#but he's gonna if it means I can justify him singing that banger of a song

[the-flying-aquatos]

I’m about 37 minutes into RTC and I like to keep imagining the au in context of it, and nothing in the world is more hilarious than the mental images I receive because of this. Imagining Frazie as Jane Doe has only solidified my casting more. I feel like I’m bullying Norma by casting her as Ocean and its GREAT.

[tsuki-sennin]

Ei! Ei! Oh! A transcendent victory! The big 3-0! The greatest milestone thus far, with non-stop bangers since Episode 1! Avataro Sentai! Donbrothers! Our festival is yet to reach its climax! Everybody jump! Everybody dance and sing together!

Spoilers, I guess continues this Saturday! Yeah, I mean this one!

-Donbros Fantasia!

-Toradora Onitaijin!

-Oh shit, Auntie Yuriko has been kidnapped!

-...you remember her, right?

-Those darn Anoni!

-Obviously they're trying to save her from Chef Haruka's Beef Stroganoff.

-The Anoni finally exist! As like, characters!

-Gotta hunt the Juto.

-HOLY SHIT TARO BHJKL:LHK

-I guess the Anoni do hate being eaten. I mean, I would too.

-Imagine literally the only family you have being Auntie Yuriko.

-...now I'm curious, what might've happened to Haruka's parents? Or rather, how little connection do the team have to regular society outside of each other and their civilian workplaces?

-"I have a wife!"

-oh

-Oh, we're finally letting that house of cards collapse, huh?

-Guess he's a real gentleman.

-Kijino Miho.

-Ah, yep! Hanamura!

-Knew that guy was trouble.

-Sorry Tsuyoshi, but we've gotta hunt 'em all down.

-Sassing and making small talk with her own kidnappers? Like aunt, like niece, I suppose.

-That's a pretty fancy spread they've got.

-.

-YURIKO

-Y'know, I can respect the honesty.

-But like

-Yeah, your shitheel ex-boyfriend's mom is a furry.

-Oni hidden in the leaves.

-Sneak 100.

-OH NO

-Yep, that dude is gonna die an absolutely horrendous death.

-At the zone.

-OH MY GOD THAT BITCH JUST TORE INTO IT

-Didn't even pay for it!

-"Oh, don't mind me, just a little oni lady doing her weekend shopping~!"

-Ohhhh, here it comes, my one weakness! Extremely awkward public confrontations about infidelity!

-Help, I'm gonna die!

-Stop crying, you overgrown flamingo chick! She was talking to this dude for like five minutes!

-...still love you though.

-Sayama appears!

-Everybody's here!

-Hanamura's mom sent him to a farm upstate.

-Whole-ass sukiyaki plate.

-Meatless sukiyaki!

-Gotta let the dog out?

-Harucrawl.

-oh

-Tsuyoshi

-Sayama was just chomping the whole time, huh?

-Find Murasame.

"Your food, sir."

"GIMME"

-Shinichi's look of terror is honestly justified.

-YOU pay!

-Man, stiff 'em like that.

-And Kaito just accepts it.

-God, man.

-Spice Spice Spice

-Oh.

-Oh, Tsubasa you charmer.

-Dog Man meets Condor Woman.

-"So like... you wanna be friends? Kinda?"

-So the Anoni went to the Donbrothers as messengers, while Sononi chose to ask Tsubasa perfectly.

-Oh shit, we're all going to the townhouse.

-"Get spiced, idiot!"

-Oh shit, Miho's here.

-From the Don Clan.

-"Don't hurt the cats. I'll deal with it."

-Alright, that lines up with what Sonoi told us.

-I mean, you guys are kinda just going off of your instincts, but the Juto possessing Sayama's boy has been trying to murder Tsubasa this whole time, so...

-Oh, copy!

-Oh, so... Don Murasame's meant for killing, huh?

-Penguin?

-Oh shit, penguin.

-CRAAAAANE

-That's it, grab your aunt.

-"Murasame, it's shark time!"

-"The plan's over. No more beast hunting!"

-Oh, Jirou's taking care of the Spice Guy.

-Donbrothers really is a lot, huh?

-Good job, Jirou!

-Spice man's really gone up the Scoville!

-Transcendent wind!

-Ohhhhhhhh

-They know.

