunes covers. And why does he go by the Weeknd?

You may notice there's an 'e' missing. That is because he didn't want to have to face a lawsuit by having the same name as a Canadian band that goes by "The Weekend."

[felipe]

Jul 15, 2015 22:10:54 GMT -5 imbondz said:

I still think it's weird how quick he blew up. I've never even really seen a pic of him other than iTunes covers.

I don't get it either. Was it all because of the Ariana Grande song?

[Glove Slap]

Jul 15, 2015 22:10:54 GMT -5 imbondz said:

I still think it's weird how quick he blew up. I've never even really seen a pic of him other than iTunes covers. And why does he go by the Weeknd?

Yeah, it's strange how fast he just exploded. Even with the Drake connection and the Ariana duet, Earned It gave his career a gigantic boost. A much bigger boost than larger hits have done for others. At the same time though, there was definite momentum and a large and prolific catalog which cannot be discredited.

Anyways, PartyNextDoor for one of the breakout acts of 2016?

Also, I'm curious how long Demi Lovato can keep charging like this given the lack of sales traction so far.

[Enigma.]

LOL The Weeknd had a #4 album years ago which has now sold platinum (Trilogy, 2012). He had his first platinum selling single with Wicked Games in 2013 so yes, it was all because of Ariana Grande.

Everything comes down to a pop diva, doesn't it Glad he got the duet slot though, it could have been Chris Brown or Usher or somebody else. He might have been in studio with Max Martin at that time too. (CFMC is produced by Martin)

Sometimes talented people just do well in the long run. BUT I must say he is awfully boring live act. Saw him warming up for Drake in Stockholm a year and a half ago.. Both were worse than expected but The Weeknd is not really born for arenas. That might have changed since then though.

[Deleted]

Amazing how The Hills might be top 10 this coming week without even any radio promotion (at least I don't know of it being promoted to radio, though I did hear it on a rhythmic-leaning pop station here in Canada) and without it being a sales debut week! When was the last time that happened?

[Deleted]

Jul 15, 2015 11:50:35 GMT -5 Clauss said:

Poor Taylor, Queen of getting songs stuck at 190-200M.

Honestly, I don't think she's crying about it. She's been overexposed as it is and has had 3 #1 hits, I think she's doing okay.

[felipe]

Jul 16, 2015 1:25:46 GMT -5 Enigma. said:

LOL The Weeknd had a #4 album years ago which has now sold platinum (Trilogy, 2012). He had his first platinum selling single with Wicked Games in 2013 so yes, it was all because of Ariana Grande.

Everything comes down to a pop diva, doesn't it

He might have had a #4 album years ago (like countless other acts have), but are you seriously saying he was a well-known singer in the US before Love me harder?

[Gary]

Jul 16, 2015 7:18:22 GMT -5 felipe said:

Jul 16, 2015 1:25:46 GMT -5 Enigma. said:

LOL The Weeknd had a #4 album years ago which has now sold platinum (Trilogy, 2012). He had his first platinum selling single with Wicked Games in 2013 so yes, it was all because of Ariana Grande.

Everything comes down to a pop diva, doesn't it

He might have had a #4 album years ago (like countless other acts have), but are you seriously saying he was a well-known singer in the US before Love me harder?

Depends on what "well-known" means?  Taylor Swift well known?  Probably not.  But being #4 in the country and logging first week sales of 86,000 in 2012 probably means someone had heard of him/

[Daniel Collins]

Mediabase 07/16/15

1. TAYLOR SWIFT - Bad Blood f/Kendrick Lamar: 193.703 (- 0.659)
2. WIZ KHALIFA - See You Again f/Charlie Puth: 171.461 (- 3.291)
3. WALK THE MOON - Shut Up And Dance: 162.805 (- 2.030)
4. THE WEEKND - Can't Feel My Face: 145.547 (+ 4.242)
5. OMI - Cheerleader: 139.257 (+ 2.065)
6. DAVID GUETTA - Hey Mama f/N. Minaj & Afrojack: 135.848 (- 1.112)
7. JASON DERULO - Want To Want Me: 119.959 (- 1.510)
8. ANDY GRAMMER - Honey, I'm Good: 107.819 (- 0.028)
9. FIFTH HARMONY - Worth It f/Kid Ink: 90.832 (+ 1.130)
10. RACHEL PLATTEN - Fight Song: 89.063 (+ 1.426)

