Billboard Hot 100: 08/22/2020

[kimberly]

Aug 18, 2020 16:31:20 GMT -5 thelegends said:

Aug 18, 2020 15:07:28 GMT -5 m450n said:

I am so excited for all these big country crossover songs from women recently. Meant To Be (annoyed that it was blocked from #1), I Hope, and The Bones.

I don't even listen to that much country music but it's exciting to see either way.

MTB ain’t a country song.

it's more country than "The Bones" tbh

[felipe]

Aug 18, 2020 4:38:30 GMT -5 𝓲𝓽'𝓼.𝓰𝓿 said:

"Move Ya Hips" -- biggest single week downward movement (#19-#99)
"Trollz" -- highest drop from #1 (#1-#34)
"Say So" -- Nicki got her first #1, then not credited afterwards

Gee, those Nicki fans must've gone insane because of what's happening to Nicki

Not trying to start a war here, but seeing Cardi B at the top again leaves me puzzled about Nicki. She's been the hottest female rapper for over a decade, and somehow her only song to get even close to the top was the one week Anaconda was at #2 because of the music video. I'm still trying to figure this out. Is it just that time worked best for Cardi or is there more to it?

[kimberly]

Aug 18, 2020 22:55:45 GMT -5 felipe said:

Aug 18, 2020 4:38:30 GMT -5 𝓲𝓽'𝓼.𝓰𝓿 said:

"Move Ya Hips" -- biggest single week downward movement (#19-#99)
"Trollz" -- highest drop from #1 (#1-#34)
"Say So" -- Nicki got her first #1, then not credited afterwards

Gee, those Nicki fans must've gone insane because of what's happening to Nicki

Not trying to start a war here, but seeing Cardi B at the top again leaves me puzzled about Nicki. She's been the hottest female rapper for over a decade, and somehow her only song to get even close to the top was the one week Anaconda was at #2 because of the music video. I'm still trying to figure this out. Is it just that time worked best for Cardi or is there more to it?

yup, pretty much. for "Anaconda," it sucked because Taylor dropped her lead single to her most successful album ever so it got unlucky, it's one of the strongest #2 hits in history iirc. beyond that, I think music consumption methods, and the way in which society treats women in music, and especially rap and hip-hop, have been evolving in favor of newer artists. Nicki Minaj has a very strong fan base, dare I say, she's got the super base, but at this point in her career the general public isn't going crazy over her music like they did for "Super Bass" and "Starships", hence why her records keep free falling ("Yikes", "MEGATRON", and even "Chun-Li" shared the same fate). She's also infamously on bad terms with Spotify, which is a huge audience & RapCaviar is one of the most influential playlists.

Nicki Minaj paved the way, truly. Without her 100+ entries before her 2 #1 hits this year, women would need to do a lot more catching up. Without her, Cardi wouldn't be taken as seriously as she has been. Nicki's got a resume thicker than a phonebook, and that tells you how successful she was/is/has been. 

[iHype.]

Aug 18, 2020 22:55:45 GMT -5 felipe said:

Aug 18, 2020 4:38:30 GMT -5 𝓲𝓽'𝓼.𝓰𝓿 said:

"Move Ya Hips" -- biggest single week downward movement (#19-#99)
"Trollz" -- highest drop from #1 (#1-#34)
"Say So" -- Nicki got her first #1, then not credited afterwards

Gee, those Nicki fans must've gone insane because of what's happening to Nicki

Not trying to start a war here, but seeing Cardi B at the top again leaves me puzzled about Nicki. She's been the hottest female rapper for over a decade, and somehow her only song to get even close to the top was the one week Anaconda was at #2 because of the music video. I'm still trying to figure this out. Is it just that time worked best for Cardi or is there more to it?

Hip-Hop in general became way more popular in the streaming era, which is after Nicki's career peak. The climate has to do the most with it. If we were in 2011, where 90% of the top 10 on a usual week was Pop radio hits then Cardi just more than likely wouldn't have gotten #1's with songs like Bodak/WAP/I Like It. 