-Inu Brother focus episode.

-The dog unmasked.

-The confrontation we've all been dreading is near.

-And I'll be on the edge of my seat the whole time.

[fourteenfifteen]

hi everybody inspired by jaz @waveridden i’m gonna rank my top 20 taylor swift songs here it goes

20. our song (s/t): the vibes are incredible this song makes me go :D

19. lover (lover): this song is so romantic it makes my heart ache also i love how like loose the playing on it is it’s very nice

18. ‘tis the damn season (evermore): this song is really lovely the winter vibes are great and i really love the chorus to it. also i just think going home and having casual sex with an old friend is a fun thing to write about i’m nodding my head

17. safe and sound (single): apologies for the deep cut this song is just sick. love how lowkey it is love the vocal performance

16. mean (speak now): and a liar! and pathetic! AND ALONE IN LIFE AND MEAN

15. fearless (fearless): i’m extremely cheesy as a person and this song just hits that part of me i’m like you’re RIGHT taylor there IS something about the way the street looks when it’s just rained

14. death by a thousand cuts (lover): this song is so cinematic feeling and there’s so much cool imagery in it not even to mention the bridge which is an all time great ts bridge. part of why i love this song sm is def that it’s the favorite ts song of an irl friend and it makes me think abt being bitchy and talking abt lover with him lol good associations

13. gold rush (evermore): this song is weird in an amazing way it feels like one of the pretentious bullshit indie bands i listen to (that is to say it’s deeply my shit) the production on this song is extremely cool and different and the chorus is like. so catchy but also so good that it can be in my head all day and i won’t be sick of it

12. false god (lover): the vibes dude the vibes. i didn’t get this song until i saw the snl performance which made it click and now i think it’s amazing 

11. hoax (folklore): this song cuts deep for me like it’s so heavy obv but i get it so hard dude. i love the structure of it too i extremely dig the rhyming triplets

10. the lakes (folklore): it’s just so perfect dude. i want to watch wisteria grow right over my bare feet cause i haven’t moved in years

9. i knew you were trouble (red): ok this is probably partially nostalgia lol but also i really love this song even tho i hate dubstep drops in pop songs it just works so well here. love the verses too and how dense with words they are

8. style (1989): this song is so perfect that i can’t imagine how it came to be like how do u write this how do u make this glass box of a thing and how was there a time when it didn’t exist. we never go out of style dude

7. call it what you want (reputation): rep is my favorite ts album and ciwyw sums up everything i love about it it’s the vibes but it’s also that it’s all about the redeeming power of love and about being true to yourself and not worrying about what people think of u like. yeah. also this song just makes my heart hurt

6. state of grace (red): an absolutely killer album opener with some of her best lyrics. i love the drums and how the whole song seems to pulse and i love when it all falls away for the bridge (which is so good that i could just copy paste the lyrics to that as my justification) in summary this is the golden age of something good and right and real

5. so it goes (reputation): this one i struggle to justify idk that i think it’s a Great song but i do think it fucking slaps the drop into the chorus is soooo good and i physically can’t listen to it without singing along. it just sparks joy

4. cardigan (folklore): the writing on this one dude. every line is just so great and the production is so pretty getting to be in youtube chat when the song premiered was one of the highlights of 2020 for me i just immediately fell in love with it

3. peace (folklore): half of my love for this song is relating to it as a super cheesy romantic mentally ill person in terms of like wanting t love people and be loved while knowing that you’re a difficult person to care about and half of it is being absolutely head over heels for the production. i’m a huge fan fan of aaron dessner and the national and this song is just the most dessner-y in a great way it makes me insane

2. cruel summer (lover): an unparalleled banger. i will go to my grave never knowing why it wasn’t a single. annie “st vincent” clark is the most powerful person alive. i love you ain’t that the worst thing you ever heard (HE LOOKS UP GRINNING LIKE A DEVIL)

1. blank space (1989): so good dude so good. what is there even to say dude it’s blank space

thank u for joining me for the swiftieism hour much love

[johannesviii]

Top 10 Personal Favorite Hit Songs from 2011

22 to 23 years old. Was working in Paris and all the hours of train were exhausting. Listened to a LOT of music for that reason. It was an average year, but the songs that were good were excellent. Anything from this top 5 could have topped a list for a more mediocre year.

