#It's an immense waste of space and a bit pretentious to have lots of books that nobody else will ever read

[deadcactuswalking]

REVIEWING THE CHARTS: 26th August 2018

There are many, and I mean many, new arrivals this week so let’s just get on with it, I’ll try to keep everything brief.

Top 10

“Shotgun” by George Ezra stays steady at the top, as does its runner-up.

Yep, “In My Feelings” by Drake featuring City Girls is a non-mover as it stays at number-two.

“Eastside” by benny blanco, Khalid and Halsey, on the other hand, is moving up a spot straight to number-three. I’m legitimately surprised at how quickly this is increasing, but I really doubt this is going anywhere higher than here.

Oh, and we have our first of two top 10 debuts this week, with “Promises” by Calvin Harris and Sam Smith entering the charts at number-four, which would be impressive if it weren’t Calvin Harris and Sam Smith, who do stuff like this all the time.

I am happy that Loud Luxury and brando’s “Body” is entering the top five here, as it ascends a spot to number-five. The song’s really growing on me.

“God is a woman” by Ariana Grande takes advantage of the Sweetener album release and increases by six spaces to number-six. Not complaining at all, I like this song.

“No Brainer”, meanwhile, by DJ Khaled featuring Justin Bieber, Quavo and Chance the Rapper, has fell hard, four spots to number-seven.

Oh, and you know how a lot of artists stylise their songs in different ways? Well, Ariana Grande did that with every track from Sweetener (except one or two exceptions) and yeah, especially with the exceptions, it looks so unprofessional and lazy. I bring this up because the next song is called “breathin” and it’s by Ariana Grande featuring ILYA, debuting at number-eight. Come on, guys, your song title looks like a text message. At least it’s not in the same route as Aphex Twin or Lil Yachty, and their messy tracklists.

“Girls Like You” by Maroon 5 featuring Cardi B has not moved at number-nine.

Neither has “Taste” by Tyga featuring Offset, still barely clenching on at number-ten.

Climbers

There’s one. Literally one song has climbed by any notable amount. Other than one song, the biggest we have outside of the top 10 is by three spaces, so, yeah, the 14-spot climber, and the only climber worth talking about, is “Don’t Leave Me Alone” by David Guetta featuring Anne-Marie, now at #23, which I’m not necessarily bothered about at all.

Fallers

Now here is where it’s at. Let’s talk about all the relatively notable fallers, sorted by genre.

Starting with pop, we have “Youngblood” down eight positions to #15, while “If You’re Over Me” by Years & Years is down four spots to #33 and “2002” by Anne-Marie is down five spaces to #37.

EDM really suffered this week, though, as Jonas Blue’s “Rise” featuring Jack & Jack has descended 12 spaces to #17, Tiesto and Dzeko’s “Jackie Chan” featuring Preme and Post Malone is down a whopping 16 spots to #24, while Calvin Harris and Dua Lipa’s “One Kiss” slogs down six spaces to #28, right next to “Ocean” by Martin Garrix featuring Khalid, down four to #29.

Hip-hop and R&B had tough drops as well, hell, you could argue, they struggled even more. “Don’t Matter to Me” by Drake featuring Michael Jackson jumps down nine spots to #27, as Drake’s other track “Nonstop” has stopped gaining any traction down four spots to #30, while ZieZie’s “Fine Girl” is down five to #35, as Nicki Minaj’s “Bed” featuring Ariana Grande absolutely collapses by a whopping 16 positions straight to #39, ironically a spot away from #40, which has its spot taken by “I Like It” by Cardi B featuring Bad Bunny and J Balvin, down nine spaces from last week.

Dropouts

Usually, when there are a lot of losers, there come a lot of songs dropping out of the charts as well, and it’s not any different this week, as “Better Now” by Post Malone is just forced out of the charts from #16, with “STARGAZING” by Travis Scott closely following from #27. “This is Me” by Keala Settle and The Greatest Showman Ensemble is also out from #39, joining another soundtrack single from Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, “When I Kissed the Teacher”, out from #40. The absolutely wretched “Barbie Dreams” by Nicki Minaj is out from #36, while “First Time” by M-22 featuring Medina is also pushed out from only #24. Wow, it was a massacre in terms of losers and drop-outs, probably due to the immense amount of new arrivals, despite a surprising lack of returning entries from the late Aretha Franklin, and any at all, for that matter.

