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deadcactuswalking · 9 months

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REVIEWING THE CHARTS: 23/09/2023 (Tate McRae, Drake/SZA, Chase & Status/Hedex/ArrDee)

Content warning: Brief references to sexual assault, drugs, death and violence

For the third week, Doja Cat holds onto the top spot with “Paint the Town Red” - welcome back to REVIEWING THE CHARTS!

Rundown

As always, we start the show with our notable dropouts, which are songs exiting the UK Top 75 - which is what I cover - after five weeks in the region or a peak in the top 40. This week, we say farewell to “Slow Dancing” by V and “Angry” by the Rolling Stones after just one week - honestly, the Stones one was kind of growing on me - as well as some songs that actually had some time on the charts, those being “MELTDOWN” by Travis Scott featuring Drake, “Highs & Lows” by Prinz featuring Gabriela Bee, “UNAVAILABLE” by Davido featuring Musa Keys, “Who Told You” by J Hus featuring Drake and “Dreams” by Fleetwood Mac. This was a relatively busy week, but there aren’t many dramatic losses, as most of the excitement is within our gains and especially our new arrivals, but we’ll get to those.

As for our returns, well, “Another Love” by Tom Odell is back at #74 but otherwise, we see boosts for “Back on 74” by Jungle at #60 (awesome!), “Daylight” by David Kushner at #51 (awful!), “Anti-Hero” by Taylor Swift at #41, “Calm Down” by Rema at #39 and some promising new emerging hits like “Rave Out” by Turno, Skepsis and Charlotte Plank at #37, “I Remember Everything” by Zach Bryan featuring Maggie Rogers at #35, “DNA (Loving You)” by Billy Gillies featuring Hannah Boleyn at #33, “Water” by Tyla up big at #24 and also, thanks to the video and acoustic version featuring Justin Bieber, “Snooze” by SZA rakes up big to #18.

Not a lot of the excitement translates to the very top, as always. The top five this week starts with “adore u” by Fred again.. and Obongjayar at #5 and “Prada” by casso, RAYE and D-Block Europe at #4 before a surprise gain for Kenya Grace grabbing her first top 10 just three weeks into her first chart entry as “Strangers” picks up to #3. Then, it’s more typical - “vampire” by Olivia Rodrigo at #2 and of course, “Paint the Town Red” at #1. So now let’s make sense of whatever else has debuted this week, because it’s a bit of an interesting bunch.

NEW ARRIVALS

#65 - “ecstacy” - SUICIDAL-IDOL

Produced by Buhguul

Okay so this, I imagine, would confuse anyone else doing this show. For me, it’s nothing unexpected, because this specific niche I’m already familiar with. One may see this as some kind of exaggerated 2010s electropop parody with zoomer distortion, and whilst it basically is, it’s part of a trend of songs that do similar things. This song immediately reminded me of Boy Fantasy, g0r3c0r3, Nurplee, H3artcrush and many other emo-rappers with terrible, terrible names who spout gross lyrics over mindless and terribly-mixed electronic overloads taking influence from rave-ready EDM of the early 2010s and late 2000s. Hell, I found one of my favourite recent musician discoveries - ratrace90210 - through this scene, fittingly sometimes called “scene revival” or “scenecore” - which the producer Buhguul has a couple type beats listed under on his YouTube - a couple years back. ratrace has since evolved and explored many other sounds, but the demand for that sound seems to have grown, and combining it with the bitcrushed “hexd” tendencies many of these fellows already have as well as an instrumental that isn’t too far from similar zoomernet trends that are a lot bigger right now like rage or especially drift phonk is a pretty good recipe for (ironic?) TikTok success. It’s also pretty good because of course, I’d think that. The obnoxious electroclash synths blend well into the witch house groove and whilst since it’s so big, I doubt they could do all that much to be very transgressive sonically, the pitch-shifted sing-songy lyrics about being incredibly submissive - to the point where it’s not even consensual - definitely don’t sound like they were made to be a hit, and given this song is two years old, and this kind of stuff is typical for the scene, it’s not exactly surprising. I’m sure people will be concerned about the rape line… listen, I’m not condoning it, but read the lyrics to “fashion show” by ratrace featuring Nurplee and see how much you care about the throw-away line in “ecstacy”. Ultimately, the song isn’t too special at only one and a half minutes, but for a scene I wasn’t prepared to see produce any hits, it’s a pretty good taster.

