Our 2014 resurgence is a pile of doodoo. We've slacked too much. It's like 2007 all over again, except worse. Hopefully our interest in this thing will grow once again.
In the meantime, let's peep the Hot 100 real quick and give a rundown of the action...
http://www.billboard.com/charts/hot-100
We're surprisingly not offended by most of this week's US Top 10. Lots of "ok to meh" stuff.
The big winner is a song we heard on the radio about an hour ago, just before the DJ announced it was the #1 song in the country, which left us pretty surprised, It's called "All About That Bass," another one of those awkward cases assuming that no one minds hearing the word "booty" sung over and over. Its beachy/island atmosphere feels somewhat derivative of that late-2000s-UK-soul bullshit trend that was hot for a minute (Amy Winehouse, Adele, Duffy). It doesn't sound horrible yet, but then again we've only heard it twice.
This week's runner-up is Taylor Swift's "Shake It Off." It's definitely a better song than "Problem" and most of Ariana Grande's ultimately disappointing 2nd album from a few weeks ago. However, the low morale among Swift fans seems somewhat justified, as "Shake It Off" can barely hold a candle to Red's Trifecta of Dope: "Never Ever Ever Ever Ever Getting Back Together," "I Knew You Were Trouble" and "22" are practically Top Jams Of The Decade contenders at this point.
#3 is Nicki Minaj's "Anaconda," which we don't really understand at all. In fact, we have yet to fully grasp any of Nicki's 2014 singles. It's not offensively horrible - much like this week's #1 and #2 - but it's nowhere near the creativity or energy from her best radio hits.
#4 is "Bang Bang" from Jessie J, which we're not familiar with. After checking out 20 seconds of it on Youtube, we'd rather it stayed that way.
"Black Widow" from Iggy Azalea is next. This is kinda boring. We heard her other song "Fancy" about an hour ago and it's not as offensive as we've been led to believe, although neither of her hits are particularly great.
"Stay With Me" by Sam Smith. Wow, this is terrible. What's next...
"Rude" by a band called Magic! Oh yeah, this song. We've heard this. Do people actually like this? Nice chorus, not. Horrible. Next.
#8 is "Break Free" by Ariana Grande featuring Zedd. We're not really sure why people are losing their shit over this album. It's been nearly impossible to go 2 days without seeing the album art, not that we're complaining. Leave the complaints to /mu/, where someone recently bitched about p4k waiting until their Friday update to post the My Everything review, as if it deserved the Monday treatment. Perhaps we should give it another shot, but it's hard to remember much beyond soulless production tricks and Aguilera-style vocal gymnastics, with almost nothing in the "hooks" department. "Break Free" actually has one of the album's best hooks (if memory serves correctly), while "Problem" has about 4 of them, none of which sound good standing next to each other. It sounds like a very poor attempt to make one of those songs like "Bad Romance" with lots of good ideas all lined up in a row. But all the ideas are so bland and uninteresting and not fun.
#9 is Maroon 5. This is fucking awful. No one likes this.
And finally at #10 is Sia with "Chandelier." So bored. Shit chorus. This sucks.
Quickly moving down the list to see if anything else catches our attention...
We heard Charli XCX's #11 song a few times earlier tonight also, and we assumed it was Lorde. And so we're still unable to ID any of Lorde's songs.
#13 is that Jeremih "Rhythm is a Dancer" thing which we've heard like 9000 times in the past month.
Oh look in at #16 and #17, there's "Fancy" and "Problem," or as we like to call them "Bleh" and "Hluh."
Ed Sheeran has a song called "Don't" at #30 which a few folks have recommended throughout the summer, although we're not sure why.
"Dark Horse" is still hanging out around #32. This song feels so fucking old now. It seriously almost feels like it's been around as long as "Firework."
Oh shit, a song we might actually enjoy comes in this week at #33, "No Mediocre." Whoa, we had no idea this was T.I.!! There is hope.
"2 On" is #34, followed by the Drake song where he's like "rull quick," followed by "No Flex Zone" (but not the remix version). The mid-30s seems like the spot on the Hot 100 where all the cool kids hang out - "cool kids" meaning the stuff we recognize from Hot 97 spinning them 9,999 times a day.
What is 5 Seconds of Summer? We've seen this name showing up a lot. Whoa, this is worse than "Hey There Delilah." Got damn.
#42 is "Studio," probably our 2nd favorite song to chart so far.
#54 is Pitbull. This one is ok. We don't usually like his stuff at all, but this one surprisingly falls in the 6 to 7 out of 10 range.
We've heard this Childish Gambino song at #69 a lot recently but didn't know it was him.
"Love Never Felt so Good" is still hangin' around at #81. That's what we like to see.
"*** Flawless" is #87. Sure, why not.
WTF why are the TWO Usher songs all the way down in the 90s? Not that we're all up-the-ass with Usher, but these are both definitely in the higher tier, the best 10% of this entire chart. Sadly, "Good Kisser" - this week's #92 - only peaked at #65, while "She Came to Give it to You" - in this week at #99 - only reached #89. BOO. Maybe things will turn around for Ursh in the coming weeks.
And finally, this week's #91 is "24 Hours," probably our 2nd favorite of the recent string of hits from DJ Mustard. Boom.