Disclaimers:

Keep in mind I’m using both the year-end top 100 lists from the US and from France while making these top 10 things. There’s songs in English that charted in my country way higher than they did in their home countries, or even earlier or later, so that might get surprising at times.

Of course there will be stuff in French. We suck. I know. It’s my list. Deal with it.

My musical tastes have always been terrible and I’m not a critic, just a listener and an idiot.

I have sound to color synesthesia which justifies nothing but might explain why I have trouble describing some songs in other terms than visual ones.

Finished my job training in June and worked full time. I kinda miss the campus. It was in the middle of nowhere and we had to steal wifi but we had some great parties there. Made friends, lost friends. And when I wasn’t there, I had my own appartment! My s.o and I put posters everywhere immediately, haha. We also had our first car which was basically a wreck but it lasted way longer than it had any right to.

Some fantastic albums dropped that year, like Ceremonials (Florence & The Machine), Modern Ruin (Covenant), All Things Bright And Beautiful (Owl City) and Imaginaerum (Nightwish). But the album that ruled the entire year for me was Mylo Xyloto (Coldplay). It’s my favorite Coldplay album. Hurts Like Heaven? Charlie Brown? Don’t Let It Break Your Heart? And especially Every Teardrop Is a Waterfall, which, no joke, is one of my favorite songs of all time? Incredible. Excellent. Amazing. The fact that the mediocre Paradise and the good but not great Princess of China were the biggest hits from it continues to baffle me. Really guys? But yeah. Album of the year to me.

So... some more unelligible songs, now. There’s the unexpectedly very, very good Lonely Lisa by Mylène Farmer, which would have ended somewhere in the middle of the list, but, way more tragic, there’s Alligator Sky by Owl City ft Shawn Chrystopher which has to be one of the most underrated songs of the 2010s. The key change is so visually fantastic that, no joke, it made me cry the first time I heard it. Chills every single time. Why wasn’t this a bigger hit. What happened. It’s so unfair. I’m not even sure it would have been my #1, but easily top 3.

As usual, here’s some honorable mentions.

Party Rock Anthem (LMFAO) - Badly written but still catchy.

You Make Me Feel (Cobra Starship) - Nice but not as good as Good Girls Go Bad.

Nightcall (Kavinsky) - This is the only song I kinda disliked on Kavinsky’s album, so of course it was a single. Of f█cking course.

Mr Saxobeat (Alexandra Stan) - A bit too repetitive, but nice.

S&M (Rihanna) - Clearly in the “so bad it’s good” category.

F█ck You (CeeLo Green) - Really fun but kinda killed by the overplay.

Black & Yellow (Wiz Khalifa) - Kept getting stuck in my head.

What the Hell (Avril Lavigne) - This felt like a brief return to form and it was pretty good.

Dynamite (Taio Cruz) - Who else misses this guy? Because I kinda do.

Judas (Lady Gaga) - I’d like to introduce you to this wonderful mashup. You’ll thank me later.

Last Friday Night (Katy Perry) - This has no rights being this catchy.

Paradise (Coldplay) - The very last cut from the list. It baffles me that this was the biggest hit out of Mylo Xyloto even though it might just be the worst song on it. Still nice to hear it from time to time, though.

Here comes the actual list.

10 - Jeanne (Laurent Voulzy)

US: Not on the list / FR: #99

Well that’s a mildly embarrassing pick on top of being barely elligible. This is a song about a guy falling in love with Joan of Arc after he sees her in a dream, centuries after her death. Some sentences are really strangely written, in an old fashioned way, and it gives the general impression of a young 19th century nerd falling in love with a picture in a History book even though it’s a 21st century song sung by a 60 y-o dude so this feels really damn weird to say the least, but it’s so pleasant to listen to it’s hard to say anything too negative or mean about it.

9 - More (Usher)

US: #61 / FR: #91

I know I sound like a broken record or an old idiot but where has fun music gone. Bring this kind of stuff back, please. We know things are terrible in the world, music doesn’t need to make us feel even more miserable. Please. We need more stuff like More.

8 - Rolling In The Deep (Adele)

US: #1 / FR: #2

Is there anything I could say at this point that hasn’t been said by everyone already? Uh. Well, maybe I can say that the only reason it wasn’t #1 in France was because the #1 spot was another Adele song, hahaha.