11. MARK RONSON - Uptown Funk f/Bruno Mars: 85.963 (- 0.673)
12. MAROON 5 - Sugar: 80.875 (- 0.126)
13. TOVE LO - Talking Body: 78.201 (- 2.314)
14. THE WEEKND - Earned It: 76.540 (- 1.329)
15. MAJOR LAZER - Lean On f/MØ & DJ Snake: 74.062 (+ 1.012)
16. OMARION - Post To Be f/Chris Brown&Jhene: 73.547 (+ 0.603)
17. JASON ALDEAN - Tonight Looks Good On You: 71.111 (+ 0.340) ▲
18. SKRILLEX & DIPLO - Where Are U Now w/J. Bieber: 69.855 (+ 0.445) ▲
19. ELLIE GOULDING - Love Me Like You Do: 69.658 (- 1.155) ▼
20. LITTLE BIG TOWN - Girl Crush: 69.640 (+ 1.222)

ED SHEERAN - Photograph: 66.045 (+ 1.280)
BRANTLEY GILBERT - One Hell Of An Amen: 58.192 (+ 1.185)
MICHAEL RAY - Kiss You In The Morning: 55.347 (+ 0.979)
SILENTO - Watch Me: 54.750 (+ 1.080)
JIDENNA - Classic Man: 54.577 (- 0.047)
LUKE BRYAN - Kick The Dust Up: 50.753 (+ 0.692)
DEMI LOVATO - Cool For The Summer: 47.585 (+ 1.568)
FALL OUT BOY - Uma Thurman: 46.981 (+ 0.911)
SELENA GOMEZ - Good For You f/A$AP Rocky: 44.759 (+ 1.254)
THOMAS RHETT - Crash And Burn: 37.120 (+ 0.726)
SAGE THE GEMINI - Good Thing f/Nick Jonas: 25.110 (+ 0.465)
X AMBASSADORS - Renegades: 22.953 (+ 0.256)
MEEK MILL - All Eyes On You f/Minaj/Brown: 18.356 (+ 0.586)
JASON DERULO - Cheyenne: 16.450 (+ 0.108)
ZEDD - Beautiful Now f/Jon Bellion: 16.018 (+ 0.446)
CHARLIE PUTH - Marvin Gaye f/Meghan Trainor: 15.168 (+ 0.563)
KELLY CLARKSON - Invincible: 14.961 (- 0.099)
JANET JACKSON - No Sleeep: 12.480 (- 0.617)
BECK - Dreams: 10.640(+ 0.035)
SHAWN MENDES - Stitches: 8.380 (+ 0.041)
R. CITY - Locked Away f/Adam Levine: 7.172 (+ 0.700)
MEGHAN TRAINOR - Like I'm Gonna Lose You: 6.310 (+ 0.146)
AUSTIN MAHONE - Dirty Work: 4.134 (+ 0.047)

[jarhys]

Jul 16, 2015 8:04:22 GMT -5 Daniel Collins said:

Mediabase 07/16/15

1. TAYLOR SWIFT - Bad Blood f/Kendrick Lamar: 193.703 (- 0.659)
2. WIZ KHALIFA - See You Again f/Charlie Puth: 171.461 (- 3.291)
3. WALK THE MOON - Shut Up And Dance: 162.805 (- 2.030)
4. THE WEEKND - Can't Feel My Face: 145.547 (+ 4.242)
5. OMI - Cheerleader: 139.257 (+ 2.065)
6. DAVID GUETTA - Hey Mama f/N. Minaj & Afrojack: 135.848 (- 1.112)
7. JASON DERULO - Want To Want Me: 119.959 (- 1.510)
8. ANDY GRAMMER - Honey, I'm Good: 107.819 (- 0.028)
9. FIFTH HARMONY - Worth It f/Kid Ink: 90.832 (+ 1.130)
10. RACHEL PLATTEN - Fight Song: 89.063 (+ 1.426)

11. MARK RONSON - Uptown Funk f/Bruno Mars: 85.963 (- 0.673)
12. MAROON 5 - Sugar: 80.875 (- 0.126)
13. TOVE LO - Talking Body: 78.201 (- 2.314)
14. THE WEEKND - Earned It: 76.540 (- 1.329)
15. MAJOR LAZER - Lean On f/MØ & DJ Snake: 74.062 (+ 1.012)
16. OMARION - Post To Be f/Chris Brown&Jhene: 73.547 (+ 0.603)
17. JASON ALDEAN - Tonight Looks Good On You: 71.111 (+ 0.340) ▲
18. SKRILLEX & DIPLO - Where Are U Now w/J. Bieber: 69.855 (+ 0.445) ▲
19. ELLIE GOULDING - Love Me Like You Do: 69.658 (- 1.155) ▼
20. LITTLE BIG TOWN - Girl Crush: 69.640 (+ 1.222)