Nicki also had plenty of big pop hits (Superbass, Starships, Turn Me On, Bang Bang) but the second biggest thing holding her back is just bad timing. Also thirdly, she has a very terrible team... all of her releases are executed terribly. 

[dremolus - solarpunk]

Aug 18, 2020 20:08:00 GMT -5 kimberly said:

Aug 18, 2020 16:31:20 GMT -5 thelegends said:

MTB ain’t a country song.

it's more country than "The Bones" tbh

What part of Meant to Be's sound is more country than The Bones?

[kimberly]

Aug 19, 2020 0:15:07 GMT -5 dremolus - solarpunk said:

Aug 18, 2020 20:08:00 GMT -5 kimberly said:

it's more country than "The Bones" tbh

What part of Meant to Be's sound is more country than The Bones?

Meant to Be is the prime example of country-pop that a lot of people who listen to actual country music dislike, but fans of Luke Bryan and Sam Hunt and FGL gobble up. 

The Bones is a pop song with some rock/country elements but far from country, whether you're talking about country country or the bro-country landscape of today.

[Naos]

It's not even country pop though. It's just pop.

[kimberly]

eh, genres blend a lot once they start mixing with pop but i’d say “Meant to Be” fits more in the modern country-pop narrative than “The Bones”.

[m450n]

Meant to Be is more modern-country and The Bones sounds like a song that would have fit fine on Taylor Swift's Red. Meant To Be takes influences from pop, and The Bones takes influences from rock/alternative.

edit: i guess technically Red is 'modern-country' but when I say modern-country I mean bro country like what kim chartdashian said.

[mcsteamy]

Lewis Capaldi hit #10 YASSSSSSSSSSs

[tasz]

WAP Lyric Video Out Now!

[kimberly]

Aug 19, 2020 14:35:36 GMT -5 tasz said:

WAP Lyric Video Out Now!

this information pertains to the chart dated 8/29, so this is the wrong thread. you already posted it in the other one.

[Baby Yoda Hot100Fan]

Why The Weeknd's 'Blinding Lights' Was the Right Song at the Right Time to Make Radio History

8/20/2020 by Andrew Unterberger 

It might not be as recognizable a Billboard chart record as Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men setting the then-Billboard Hot 100 endurance mark in the mid-'90s with the 16-week reign of "One Sweet Day" -- but the Goo Goo Dolls' 18-week record run atop the Radio Songs tally with "Iris" in 1998 was just as impressive, and lasted for nearly as long.

After 22 years, though, the historic radio dominance of the Goos' City of Angels soundtrack single has been overtaken by a new four-quadrant smash: "Blinding Lights," the fifth Hot 100 No. 1 for pop superstar The Weeknd. This week, the song spends its 19th week atop the Radio Songs tally, passing "Iris" and moving into sole possession of the record for the chart's longest-reigning No. 1 since its introduction in 1990.

The songs couldn't be much more different: "Iris" was a sweeping, string-laden power ballad while "Blinding Lights" is a neon-hued synth-pop pulse-racer. But like "Iris" before it -- a song that fit into a larger mainstream trend of massive soundtrack ballads, and crossed over from alternative to pop to adult contemporary at a time when less separated the formats than ever before -- "Blinding Lights" has proven to be the right song at the right time for total 2020 radio omnipresence.

"'Blinding Lights' is one of those special, melodic, mass-appeal songs with multi-format and multi-generational appeal," Jon Zellner, president of programming operations at iHeartMedia, tells Billboard of the song, which hit No. 1 on Pop Songs and Adult Pop Songs and No. 2 on Rhythmic Songs, and is now up to No. 6 on Adult Contemporary. Even for an artist like The Weeknd -- no stranger to crossover success with his four career Radio Songs No. 1s -- Zellner says "Lights" was an initial standout: "The Weeknd as an artist certainly is big enough where programmers will give his new music the benefit of the doubt, but this particular song had all the metrics of a hit earlier than most."

That ability to separate itself from the pack was an immediate boon to "Blinding Lights," which was released last November just two days after the booming "Heartless" -- the first taste from The Weeknd's fourth full-length LP After Hours, released in March. Initially, "Heartless" outperformed "Lights" on the Hot 100, bounding to No. 1 on the chart after its first full week of availability, where "Lights" peaked outside the top 10. "I just remember thinking, Holy s--t, he’s got two smashes that are gonna carry us for quite some time,'" Erik Bradley, music director at Chicago's WBBM-FM, recalls of his first impressions of The Weeknd's two-pack.