What else? Uh, well usually I don’t like slow emotional music which is why I never listened to a lot of Adele, but Rolling in the Deep has energy and anger, and that’s everything I want from sad songs, so I’ll take it.

7 - Somebody That I Used To Know (Gotye ft Kimbra)

US: Not on the list (obviously, it was #1 the next year) / FR: #4

That song took nearly an entire year to grow on me, but I’m glad it did. Like the previous one, I don’t think there’s anything new I could say about that one.

6 - Pumped Up Kicks (Foster the People)

US: #13 / FR: #44

This should be more offensive and disturbing than it actually is, even in a country with extremely strict regulations on firearms where school shootings are basically unheard of. I think it’s because the song sounds pleasant and mellow instead of threatening? I guess? Maybe? I don’t know. I’m kinda glad it didn’t come out when I was 15, though.

5 - Levels (Avicii)

US: Not on the list / FR: #63

Let us take a moment to appreciate all the bangers and absolutely wonderful songs Avicii created or contributed to create in his way too brief stay on Earth, and deeply regret his untimely departure. We already miss you dude.

4 - All Of The Lights (Kanye West ft Rihanna)

US: #59 / FR: Not on the list

Behold, the only Kanye West song I ever loved or even liked. But what a song. And what a fitting title. This song is full of flashes of light and that music video is extremely fitting and a joy to watch because it kinda looks like the song itself, down to its very colors. Just fantastic. What is that guy even doing nowadays instead of making more stuff like this. Why.

3 - We Found Love (Rihanna)

US: #69 / FR: #9

So many fantastic songs with fantastic beats and/or dance/electronic tracks at the top of this list. Rihanna is good in nearly every genre she has tried to fit in so far but obviously, as someone who kept putting eurodance track after eurodance track at the top of my 90s lists, you guessed it, my favorite songs from her are the ones where she’s basically a dance diva ala Corona project. Just great stuff all around. This is still on my mp3 player to this day.

2 - Edge of Glory (Lady Gaga)

US: #29 / FR: Not on the list

There it is, my favorite Lady Gaga song, in all its glory (HA). A joy to sing along to, a joy to headbang to, a joy to listen to it while walking, driving, painting. Makes you want to dance even if you don’t know how to dance. Not sure why this wasn’t the first single of the album, but who cares.

I put this at the top of the list at first, and then I was like oh wait, I need to check the French charts first to make sure that- OHMYGODOHMYGOD

1 - Elle Me Dit (Mika)

US: Not on the list / FR: #7

The guy I called the “new king of pop” back when I made my 2007 top ten list finally claims a top spot on one of my lists, and that feels so good.

So... Mika made a song in French. A few of them, in fact. And at first I was like “why would you do this. Your songs in English are so great, dude.” But then I heard that one when it dropped in July 2011 and I was like NEVERMIND. FORGET I SAID ANYTHING. THIS SOUNDS FANTASTIC. CARRY ON.

But it gets better. See, the song is about (and I’m quoting him there) “all the horrific things a mother can say to her son to get him to get out of her house”. Now is a good time to remind you that when it dropped, I had been out of my parents' appartment for good (and basically out of the range of my mother’s verbal abuse) for just about a year, and that entire song sounded like a double middle finger specifically targeting my mother, and, no joke, I burst out laughing the first time I heard the song.

Elle me dit (She tells me) Ne t'enfermes pas dans ta chambre (Don’t stay locked in your room) Vas-y, secoue-toi et danse (Go, get up and dance) Dis-moi c'est quoi ton problème (Tell me what is your problem) Elle me dit (She tells me) Qu'est-ce que t'as pas l'air coincé? (Why do you look so depraved?) T'es défoncé ou t'es gay (Are you high or are you gay) Tu finiras comme ton frère (You’ll end up like your brother) (...) Elle me dit (She tells me) Pourquoi tu te plains tout le temps? (Why are you always complaining?) On dirait que t'as 8 ans (It’s like you’re 8 years old) C'est pas comme ça que tu vas plaire (Nobody’s gonna love you if you’re like that) Elle me dit (She tells me) Un jour je ne serai plus là (One day I won’t be here anymore) Mais c'est quand elle me dit ça (But that’s when she tells me that) Qu'elle me dit un truc que j'aime (That she says something I like)

Catharsis is delicious, especially when it’s sung by someone as lovely as Mika. Most useful song of 2011 to me, I swear. Way too relatable.

