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deadcactuswalking · 5 years ago

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REVIEWING THE CHARTS 2020: 31/01

So, this is the first UK Top 40 after Brexit—we left the European Union the day of this chart’s release... and we’re clearly being punished for it already.

Top 10

Lewis Capaldi, Lewis, Lewis Capaldi. Somehow, due to a new music video, this bloody creature has got his second #1 with “Before You Go”, up four spaces to the top. This is France’s revenge, isn’t it? Sacrebleu.

Up two spaces however is “Blinding Lights” by the Weeknd, to the runner-up spot, which is never a bad thing.

At number-three, we have the slight one-spot drop for “The Box” by Roddy Ricch.

At number-four, unfortunately, there isn’t that big of a drop for “Godzilla” by Eminem featuring the late Juice WRLD, down three spaces from its #1 position last week. I guess sales are doing well enough to keep this at the top.

Down two spots is “Own It” by Stormzy featuring Ed Sheeran and Burna Boy at number-five.

At number-six, we have a slight one-space increase for “Don’t Start Now” by Dua Lipa.

“Life is Good” by Drake, then Future is down one position to number-seven.

Due to the Grammy’s performance, because, yes, they do affect the UK charts as well, probably because of 4Music’s pathetic coverage, as well as a long overdue video, “everything i wanted” by Billie Eilish is up three spaces back into the top 10 at number-eight.

“Someone You Loved” by Lewis Capaldi is up a spot to number-nine because of course it freaking is.

Finally, to round off the top 10, we’re seeing the end of the top 10 run for deteriorating TikTok meme “ROXANNE” by Arizona Zervas, down two to #10... just as it was starting to grow on me.

Climbers

Our singular climber this week is “bad guy” by Billie Eilish up six spots to #22. I’m as confused as you are.

Fallers

On the other hand, we have a handful of these due to a bigger story this week, probably the one that’ll occupy the most time of the three big chart stories here. So, outside of the top 10, “Ei8ht Mile” by DigDat featuring Aitch is down eight spaces to #17 off of the debut, “Ride It” by Regard featuring Jay Sean is also down eight to #29, “Circles” by Post Malone is down six to #31, and that’s not a lot, right? Well, no, but there are also the fallers from last week’s group of Eminem debuts, which unlike what happens with album bombs in the US, did not cause absolute chart chaos once dissipated, and instead just peacefully and rather slowly decreasing in chart points against the flood of the other album bomb. I’m of course talking about “Those Kinda Nights” featuring Ed Sheeran down 15 spaces to #27 and lead single “Darkness” crumbling down 20 spaces to #37.

Dropouts & Returning Entries

We have a couple dropouts here as well, but no returning entries. These are the songs that dropped off the face of the chart this week: “South of the Border” by Ed Sheeran featuring Camila Cabello and Cardi B out from #30, “Beautiful People” by Ed Sheeran featuring Khalid out from #32 (Not Sheeran’s greatest week), “Me & You Together Song” by the 1975 sadly out from #35 off of the debut – I thought this song would last, unlike “STILL DISAPPOINTED” by Stormzy out from #36, or even long-running hits like “HIGHEST IN THE ROOM” by Travis Scott and remixed by ROSALIA and Lil Baby out from #37, and finally, “Senorita” by Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello. Now, I figured I should mention some songs in the top 75 but not in the top 40 that we could see enter the chart in the coming weeks—I haven’t got a single one of these right yet (Well...), but regardless, here are the songs I picked. Not all of them are good, not all of them are bad. There is “Better Off Without You” by Becky Hill and Shift K3y at #42, “Suicidal” by YNW Melly at #44, “Say So” by Doja Cat at #45, “Power Over Me” by Dom Kennedy at #48, “Lonely” by Joel Corry at #61, “SUGAR” by BROCKHAMPTON at #62, “High Fashion” and “Ballin’”, both by Roddy Ricch and Mustard, at #63 and #64, “One Night” by MK at #66, and even the two new songs from M Huncho’s album that missed the Top 40: “Indulge” at #50 featuring D-Block Europe, and “Head Huncho” at #60 featuring Headie One... now for a bit of a different story that starts in the Summer of 1785.