But while "Heartless" topped out at No. 5 on Radio Songs and slid out of the Hot 100 shortly after, "Lights" just continued to grow and grow on radio -- leading to it hitting the Hot 100's top 10 for the first time in February, and topping the tally for the first of four non-consecutive weeks in early April. “'Blinding Lights' always stood out for being a little more special," Bradley says. "It just had a little more of a retro vibe to it, and it just felt like it was going to be one of the top couple songs for the entire year. And that happened."

That retro vibe of "Blinding Lights" also ended up being somewhat prescient, as radio would shortly be taken over by a number of up-tempo throwback tracks -- Dua Lipa's "Don't Start Now," Doja Cat's "Say So," Lady Gaga's "Stupid Love" -- that helped bring energy back to top 40, after a long period of downtempo and midtempo tracks dominating the format, and allowed "Lights" to continue feeling at home in heavy rotation. And that injection of energy became particularly vital to top 40 once the novel coronavirus hit, and listeners were suddenly stuck at home and more in need of pop escapism than ever.

"I don’t know that during a pandemic, you want to be so sad and 'the world is ending,'" Bradley says, explaining that his station refrained from playing the recent hit J.P. Saxe and Julia Michaels downtempo duet on that very topic. "We try to keep the station uptempo... when people come to [WBBM-FM], you hope that you make them feel good, and not sad and depressed. That’s always been a staple of the top 40 format."

The pandemic also had major impact on the radio success of "Blinding Lights" for another reason: the desire for the familiar during a time of tremendous global uncertainty. "In this last six months-plus, it has certainly been more applicable that comfort and familiarity is really important to people as they’re navigating life," Bradley offers, also pointing out that recent hits by Lipa and Harry Styles (who each have had two singles in the Radio Songs top 10 for the last five weeks) have proved similarly enduring on top 40. And if listener excitement for "Lights" has faded over the four-plus months it's been the most-played song on America's airwaves, Bradley says the research isn't showing it: "It’s never been out of the top two or three [in our testing], every single week. And that's really hard to do." 

"Blinding Lights" certainly benefitted heavily from the time and circumstance of its release: "A catchy, pop-driven, uptempo song with a strong hook by a relevant superstar artist released at a time when not much new music was coming out and most of America was trapped at home -- all the planets certainly were aligned!" Zellner summarizes. But as with "Iris" two decades ago, Zellner still believes the primary reason for its radio endurance comes down to the strength of the song. "There are a variety of reasons why some songs perform well as currents -- timing, the success of the artist, the quality of other currents, how the song is embraced and introduced on the radio. But songs that stand the test of time always end up being about the quality of the song itself, above everything else."

"Classics come in all shapes and sizes and formats -- and this is what that is," Bradley concurs. "It feels really good that we have it, because we need these songs that have that legacy. It just feels like a song that’s going to be on the radio for the next 30, 40, 50 years."

[Choco]

I think BL was just a perfect storm of a massive song that appeals to several genres while the follow-up tanked. Radio has been really slow at letting go of the early 2020 hits as well and The Weeknd is the only one without an active follow-up competing for spins anymore.

I lol'ed at the mention of Stupid Love. It didn't even crack top 10 on it's main format.

[dremolus - solarpunk]

Expect this to be the next number one after WAP

[phieaglesfan712]

Aug 20, 2020 21:33:00 GMT -5 Choco said:

I think BL was just a perfect storm of a massive song that appeals to several genres while the follow-up tanked. Radio has been really slow at letting go of the early 2020 hits as well and The Weeknd is the only one without an active follow-up competing for spins anymore.

I lol'ed at the mention of Stupid Love. It didn't even crack top 10 pm it's main format.

BL really benefited from weak competition on radio. It makes me wonder how many weeks at #1 Uptown Funk would have spent on radio songs (and even the Hot 100) if it was released in late 2019.