Next up: the first of THREE top 12s in a row because Quality(tm)

[theworstbob]

yellin’ at songs: june, week one

the songs that debuted on the 6.3.2017 and 6.2.2007 editions of the billboard hot 100 discussed herein with an appropriate enthusiasm

6.2.2007

33) "Do You Know? (The Ping Pong Song)/Dimelo," Enrique Iglesias

Maybe my earbuds just suck, but the ping-pong ball was disappointingly low in the mix. I needed that ping-pong ball to be the only instrumentation here. Like, the standard Enrique Iglesias drama, but instead of All The Producing, it's just a cascade of ping-pong balls, bouncing arrythmically as our boy has emotions. Like, if ypu're gonna be a bad song, don't play it safe with the novelty noises. Own that ping-pong shit. Throw in some ping-pong metaphors, give shout-outs to the best ping-pong players in the world. You can't just call your song "The Ping-Pong Song" and expect to get away with it, you gotta earn that shit.

91) "Bubbly," Colbie Callait

Comfort food is an important part of a balanced diet. You want to be healthy all the time, but part of being healthy, for me at least, involves keeping a thing of Ben & Jerry's in my freezer. I KNOW I'm gonna need that ice cream at some point, y'know? This weekend, when my computer stopped accessing the Internet, I said nuts to the world, I put some Mario streams on my phone, and when I got bored of those, my DVD player figured out a way to play Beauty & the Beast on a loop without me telling it to, so I could just turn my TV on. Critical thought is important, especially as we slide further into an authoritarian society, but sometimes, you gotta say 'fuck it' and accept a nice thing as a nice thing. "Bubbly" is that nice thing. It's barely anything, but it's nice what it barely is.

93) "I Need You," Tim McGraw & Faith Hill

This is "Whiskey Lullaby" for beginners (yes bob that is a sad country duet also) yes thank you I’m a good at critic-sizing, but can we take a moment to appreciate that TIm McGraw & Faith Hill have duets that charted in 1997, 2007, and 2017? Think of all the loves we've lost. Will Arnett and Amy Poehler. Rhea Pearlman and Danny DeVito. Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens. And all throughout, Tim McGraw and Faith Hill remain a constant. Like, it hurt when Rhea and Danny broke up because they were perfect, but if I'm being honest, Tim McGraw and Faith Hill is the couple I need to stay together forever. I honestly don't know if I could ever let myself fall in love if I knew Tim McGraw and Faith Hill ever fell out of love. I need them to make an "I Need You" every year for the rest of my life. I don't need to hear it? But I need them to make it.

96) "The Great Escape," Boys Like Girls

In 2007 we let pop bands with heteronomrative names make hit songs. Anyway, the song, it's bad. It's like a Yellowcard song by people whose sense of music history only goes as far back as Yellowcard. Honestly, this might be the worst song of 2007. There's been a lot of rap tracks trying to start dance crazes, by dancing is an inextricable part of hip-hop, the genre is nothing without the occasional "Chicken Noodle Soup," y'know? And KaraDioGuardi is trash, but she has noble aspirations: she is trying to infuse pop starlets with attitude, and while she fails horribly, there's at least noble aspirations. This song stands for nothing. It's riding the coattails of the mid-aughts emo wave, a trend we were making fun of AS IT WAS HAPPENING, nothing about it is original or spun in an interesting way or even delivered convincingly, it's just a shitty song with a chorus that would be rousing if any of these dudes had something like charisma behind which a crowd might rally, it's, it's nothing! It's less of a thing than Joe, and Joe was just a dude named Joe! I hate this song and I hate that I'm going to make myself listen to another Boys Like Girls song.