ED SHEERAN - Photograph: 66.045 (+ 1.280)
BRANTLEY GILBERT - One Hell Of An Amen: 58.192 (+ 1.185)
MICHAEL RAY - Kiss You In The Morning: 55.347 (+ 0.979)
SILENTO - Watch Me: 54.750 (+ 1.080)
JIDENNA - Classic Man: 54.577 (- 0.047)
LUKE BRYAN - Kick The Dust Up: 50.753 (+ 0.692)
DEMI LOVATO - Cool For The Summer: 47.585 (+ 1.568)
FALL OUT BOY - Uma Thurman: 46.981 (+ 0.911)
SELENA GOMEZ - Good For You f/A$AP Rocky: 44.759 (+ 1.254)
THOMAS RHETT - Crash And Burn: 37.120 (+ 0.726)
SAGE THE GEMINI - Good Thing f/Nick Jonas: 25.110 (+ 0.465)
X AMBASSADORS - Renegades: 22.953 (+ 0.256)
MEEK MILL - All Eyes On You f/Minaj/Brown: 18.356 (+ 0.586)
JASON DERULO - Cheyenne: 16.450 (+ 0.108)
ZEDD - Beautiful Now f/Jon Bellion: 16.018 (+ 0.446)
CHARLIE PUTH - Marvin Gaye f/Meghan Trainor: 15.168 (+ 0.563)
KELLY CLARKSON - Invincible: 14.961 (- 0.099)
JANET JACKSON - No Sleeep: 12.480 (- 0.617)
BECK - Dreams: 10.640(+ 0.035)
SHAWN MENDES - Stitches: 8.380 (+ 0.041)
R. CITY - Locked Away f/Adam Levine: 7.172 (+ 0.700)
MEGHAN TRAINOR - Like I'm Gonna Lose You: 6.310 (+ 0.146)
AUSTIN MAHONE - Dirty Work: 4.134 (+ 0.047)

Where's FLO RIDA - I Don't Like It, I Love It f/Robin Thicke?
This song is quite perfect for summer.

[Daniel Collins]

FLO RIDA - I Don't Like It, I Love It: 15.392 (+0.444)

[Enigma.]

Jul 16, 2015 7:54:50 GMT -5 Gary said:

Jul 16, 2015 7:18:22 GMT -5 felipe said:

He might have had a #4 album years ago (like countless other acts have), but are you seriously saying he was a well-known singer in the US before Love me harder?

Depends on what "well-known" means?  Taylor Swift well known?  Probably not.  But being #4 in the country and logging first week sales of 86,000 in 2012 probably means someone had heard of him/

Yes and he was on Love Me Harder only probably because they're on the same label (Republic)

[Love Plastic Love]

Jul 16, 2015 7:18:22 GMT -5 felipe said:

Jul 16, 2015 1:25:46 GMT -5 Enigma. said:

LOL The Weeknd had a #4 album years ago which has now sold platinum (Trilogy, 2012). He had his first platinum selling single with Wicked Games in 2013 so yes, it was all because of Ariana Grande.

Everything comes down to a pop diva, doesn't it

He might have had a #4 album years ago (like countless other acts have), but are you seriously saying he was a well-known singer in the US before Love me harder?

If you are using Adele/Taylor Swift standards, then no. However, he has been big in his genre for years. It is one of the continual blind spots with this board that artists who are big, but not on pop are basically ignored as nobodies. Sometimes that is true, but the entire musical world doesn't revolve around just pop success and cute pop divas. I would say that The Weeknd also has the type of following Lana got through youtube videos/mixtapes rather than traditional radio play which also makes it hard to gauge his popularity before. We tend to preference pop radio as the only type of success to reach an audience, but the music industry doesn't always work that way particularly with different forms of promotion out there now and some genres are also less dependent on traditional promotion.

Either way, obviously Earned It and Love Me Harder helped his pop profile, but he was not a nobody before and I don't think his current success was only because of one Ariana duet.

[Mikel Echarri]

My prediction about Cheerleader VS Can't Feel My Face next week

Formula: Sales/12 + Airplay/10,000 + Streams/900

#1 Cheerleader [42.659]

Sales - 160,000

Streaming - 15.7M

Airplay - 118.81M

#2 Can't Feel My Face [38.114]

Sales - 155,000

Streaming - 10.6M

Airplay - 134.2M

[Au$tin]

Jul 16, 2015 7:18:22 GMT -5 felipe said:

Jul 16, 2015 1:25:46 GMT -5 Enigma. said:

LOL The Weeknd had a #4 album years ago which has now sold platinum (Trilogy, 2012). He had his first platinum selling single with Wicked Games in 2013 so yes, it was all because of Ariana Grande.

Everything comes down to a pop diva, doesn't it

He might have had a #4 album years ago (like countless other acts have), but are you seriously saying he was a well-known singer in the US before Love me harder?