The Ed Sheeran Update

Where’s Ed Sheeran, you ask? Well, “Perfect” hasn’t moved from #61 and “Shape of You” is down four spots to #80.

NEW ARRIVALS

Alright, I’ll try and keep all entries of a decent yet not extensive length, especially since there are freaking seven of these to talk about.

#36 – “In My Mind” – Dynoro and Gigi D’Agostino

So, from what I can gather, Dynoro is a mysterious UK producer who just recently made his breakthrough with this mash-up. Yeah, this is a remix, I suppose, but this is borderline mash-up as it not-so-subtly intertwines elements from both the 2012 track “In My Mind” by Ivan Gough, Feenixpawl and Georgi Kay and the hook of the song “L’amour toujours”, a song released in 2000 by Italian DJ Gigi D’Agostino, which was a smash hit in a lot of Europe, but didn’t chart here in the UK. Yeah, so they’re sampling two songs, one of which is a quite memorable and some may say nostalgic track in order to lazily find a way for people to remember their song so they can get a hit without much effort. All that aside, is the track good enough to redeem the shady business practices? No. Not really. As I said, it’s basically a mash-up so it’s hard to really judge the song on its own merits, especially as it’s just some generic house with a rather ugly bass-synth wobble and a mind-numbingly repetitive hook. Not feeling this one’s concept or execution, at all.

#31 – “Happier” – Marshmello and Bastille

Oh, hey, Bastille, doing another track with an EDM producer for no good reason! I do like these guys, though, they’ve made some damn good, catchy, fun indie pop and pop rock in the past, and I still return to some of their hits like “Good Grief” and “Pompeii” to this day. The collaboration they had with Craig David was... okay, but knowing Marshmello’s track record of being mostly utter garbage, I don’t exactly have high hopes, and after listening, I can’t blame myself. It has some pretty okay skittering percussion and some nice strings in the pre-chorus, but the drop is so weak, man. Bastille’s lead vocalist is not straining himself at all, but he’s not putting much effort in either, some of this just feels like talking over copy-and-pasted guitar strumming and a synth in the drop that sounds like it has better things to do than spending time with a hack like Marshmello. It probably does, to be perfectly honest. That last pre-chorus is pretty cool, though, because the members of Bastille actually get some good guitars in, and there is a bit more “oomph” to the production generally. That drop sucks so badly, though, God. The song ends with “I will go”, which is somewhat amusing, I suppose. Skip this.

#26 – “TOOTIMETOOTIMETOOTIME” – The 1975

Okay, first of all: what on Earth is that godawful song title and what the hell does it mean? Secondly, the 1975, what on God’s earth are you doing, and why?

It’s dancehall-ish pop. It’s tropical, vocal-sample-infected dance-pop with some Caribbean influences that are now typical of modern British popular music, with some awfully autotuned vocals from our lead singer, Matt Healy, here, who said just a few days or weeks prior, that no big rock band is doing anything unique or interesting right now, compared to what the 1975 is doing... you say, as you make one of the most predictable, trash-tier electro-pop songs I’ve ever heard, taking a page out of the Imagine Dragons’ book of separating yourself entirely from the rock scene. Healy’s band is one of the most popular rock bands at this point in time, so it’s expected for them to make some pop tunes, but given Healy’s pretentious lyrics in the last two tracks they’ve released, which I didn’t like as much I wanted to but at least appreciated for what they tried to do, as well as his recent statements, this song just seems rather hypocritical and (not like Healy would have changed this) borderline unlistenable and amateur. I can’t even say I expected much better.

#22 – “sweetener” – Ariana Grande featuring Pharrell

This is the first of two songs to debut from Ariana Grande’s newest, recently-released album Sweetener. Now, I haven’t listened to the album in full yet, but I am looking forward to as the singles seemed promising. I loved “no tears left to cry” and liked “God is a woman” and “the light is coming” a hell of a lot, so I’m excited to check out the record. The title track, however, does not really show any of the promise I saw in those singles. Jesus Christ, this is bad.

It starts with a pretty monotone piano melody while Grande sings pretty greatly as always, but then the percussion and bass kick in for a repetitive, kind of nonsensical hook, which is just pretty insufferable, while in the verses, Grande prefers to talk-sing over Pharrell’s goofy “sheesh!” ad-libs, which also repeat throughout the rest of this song, for some inexplicable reason. Yeah, I’m assuming Pharrell produced this, and I’m also assuming that whoever transcribed the Genius lyrics to this, who had to listen to this on full blast God knows how many times just to get the accurate transcription of those Pharrell ad-libs, because they seem to be subtly different each time and while I appreciate attention to detail, I hate when that detail goes into something as moronic and pointless as Pharrell ad-libs. This gets a “sheesh” from me.