97) "Bleed it Out," Linkin Park 99) "Given Up," Linkin Park

These were almost good songs! Linkin Park is much better at being a rock band than they are emotional balladeers, and they have something going with both of these songs, like those hand-claps really make you feel like Linkin Park is about to hit you with some hot rock sing-a-long action, and then... dude just kinda screams about how much pain he feels? OK, that's not fair to "Bleed it Out," "Bleed it Out" is legit hot, that's one of the rare times that the rapper in Linkin Park is absolutely on his game. He's not a great rapper, but dude knows how to blend in with a great song. And Screams McGee (his name is Chester Bennington, you know I know who he is) can be a compelling vocalist! He does a few subtle things in "Given Up" that make him sound legitimately damaged and frustrated before the song devolves into him screaming "put me out of my misery!" Maybe I just needed this to be good just so I wasn't too bummed out after enduring "The Great Escape," but y'know what, Linkin Park? Not that shitty. Still pretty shitty, but there's enough here that I like that I’m not gonna call it an utter angstfest.

should i still publish top 20s if there are no changes. is there any instructive value to the top 20 even if things did change. 20) "Movin' On," by Elliott Yamin (3.17.2007) 19) "U + Ur Hand," by P!nk (1.13.2007) 18) "Doe Boy Fresh," by Three 6 Mafia ft./Chamillionaire (1.20.2007) 17) "Get Me Bodied," by Beyonce (5.26.2007) 16) "I Don't Wanna Stop," by Ozzy Osbourne (5.26.2007) 15) "Stolen," by Dashboard Confessional (4.21.2007) 14) "Beautiful Liar," by Beyonce & Shakira (3.31.2007) 13) "Cupid's Chokehold," by Gym Class Heroes ft./Patrick Stump (1.13.2007) 12) "The River," by Good Charlotte ft./M. Shadows & Synyster Gates (2.10.2007) 11) "Say OK," by Vanessa Hudgens (2.17.2007) 10) "Alyssa Lies," by Jason Michael Carroll (1.13.2007) 9) "Never Again," by Kelly Clarkson (5.12.2007) 8) "Get Buck," by Young Buck (4.14.2007) 7) "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going," by Jennifer Hudson (1.13.2007) 6) "Thnks fr th Mmrs," by Fall Out Boy (4.28.2007) 5) "Candyman," by Christina Aguilera (1.13.2007) 4) "Because of You," by Ne-Yo (3.17.2007) 3) "Umbrella," by Rihanna ft./Jay-Z (4.28.2007) 2) "Dashboard," by Modest Mouse (2.17.2007) 1) "The Story," by Brandi Carlile (4.28.2007) alright, 2017. the bar has been set. can you produce one song better than “bubbly?” i see you’re giving me another imagine dragons banger. i’m not confident in your ability to get this w.

6.3.2017

62) "Rollin," by Calvin Harris ft./Future & Khalid

I appreciate the work Calvin Harris has done this spring to get our most morose pop artists to get funky. I don't really remember Khalid, but I do remember not feeling "Location," and he was much better with a song that felt like something, and I don't think I can name a Future verse delivered with higher energy than this. (There's so many, though. I might well be forgetting like seven Future songs.) I'm not here to call it great, it might end up fading from memory completely like "Heatstroke" did (I liked it, right? It's #20 before I dip into the rest of the debuts, but I recall liking it), but, y'know, funky. Calvin Harris is like the only pop megastar insisting that we boogie, and however disposable his music ends up being, his mission is one I can get behind.

80) "Bad Liar," by Selena Gomez

"This is a pretty dope baseline!" Bob thought on his way to Wikipedia, where he was informed this is a Julia Michaels joint sampling Talking Heads. This is great. Like, David Byrne had to think this was good in order for it to be made, I am not quite sure what I come to this space to do, but I know it's not to disagree with David Byrne.

92) "Whatever it Takes," by Imagine Dragons

this is the same song as "thunder" was the same song as "believer." like they made three songs about how awesome it is to be famous, except this song is about how imagine dragons will be imagining dragons so hard to maintain the level of fame which they have attained, because: being famous: is good. no entity has wasted more of my time this year than imagine dragons. and i had to listen to an entire drake album! i mean this! how many more of these songs do i have to listen to? how many of these songs do they have LEFT?