You're looking too broad. The Weeknd is (or was) a type of artist that focused on their main format, and that was most certainly not pop. He scored hits on his main format ever since "Wicked Games" in 2013, and made a nice name for himself in the r&b/hip-hop world long before "Love Me Harder." "Love Me Harder" was just his first pop hit, and to be completely honest, I doubt that's what caused him to become the huge artist he is today. There's quite a few people who would be completely shocked to learn that the guy who sings "Earned It" is the male vocalist on "Love Me Harder" as well. Really, it was "Earned It" that put him on the mainstream pop map. Did "Love Me Harder" help with that? Of course, but not enough to send "Earned It" soaring up the charts when it first came out. (Hence why "Earned It" was still climbing after "Love Me Like You Do," released at the same time from the same movie soundtrack, peaked.) If we're going to attribute The Weeknd's explosion onto the mainstream pop world to anything, it should honestly go to Fifty Shades of Grey and not Ariana Grande.

[badrobot]

The Weeknd was the kind of artist that people share online with Tumblr, etc., and builds an "indie" following. I was surprised to see how successful Trilogy was and surprised again when he started getting radio airplay. But he definitely didn't come out of nowhere. He reminds me of people like Lana Del Rey and Ellie Goulding who had an online following and then started to break through.

For someone like me, the people that come out of nowhere are artists like Demi Lovato and Carly Rae Jepsen -- reality/kids TV show stars who I've never heard of until I see them with a song on the Hot 100.

[Enigma.]

5 Seconds of Summer came out of nowhere to me but that's mainly because they're Australian.

Then some rappers such as Silento are totally unknown if one doesn't follow the right forums.

But like said above, pop radio is only one measure of success. They usually play tracks only when a) artist is popular enough from the start b ) the song is already popular elsewhere c) label pays

[Au$tin]

It's honestly extremely rare for an artist to come out of seemingly nowhere. Meghan Trainor is really the only artist I can think of in recent years to have just come out onto the scene from nowhere. Most others had a few buzz songs before, were featured somewhere else, started out in acting, were Internet famous beforehand, or have been slowly building over the years to get where they are now. Before Meghan, the last one was probably Rihanna.

[felipe]

I never meant to say The Weeknd came out of NOWHERE, or that he was a nobody before, I just don't think he was known by general audiences. Most of his older songs struggled to get 10 million views on youtube and now The Hills (which isn't even being actively promoted) is at 70 million after a month, so yeah, there's a huge pre-LMH difference, and it's not just because "people at Pulse are obsessed with pop music".

[velaxti]

I don't think The Weeknd is THAT much more famous than he used to be. It's recently he's started getting played on the radio and getting in the charts, but he already had millions of fans before.

Like would you say Skrillex just blew up because he got his first top 10 hit? No, he's been famous for years. Same with The Weeknd.

[felipe]

Jul 16, 2015 17:51:06 GMT -5 velaxti said:

I don't think The Weeknd is THAT much more famous than he used to be. It's recently he's started getting played on the radio and getting in the charts, but he already had millions of fans before.

Like would you say Skrillex just blew up because he got his first top 10 hit? No, he's been famous for years. Same with The Weeknd.

I am sure that The Weeknd had some fans before, but before last year he only hit the Hot 100 twice, never in the top 50. And now he's having consecutive top 10 hits and a song that might be one of the biggest hits of the summer. So I'd say there's quite a before/after difference here.

Arcade Fire has millions of fans. And yet they're not really "popular". They don't have huge hits, people probably wouldn't recognize them on the streets. So if all of a sudden they start having these big hits after hits then, yeah, most people would probably say they just blew up - which in no way discredit the niche success they had prior to that.

[Enigma.]

I might not recognize The Weeknd on streets because it's not essential in being a fan of his.

[Dylan :)]

Idk who wouldn't recognize with that hair tbh. Since him once, know him for life

[aser94]

*quietly makes first post*

It seems to me that people sometimes underestimate how much pop and urban audiences overlap. It's true that The Weeknd wasn't a superstar before this year, but he was big enough to make a bid for pop success seem viable. Even by the end of 2011, the year he first broke out among blogs and music outlets, he was already featured on Drake's Take Care and given a slot at OVO fest. For an R&B singer, that's about as big a co-sign as you can get, and while Drake's home obviously isn't pop radio, it's fair to say he's just as big and influential as any of the big pop artists today. By the time "Love Me Harder" came out, The Weeknd had built up enough name recognition for a collab with Ariana to not seem totally shocking.

At the same time, The Weeknd's music also wasn't very pop-friendly, which didn't score him many hits on the Hot 100, but it gave him a very devoted fanbase. Which means his current run of top-10 hits wouldn't have happened if he wasn't making a conscious bid for pop stardom, aka changing up his sound; "Earned It" and "CFMF" sound pretty much nothing like his mixtape days. So obviously he's gunning for a much different level of fame than he's previously gained, but that's always been the case with pop radio: it gives you the most direct route to the biggest audience possible.

[Enigma.]

Great first post!