It's been about 4 months since I did one of these Billboard reviews. Now that it's about to be Summer and the popular songs are finally changing I thought it would be nice to do a look at the top 10 songs in the country right now. Two songs are still surprisingly on the top 10 after 4 months and that's Teddy Swim's Lose Control and Benson Boone's Beautiful Things. I honestly haven't gone back to those two songs at all after reviewing them, even though I remember being more positive on them. Just not my cup of tea I guess, songs that are fine but not really something I like to listen to on repeat. So let's get into it and see if things are any better than they were back in February.
1. Post Malone and Morgan Wallen - "I Had Some Help"
Two artists I'm not the biggest fan of teamed up to make a big new single that hit #1 in the country. It's a match that makes sense as both artists have had big success on their own so why not collab and make a huge hit together. The song is more of a Morgan Wallen pop-country style song than what Post Malone usually puts out there. I'm annoyed to say I really like this song actually and I've listened to it a decent amount of times even before I started writing this. If you've read my previous posts then you know I'm not a Morgan Wallen fan at all, in fact, I think his music is pretty awful especially the last two albums he released. Even artists I'm not big on can make a great song though and this is certainly that. I think Post Malone takes all the annoying aspects of Wallen's music and focuses on his strengths for once, not his terrible lyrics and boring pop-country production. Instead, we get a fun song with good instrumentation that actually feels like it has some life behind it. If Wallen tried to stick to a sound like this, I think I might actually be more of a fan of his music. Somehow I doubt this will be his turning point, but I guess I can hope.
Grade: B+
2. Kendrick Lamar - "Not Like Us"
Seems like a lifetime ago that the Drake and Kendrick beef was happening and they were releasing multiple diss tracks against each other. Really, it's barely been a month since that happened. I'm not going to get into the whole story of the beef, but all you need to know if for whatever reason you didn't hear about it is that Drake was pretty much destroyed by this song and he wasn't able to make a good comeback to defend himself against this one. I think it's obvious when this song hit number one on the charts and is still hanging strong at number 2 a month later. Kendrick teamed up with DJ Mustard for the beat to this one and it worked so well. Making a diss track that's one of the catchiest songs of the year is pretty genius. It's pretty crazy the song of the summer might be the song that's calling Drake a pedo. I do feel the need to say that I don't know how true any of the things Kendrick calls out Drake for on this track, but if they are true it's pretty brutal and a strong KO punch in their diss track fight. I mean I've seen some creepy videos of Drake acting inappropriately towards younger fans, that was a while back so who knows if he kept that behavior up, but it didn't look good at the time. At the end of the day the song is catchy, hits hard lyrically, and did the job it set out to do. I will say that this beef did inspire Drake to release one of the best things he's done recently in "Family Matters" so that's a bonus.
Grade: B+
3. Tommy Richman - "MILLION DOLLAR BABY"
The recent trend of having song titles in all caps continues with MILLION DOLLAR BABY!!! Dumb trend aside, this one was actually interesting from an artist I had no idea existed a few minutes ago. I really like the beat most of all, but Tommy himself isn't too bad. Though it almost feels like the beat is drowning out most of Tommy's vocals because of how strong it is, or maybe it's just the production that made it feel like this. There's a lot to like here, so maybe I need to dive deeper into this new artist and see what else is on offer.
Grade: B
4. Shaboozey - "A Bar Song (Tipsy)"
The first two things that stand out are the awful artist name and the worst song title. The second thing that stands out is how boring this song is. "Everybody at the bar getting tipsy" I guess is a reference to the song "Tipsy" from like 2004. A more obvious reference to J-Kwon's "Tipsy" is him singing the actual verses from that song during the pre-chorus. It's... an interesting choice to reference a song that wasn't that great to begin with. I don't know, this song just doesn't do anything for me and it's references to an old 2004 hit are mildly funny at best and just make the song feel a bit lame.
Grade: D
5. Billie Eilish - "LUNCH"
Billie released her much-anticipated album "Hit Me Hard and Soft" last month to a ton of success. Personally, I think it's one of the best albums of the year and it's probably Billie's best album to date. The standout single here is "Lunch", while not my favorite of the album, it's still one of the best songs. To be fair every song on the album is one of the best songs. This one has a strong bass line, subtle guitars, and keys along with strong lyrics by Billie. The production on this album is about as close to perfect as you could get for a Billie Eilish project. Everything just works so well I literally have nothing bad to say about this... except the all caps song title again.
Grade: A+
6. Sabrina Carpenter - "Espresso"
Here is a strong contender for the song of the summer this year. I really like the city-pop vibes the music gives me, especially the bass line. It's very of the times to have a song that has a heavy bass carrying the song with the usual synth and light guitar elements thrown in. It's not groundbreaking in that regard, but man it's extremely catchy and short/sweet. I can't say I've ever been a huge of this artist, a lot of times it feels like she's just chasing the current trends of big artists... but if it means making more songs like this then I'm not going to complain about it. To be fair this is just the way pop music goes most of the time anyway, roll with the trends and take inspiration from the biggest artists.
Grade: A
9. Hozier - "Too Sweet"
To my disappointment, "Too Sweet" is not a reference to 90s wrestling. This is Hozier's second big hit after his first album's song "Take Me to Church" took the world by storm 10 years ago. Actually, "Too Sweet" ended up being his number-one hit here in the USA as his previous hit only got to the second spot. The track "Too Sweet" was released earlier this year on an EP of unreleased songs from his last album. Kind of funny that his biggest hit was from a song that wasn't even meant to be on his last album, but it's not the first time that's happened to an artist actually. "Too Sweet" has the signature Hozier songwriting and his soulful voice alongside some bluesy rock. It's a solid track, one worthy of being a hit and hopefully get more ears on this growing artist.
Grade: B+
10. Taylor Swift - "Fortnight" *Feat Post Malone
One of the stronger songs from Taylor's last album "The Tortured Poets Department". My opinions on that new album were all over the place really, I think it's one of her weaker albums in a while and I'm not sure it's really on Swift herself. It doesn't help the album that it's 2 hours long (if you listen to the full version), though I think I liked the second half of the album a lot more than the first 16 tracks. "Fortnight" sounds like a mix of the Midnights and Folklore style. It's a solid opening track with good lyrics and a nice relaxing dreampop sound. My only complaint is just Post Malone as a singer I've never been a big fan of and it maybe would've been better with a different artist. Small complaint, still an overall good song.
Grade: B-
To my surprise, almost every song I reviewed here got a positive score except one. It was a strong week for the top 10 with a lot of interesting music and some songs I will be listening to more of in the following weeks. Most of these songs I've heard before, to be honest, but I still really enjoyed listening to them for this and a nice bonus of hearing a new song I like in "MILLION DOLLAR BABY". Things are looking pretty good for pop music... hopefully it keeps heading in a good direction throughout the summer.
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