#16 – “All I Am” – Jess Glynne

Oh, okay, more Jess Glynne, we needed that after the trainwreck that was “I’ll be There”. So, what specific parts of her potential will be wasted in this song? Actually, wasn’t this promoted by Spotify ads? It must be good then. Well, it’s not bad, but it’s not particularly interesting either. It’s just some desaturated piano and annoying yet only brief vocal samples backing some house-like rhythm and Jess Glynne’s as-pretty-much-always fantastic vocals, which are only really all that prominent in the catchy hook. The wobbly synth-bass that shows up throughout kind of feels somewhat out-of-place but it’s also barely noticeable outside of the verses, so, call me stumped. I have no opinion on this song whatever – the pros outweigh the cons but there are simply not enough of those pros to make it all that good. It’s okay. It’s not like I’d change the station but it’s not like I’d turn the volume up or anything.

#8 – “breathin” – Ariana Grande featuring ILYA

So, this is the ninth track from Sweetener, featuring production, instrumentation and uncredited background vocals from Ilya Salmanzadeh, or ILYA, and it not having Pharrell related to it at all should be good, right? Well, kinda? I love the vocals here, but I’m not surprised by that at all, instead I’m surprised by how fun this instrumental is for such a dramatic song about anxiety. There’s a barely noticeable bass supporting a pounding drum beat and some nice synth and piano melodies, as well as what I assume are pretty rapidly-clapped handclaps in the second verse, and the drop is pretty fun too, with Grande ad-libbing over what could either be some strings or vocal manipulation, it’s anyone’s guess, but you know, it sounds good enough, despite doing absolutely nothing for me. It’s listenable and I’m not going to say it isn’t a damn good attempt at an inspirational anthem, but I’m not really all that in the know about why this song was any special, out of all the songs on the tracklist. Maybe when I listen to the rest of the album, the reason will be is that the rest is pretty terrible, and knowing Pharrell and his attempts at producing modern pop music, that’s probably the reason, but I’ll see. For now, this is pretty okay, but I don’t see it growing on me in time as much as stuff like “Better Now” and “One Kiss” have.

#4 – “Promises” – Calvin Harris and Sam Smith

Now, part of me hoped this was going to be utter rubbish so I could ask Calvin Harris to “promise me no promises”, but even if it was, I don’t think it’d be all that worthy of any jokes being made out of it. There’s some nice UK Garage-influenced percussion that Sam Smith usually excels in, but those backing vocals are bloody awful and the laughing is obnoxious, and Sam doesn’t seem to be putting any effort in at all. It’s not even catchy, and the piano is nothing more than an additional instrument to add to what seems to be some kind of experimental minimalistic artsy masterpiece I just don’t get, I don’t know, I seriously don’t see the appeal or any reason I should write more than I already have. What is the point of this existing? I’m curious.

Conclusion

I don’t have much passion for this show in particular anymore, and it’s weeks like this which get me to that point. When the artists aren’t bothering whilst making the art, why should I bother analysing it? Anyway, since I kind of have to, Dishonourable Mention goes to The 1975 for “TOOTIMETOOTIMETOOTIME”, yep, that’s right, it’s not even getting Worst of the Week despite being one of the worst songs I’ve ever heard. The song that does its job as a pop song with the least care is “Promises”. Worst of the Week goes to Calvin Harris and Sam Smith for making a song that shouldn’t and probably doesn’t actually exist, yet here it is, and I don’t understand how this song even got in the top 100 other than star power. It’s not catchy, it’s not interesting and it’s barely even an accessible pop song, it’s just noise, with no real hook or anything that grabs me. Best of the Week goes to nothing and there’s nothing that is an Honourable Mention here, so why not tie Dishonourable Mention with Dynoro and Gigi D’Agostino for one of the laziest hit songs I’ve heard in a while, “In My Mind”, and introduce another category: “Sheesh of the Week”. The song that is just hilariously dumb and maybe even so bad it’s good gets Sheesh of the Week, and it’s pretty obvious that Pharrell and Ariana Grande get it this week for the category’s namesake, “breathin”. See ya next time!