93) "Felices Los 4," by Maluma

If the rousing success of "Despacito" means we're getting more Latin pop on the charts, I am absolutely down. And if a new Latin pop explosion means we get more songs about polyamory, as the basic English translation I have found leads me to believe this is, I am SO DOWN. This is a chipper and fun song about saying "The more the merrier!" when your girl finds a new boy. It's the epitome of a chilled-out groove. "It doesn't matter what they'll say, we like it like this." DAMN SKIPPY. Maluma will not be kink-shamed. I like what I'm 90% sure this song is. Give me more songs about people on different areas on the ever-expanding spectrum of human sexuality. I expect an asexuality anthem by the time we're through, 2017.

95) "No Promises," by Cheat Codes ft./Demi Lovato

Who are Cheat Codes? Like, legit, if I'm gonna complain about the slop of dudes churned out by Nashville, I should also call out the endless parade of dudes at soundboards constructing their tool-assisted pop songs. Does Cheat Codes have any artistic identity? Am I supposed to have left this song having learned something new about the world, or at least heard familiar noises used in a new and fun way? Like, "Bad Liar" wasn't an earth-shatteringly epic statement of purpose, but it used the "Psycho Killer" bassline in modern setting, and that made me want to see who made it. I can't tell you who Cheat Codes are from their music. I don't get the feeling they got into music as an avenue of self-expression, I think the goal is to make formless, unidentifiable dance noises, and that's intensely disappointing. (Demi Lovato's here, too. It's not her fault this song is bad. She tries her darndest.) I can't say what Cheat Codes bring to the table to justify listening to Cheat Codes instead of anything else that's ever existed.

98) "Ghost in This House," as performed by Lauren Duski

So next week is a big week for American Idol, five Idol songs on the chart, and I'm sure the The Voice finale is gonna put more than one song on the chart, so that’ll be a fun comparison. Big couple weeks coming up for reality singing competitions! This is a nice performance of a country song with which I'm unfamiliar, being sung by an attractive blonde with something like a unique voice. It's nothing I'd ever vote for, but I completely get how it ended up in my list of things to do today. Finally: a white country singer is going to win a reality singing competition. Been, what, three months since the last time? TOO LONG.

100) "Me Enamore," by Shakira

It would have been so easy for this to feel like seven dudes in suits screaming FUCK LATIN POP'S BACK WE HAVE FIVE MINUTES TO WRITE A TRACK FOR SHAKIRA, but man, Shakira's just too reliable a pop music entity to let it go down like that. It's basic, simple stuff, "me en-na-na-more" is nowhere near the thundering statement of purpose that is "des... pa... ci-to," but y'all need something basic done right, you call in a pro, and Shakira's a consummate professional. It's hard to tell if I'm reacting to the actual performance or to the band name, but as far as I can sort out, Shakira brings a joy and personality to a song that might've been listless in less capable hands.

Hey! New blood in this Top 20! 20) "You Look Good," by Lady Antebellum (4.22) 19) "The Heart Part 4," by Kendrick Lamar (4.15) 18) "Selfish," by Future ft./Rihanna (3.18) 17) "Slide," by Calvin Harris ft./Frank Ocean & Migos (3.18) 16) "Felices los 4," by Maluma (6.3) 15) "Now & Later," by Sage the Gemini (2.25) 14) "Bad Liar," by Selena Gomez (6.3) 13) "DNA." by Kendrick Lamar (5.6) 12) "It Ain't Me," by Kygo x Selena Gomez (3.4) 11) "Craving You," by Thomas Rhett ft./Maren Morris (4.22) 10) "That's What I Like," by Bruno Mars (3.4) 9) "Chanel," by Frank Ocean ft./A$AP Rocky (4.1) 8) "Either Way," by Chris Stapleton (5.27) 7) "Run Up," by Major Lazer ft./PARTYNEXTDOOR & Nicki Minaj (2.18) 6) "Green Light," by Lorde (3.18) 5) "ELEMENT." by Kendrick Lamar (5.6) 4) "Despacito," by Luis Fonsi ft./Daddy Yankee (2.4) 3) "Issues," by Julia Michaels (2.11) 2) "iSpy," by KYLE ft./Lil Yachty (1.14) 1) "Hard Times," by Paramore (5.13) I underestimated you, 2017!

Who won the week?

2017! I don’t know what I’m supposed to say in this section so I’ma just bounce, great work today some of you, next week we’re gonna revist “Lip Gloss.”

2017: 6 2007: 4