#63 - “My Love Mine All Mine” - Mitski

Produced by Patrick Hyland

Well, that felt like an essay that went a tad too long on a song that probably didn’t deserve it, but that should be expected of this show at this point. Now indie-pop singer Mitski probably does deserve that extended analysis, but sadly I’ve yet to hear that newest album with the really long name that debuted at #4 on the albums chart this week. Now I don’t know about the other 10 tracks, but this breakout single is actually pretty straightforward, being a two-minute ode to a lover she’s incredibly devoted to, as the whole world changes around her she’s able to know that they’re a constant. Death is looming here though too, as whilst the song is simple, she spends a great deal of that first verse bargaining with the Moon, asking for her heart to be sent up to it so in the event that she passes, as a thanks to her partner, her love can shine down on her once again. According to Genius, if the album is a narrative, this could be a breakup metaphor, but with or without that context, it’s a pretty heart-warming track, definitely helped by the mellow backing of pianos and folksy guitars, as well as Mitski’s vocal that never really seeps out of the more lowkey delivery, laying there for harmonies to develop upon and around it. She does a lot with two minutes and makes a pretty beautiful - and pretty queer - loving tribute, which I would love to stick around even though I know it absolutely will not. Come on, I can dream. This is gorgeous.

#52 - “A N X I E T Y” - Sleepy Hallow featuring Doechii

Produced by Great John

People still check for this guy, apparently. Well, New York driller Sleepy Hallow is back with his signature producer and a hook from Doechii and - are you kidding me? Is that an interpolation of the same Luiz Bonfá track used in Gotye’s 2012 #1 “Somebody that I Used to Know”? Wow, they’re really finding the cheapest ways out for these recognisable samples. Doechii sounds like she’s been sampled too, as if she recorded a demo about her anxiety over this Gotye sample and Sleepy Hallow just threw a Great John beat on it, which sounds completely unfinished, barely keeping on the topic or the beat which makes no progression through pretty much its entire runtime. There’s some vague attempts at wordplay but they’re about as stunted as this song’s groove, or lack thereof, including an odd reference to slavery that is not the last on this week’s set of new arrivals. I told you, it was a weird bunch, and this is just a pathetic contribution to the mix.

#50 - “PARK CHINOIS” - K-Trap and Headie One

Produced by Carns Hill

Now for some more drill, this time closer to home. Now, Carns Hill is responsible for some of the classic 67 beats, so hearing him on production, with his classic melodramatic tags and the menacing bombast of the pianos and strings he uses was a breath of fresh air, with his drum pattern being particularly explosive given those manic hi-hats and distorted loops of yelling in the back. The melodies turn into a muddy aura of crime, like someone following you in the streets at night, and both Headie and K-Trap deliver solid performances here. A lot of it is gang violence and flexing, but K-Trap has a lot more energy and charisma than last time I heard him, and his flow is incredibly tight in the chorus. Headie delivers as always with his rich, cold voice and clever, downright scary or borderline comical bars about his opps drowning and… Family Guy, really, and K-Trap may have outdone him in his hard as bricks second verse. I’d like for some more chemistry on display, but the one-up rivalry that exists in how the song is structured as is is still pretty compelling so yeah, basically no complaints.

#38 - “On My Love” - Zara Larsson and David Guetta

Produced by David Guetta, Giorgio Tuinfort and Cesqeaux

Alright, Guetta, which one are you sampling today? WHAT?! Have we ran out of actually good or memorable songs to sample? Chris Brown’s “Beautiful People” featuring Benny Benassi was a lazy electro house bore when it was released in, you know, 2011! Surely, it’s too early and too much of a garbage song to consider sampling just 12 years after it hit #4. I’ve always thought this song was terrible and not just because of Mr. Brown’s questionable vocal performance, but also this slab of robotic house that backs it from Mr. Benassi. At least with Zara Larsson singing, we have a decent vocalist, but the lyrics are… somehow worse? How?! You sampled a Chris Brown song and made the lyrics more repetitive and meaningless? Okay, well, maybe the drop goes at least? Oh, it’s pretty much that same anti-climactic slab that is just dropped in the song with the build-up of someone ordering a Lego set pre-built? And then had the gall to make an extended version? Joy. Retire, Pierre.