BREXIT RUBBISH

German poet Friedrich Schiller published an ode in 1786 that he wrote the year prior. It was later interpolated by the legendary Ludwig van Beethoven in his 1984 Ninth Symphony. In 1972, quite ironically for a song composed by two Germans when Germany was still split into two (Although admittedly they were both born in western regions of Germany), Beethoven’s composition was adopted as the anthem for Europe as a whole, and the European Union. Does that sound familiar? In 2016, the most famous pig-adulterer in Britain commenced the Brexit vote, resulting in a slight majority to leave the EU. I don’t like getting too political on this show, so I won’t get into this in-depth, but all you need to know is that the Scottish party protested in Parliament in 2017 by singing this song, and that led to this two-party war: The Anti-Brexit and pro-EU song, “Ode to Joy”, the European anthem as performed by Dutchman André Rieu, and the pro-Brexit song, if you excuse my language, “17 Million Frick Offs”, a song by some right-wing comedian (Dominic Frisby) directed towards the 17 million people who proudly told the European Union, to, well, “frick off”, and praising them for doing so. Thankfully, the nation has spoken.

#30 – “Ode to Joy” – André Rieu and Johann Strauss Orchestra

Produced by André Rieu

Frisby’s song peaked at #43, meaning we only have to talk about the Dutch man here, and his first UK Top 40 hit, probably his only one. I would have preferred “Anarchy in the UK” personally, but I’ll accept this. I see how this works as a protest song too, as it’s a pretty triumphant composition, but really, I mean, what do you expect me to say about the European national (Continential?) anthem? Yeah, I think the Johann Strauss Orchestra guest verse kind of ruined the vibe for me on this one, but the beat slaps hard. I don’t like boring, patriotic squabble like this, and it’s not like Rieu does anything with it as this is rather trite, with some really gross mixing of the horns. In fact, the whole song is mixed pretty painfully. I appreciate the sentiment, though, guys, but this is pretty bad. Call me a Eurosceptic for not appreciating some Dutch dude’s rendition of a European historical motif, but really I’d say the same about “God Save the Queen” – and not the Sex Pistols song; that one’s awesome.

ALBUM BOMB: Big Conspiracy – J Hus

I haven’t listened to this album yet, simply because I haven’t had the time, but J Hus is a British rapper who released his first album since his release from prison, Big Conspiracy, on 24th January 2020, to immense critical acclaim and commercial success, debuting at #1 on the UK Albums Chart. These are the three biggest songs from it, and my thoughts on all of them.

#21 – “Repeat” – J Hus featuring Koffee

Produced by Jae5

Interestingly, all of these songs have features. Anyways, let’s get through these as quickly as possible, shall we? I mean, they will probably all sound the same. This was released the day before the album, and is J Hus’ tenth UK Top 10 hit, and Koffee’s first. Who is Koffee, you ask? She’s a Jamaican reggae artist who became the first woman to win the Best Reggae Album award at the most recent Grammy’s. I can see some of the reggae influence here as well, but it’s not actually that clear as it’s mostly a typical Afroswing song that J Hus would have made, with inorganic and pretty stiff drum patterns, and a non-existent atmosphere. Koffee puts way too much effort in, at least in comparison to Hus’ dire performance here, where he just literally mumbles somewhat off-beat for a couple bars and calls it a day, while Koffee is singing her heart out. It’s a really imbalanced ratio is what I’m saying. The strings towards the end are pretty cool but the final chorus is abrupt and overall, this song feels like a pointless meander for the sake of either filler or just landing Koffee a place on the album. I can’t hate it, because Koffee’s performance is great and the instrumental is tolerable, but for Hus, this is oddly flavourless.

#19 – “Big Conspiracy” – J Hus featuring iceé tgm

Produced by TSB

“Big Conspiracy” is the title track and the opening track on the album as well as J Hus’ 11th UK Top 40 hit, and Iceé tgm’s first – hell, she doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page and it’s seeming pretty likely that she debuted on J Hus’ album and she is in fact his sister. It’s pretty cool getting your family involved in the business. You know what else is pretty cool? This song; I like the guitar pick-up and the complimenting bassline, with some sweet vocal melodies and loops from iceé tgm, that seem to be scattered around the entire beat, which is an interesting idea. J Hus is still a tad lazier than usual here, with very little multi-tracking (Seems to be only one-take) or energy, but the chorus has some gorgeous harmonies, his rap verses are casual albeit memorable. I enjoy his (hopefully) sarcastic endorsement of Ronald Reagan in the first verse, and his point about underdogs rising in the second verse, which is a nice message. The bridge is pretty good, as it gives iceé tgm a bit of solo time, and she sounds decent but admittedly non-descript, and then there’s a smooth sax solo for seemingly no reason. Eh, I’m all for it. This is sweet, and it’s nice that an out-of-the-blue conscious rap song debuted in the top 20, but again, lacking a lot of the character I saw from the lead single.