#31 - “Liquor & Cigarettes” - Chase & Status and Hedex featuring ArrDee

Produced by Chase & Status and Hedex

Okay, so this is a bit of a weird combination but it could work, and if this episode is anything to go by, I’ll either love it or hate it so we have drum and bass giants Chase & Status teaming up with ArrDee, a UK rapper who at this point has become quite stale, and a rave producer called Hedex who was unknown to me prior to this song but has had some remixes hit it big in the past few years, including one of “Closer” by Bou and Slay which is still charting right now. As for this song, I was initially pretty confused by what sounded like a sped-up lounge instrumental and text-to-speech vocals but as soon as ArrDee came in, I think I got the appeal - it’s a mess, with daggers of synth bass and looming horns, as well as ArrDee’s laddish yelling that acts essentially as a Prodigy-esque preparation for the wubs that are about to come next. It’s gross, probably fuelled by a lot of cheap alcohol and cigarettes, hence the name, and driven by nothing but pure hedonism, but I kind of like this unbridled toxicity, especially with horn lines like that. I will say that it barely tries anything new after that first drop, and I’d appreciate further detail in ArrDee’s lyrics, Hell, maybe a second verse or bridge? As is, at least I get the appeal.

#10 - “Slime You Out” - Drake featuring SZA

Produced by BNYX, Grant Lapointe, Noel Cadastre, 40, Drake and D10

When people say they have a guilty pleasure, usually it means that the song’s a little cheesy or dated, and as a result I don’t really like using the term because we love pop music as a concept on this show, we have no time to feel “guilt” over what we enjoy… except when it’s Drake, and Drake at his most unlikeable at that.Because again, I should not like this song at all. It’s a five-minute, hookless Drake track where he’s condescending to women in a sing-songy broken falsetto wherein the metaphors he uses include the Kid Choice Awards and how he has her “whipped and chained like American slaves”. The misogyny on Her Loss - and for most of Drake’s catalogue, for that matter - went mostly unchecked, however. In here, I feel like Drake is embarrassing in a way more obvious and effective than usual, and potentially even intentional. For one, this beat - whilst great - is stagnant and looming with the harrowing vocals that Drake feels slightly off the rhythm of, especially when the clippy drums come in reluctantly and Drake sounds practically like a child. In the second of Drake’s moaning verses, he sets the space for his “slime” SZA, only for her lyrics to sound like they’re making a fool of Drake entirely, making fun of his “real” persona despite his conduct with women, his lyrics about having sex with SZA - it may not be intentional but Drake fits all the categories of gross men she ends up describing, is all I’m saying. It’s not her best performance but when you’re in a singing competition and your opponent is Drake, you win by default unless you’re tone-deaf. Then Drake comes in for a monotone rap verse that is actually pretty great given his calendar-long wordplay and narrative that is remarkably focused, right before the reversed percussion comes in and sounds just about as uninterested and insignificant as that guy was to SZA. So, yeah, for this first real single off of the perpetually delayed FOR ALL THE DOGS, I actually like it quite a bit. Hopefully there’s more of where that came from.

#8 - “greedy” - Tate McRae

Produced by Ryan Tedder and Jasper Harris

This is the big debut? This one? Really? To be fair, it has the Timbaland-esque percussion that people are nostalgic for, which Genius says is directly from “Promiscuous” (peaked at #3 in 2006) - it would make sense with the vocal melody. It’s vaguely catchy but not enough for me to recognise the fact that I’d actually listened to it before until midway through the chorus. It’s kind of whiny, in all honesty, with McRae’s grating vocal delivery. Otherwise, I really have got nothing to say about this one, but I do have a lot to say about apples. Specifically green apples, which I prefer to red apples. Aesthetically they may be less pleasing but the crunch of a ripe gren apple just feels tremendous. They don’t feel like they go as soft as easily as red apples either, so you have something more permanent you can grab any time for a good amount of time and just dig your teeth into. They might be my favourite fruit, honestly, if we’re specifically talking green apples. If you include red apples, raspberries might have them beat but otherwise, yeah, I really love a good green apple.

Conclusion

You know what, this week was actually pretty good all things considered. Worst of the Week still has to come from somewhere though, and I think it’s pretty obvious that Sleepy Hallow gets it for “A N X I E T Y” featuring Doechii, whilst “On My Love” by Zara Larsson and David Guetta grabs the Dishonourable Mention. There’s definitely more competition for the best but Mitski takes it here for “My Love Mine All Mine”, though running in very close was “PARK CHINOIS” by K-Trap and Headie One with the Honourable Mention. Hopefully, we’ll see more of that level of quality when they, alongside new albums from Doja Cat and Kylie Minogue, inevitably impact the charts next week. Should be a fun one. For now, thank you for reading, and I’ll see you then!

#uk singles chart #song review #drake #sza #tate mcrae #chase & status #hedex #arrdee #david guetta #zara larsson #mitski

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