#11 – “Play Play” – J Hus featuring Burna Boy

Produced by Jae5, Nana Rogues and Scribz Riley

Finally, also a pre-release single by about a day, is “Play Play”, J Hus’ 12th UK top 40 hit and Burna Boy’s fourth. We all know who Burna Boy is by now, although coincidentally Koffee happened to have covered Burna’s breakout hit “Ye” on the BBC Radio Live Lounge. I suppose that’s of note. I figured maybe the highest debuting single from the album would have that lively energy and bright comedy that I saw in “Must Be”, but no, there isn’t, which is exciting as that’s what I expected from this record, and the second single did try to confirm my suspicions. Much like “Repeat”, however, I feel this would easily be better if it were just a Burna Boy single, with his charming hook and cute steel-pans-based instrumental, but no, J Hus is here, and... did he forget how to rap? He sounds pretty awful here, with a dry flow that flubs rhymes and fits too many words into the meter, an uninteresting cadence and even awful mixing that makes him feel so distant from a song that should be warm and intimate. The reason I can’t dislike the song, however, is the concept, which both artists talk about in detail, especially Hus’ hilariously... bipolar verses, if that’s the best way to describe them. It seems to be about comparing women to guns, but also that women like him for his guns, and that he treats his gun like a woman? I don’t know, it’s a dumb concept that is messy in execution, but at least it’s unique. Pretty disappointed in these tracks, to be honest; maybe the deep cuts will be more to my fancy.

NEW ARRIVALS

#40 – “Roses” – Saint Jhn

Produced by F a l l e n and remixed by Imanbek

Hey, a song I actually predicted would reach the UK Top 40, just last week! I’m pretty impressed with myself, but admittedly I guess if you throw 70 stones at a bird, at least one will kill it, just as the old proverb says. Anyways, this is Saint Jhn’s first ever UK Top 40 hit and was mostly propelled by the Imanbek EDM remix, which I’ll be listening to as well. The original song “Roses” was released on the Guyanese-American rapper’s SoundCloud in July 2016 and was included in his 2018 compilation album. He had written for other artists like Jidenna before but his solo work went mostly unnoticed until a producer called Imanbek released an unauthorised house remix. Imanbek is a Kazakh producer, and his remix was released through a Russian record label, so there is a surprising amount of cultures involved in making this one song; it’s kind of interesting. Also, we never see anyone on the UK Top 40 chart from freaking Kazakhstan! That’s insane! By the way, Kazakhstan’s flag is my personal favourite flag of the world. I love the colour combination. The original song is one I’m generally not pleased with, personally, with a dull trap beat and hi-hats that somehow rattle too much, and a murmuring, unintelligible Auto-Tune drawl from Saint Jhn that’s just unpleasant, and for a song called “Roses”, is kind of eerie, and overall, the song is just kind of boring and underwhelming, although I’ll admit the vocal melodies and ideas are there, and I especially like the synths in the later parts of the chorus. What this needed to push it over the edge was a 19-year-old guy from Kazakhstan and I’m not joking; I love this house version. The pitch-shifted, almost chipmunk, rendition of the vocals could be obnoxious to some people but to me it adds so much energy and quirk to an otherwise dry performance from Jhn, and the beat in this version has such an infectious synth bass, despite otherwise being a pretty standard house beat, with some vague horn inflections, traditional pop-house drum beat, and pretty cliché vocal samples, but the melodies I liked are still here, in fact the trap beat is partially kept in during the chorus, and touches like that are pretty nice. The slog of the verses have a lot more groove to them sped-up too. Yeah, I enjoy this, and it’s a massive improvement over the original. Big up Kazakhstan.

#32 – “Pee Pee” – M Huncho

Produced by ADP

Honestly, if the form of protest against Brexit is only demonstrated into making songs chart, I’d like to think that the children all around Britain have all decided to make it clear that Brexit is pee pee, and I couldn’t be more proud. This is M Huncho’s third UK Top 40 hit and from his album Huncholini the 1st... this guy is a joke, right? He even wears a mask to be anonymous, but it’s not for personal or even gang-related reasons. It’s just a cartoon mask that he says is supposed to accentuate the message of the music. What’s the message of this song then, Mr. Huncholini?

When I bust my nut, I go and take a pee pee

Inspiring. I’m tempted to just leave it at that, actually – can I? Yeah? Are you sure? Okay, well, that’s all, then.

Conclusion

Honestly, “Pee Pee” isn’t even that bad, and it’s not getting the Dishonourable Mention. That’s going to “Play Play” by J Hus featuring Burna Boy, with Worst of the Week going to that crap rendition of “Ode to Joy”. I don’t have much to praise here, but I might as well give Best of the Week to “Roses” by Saint Jhn, purely for the Imanbek remix, as if it were the original only, it could easily get the Dishonourable Mention. Honourable Mention goes to “Big Conspiracy” by J Hus featuring iceé tgm, just barely. Follow me on Twitter @cactusinthebank, I’ll see you next week!

REVIEWING THE CHARTS 2020

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