1. Jeremih and Ty Dolla Sign - "The Light" 
I'm a way bigger fan of Jeremih than of Ty Dolla Sign, but there's a great logic in them hooking up for a duo project, since they're both often the glue that holds together other people's hits. Unfortunately, their album MihTy's announced release date last month came and went without any explanation, in the same space of a few weeks that Ty got arrested and  Jeremih was acrimoniously kicked off a tour with Teyana Taylor. So who knows what's going with them, but "The Light" is fantastic, and really balances their voices well, hopefully this record won't go missing for months and months like Late Nights: The Album. Here's the 2018 singles playlist I update every month. 

2. The Interrupters - "She's Kerosene" 
It's been a couple decades since ska punk was all the rage on alt-rock radio, so it was kind of refreshing and surprising to hear a song that sounded to me basically like Rancid with a female singer. And that description turned out to closer than I realized, because The Interrupters are on Hellcat Records and "She's Kerosene" is co-written and co-produced by Tim Armstrong. 

3. Daniel Caesar f/ H.E.R. - "Best Part"
One of my favorite kinds of R&B slow jams is the kind with elegant acoustic guitar and minimal percussion (I'm thinking, like, Tamia's "Officially Missing You" and Maxwell's "Whenever Wherever Whatever"). And "Best Part" really hits that sweet spot, with two of the artists who've been most responsible for kinda bringing quiet storm ballads back to R&B radio lately. "If life is a movie then you're the best part" is kind of a weak line, though, like everything has 'parts,' I feel like there could've been a more specific cinematic term in there to make the movie metaphor work. 

4. Khalid & Normani - "Love Lies" 
Khalid's first album was pretty successful, but I get the sense, given the nominations he was showered with at the Grammys and the dozens of features he's racked up in the past year, that the music industry kind of views him as a very important key to the young millennial demographic and that vague but fertile interzone between alt-R&B and top 40 pop. He's done records with rappers, EDM producers, rock bands, and seemingly every other major label female singer under 30, including Normani, probably the best vocalist out of Fifth Harmony. So I'm pleased that this song, released on a soundtrack 6 months ago, has just climbed into the top 10, more because it bodes well for Normani's career than that Khalid needs any help. 

5. Alessia Cara - "Growing Pains"
I kind of rolled my eyes when I heard this song, like this girl is 22 and still singing puberty carols. But the song really grew on me, Pop & Oak tracks sound so consistently great, even if the song doesn't really sound like a lead single and fell way short of the chart success of her first album's singles. I'm guessing they'll go back to the drawing board and release something different before the album to try to avoid a sophomore slump.

6. Pink - "Whatever You Want" 
"Whatever You Want" is kind of twinned in my mind with "Growing Pains" because they open with dialogue snippets I don't recognize from what sound like old movies from the 1950s. Even though Pink still sells album and tickets, it bums me out that she's kind of lost her grip on pop radio -- this, the 3rd single from Beautiful Trauma, missed the Hot 100 where the 3rd single from her last album went to #1. It's got a really lovely bittersweet melody, though, I've been really hooked on it lately. 

7. Twenty One Pilots - "Jumpsuit" 
Twenty One Pilots never struck me as a band that would feel the need to cater to rock radio after they became a huge crossover act, so I was a little surprised at how their first single was this kind of heavy track driven by a big bassline. I'm also kind of amused that one of the most popular bands in the world released a 2018 lead single that could pass for a Primus song.
 
8. Eric Church - "Desperate Man"
It's a well established pattern that big rock bands like Twenty One Pilots, and big acts in certain other genres, can get away with a less radio-friendly first single and then move onto the surefire hits, secure in the knowledge that their fanbase will appreciate the risk they took and still buy the album. And Eric Church is the very rare country artist who gets away with that, with almost alarming consistency. His last 3 albums all followed the same pattern: the first single missed the top 10 of the country airplay charts, and then the album yielded two or three top 10 hits. "Desperate Man," which is kind of a fun "Sympathy For The Devil" type track, peaked at #13 so it's right on schedule, and it's pretty safe to assume the album of the same will have bigger hits. 

9. Post Malone f/ Nicki Minaj - "Ball For Me"    
One thing that I've been preoccupied with in the last year or two is the quiet critical mass of white rappers we've reached, which you can often see all over the Hot 100 and pop radio but especially on the iTunes hip-hop charts. So I liked when Nicki Minaj posted a snide, totally justified caption on the iTunes hip-hop chart last year. It's tempting, then, to say she's a hypocrite to do a song with Post Malone after that, but "Ball For Me" is really good, maybe my favorite thing either of them have done this year. It's a shame it's kind of lingered in the lower tier of Post hits with the also great "Candy Paint" while (ugh) Beerbongs & Bentleys has enjoyed three ubiquitous top 5 hits. 

10. Jay Rock - "Win" 
"Win" has one of the worst radio edits in recent memory because every single explicit phrase in the chorus is replaced with a buzzy slang term like "curve" or "opps" or "lit" and together it all just sounds so forced and cheesy. Good song, though, it feels weird to have Kendrick just doing hypeman ad libs in the background of a song but it's really funny when he yells "mommy!" for some reason.

The Worst Single of the Month: Drake - "Nonstop"
Drake has multiple hits out at almost any given time, and I usually actively dislike half of them, but I'd rather avoid becoming a Big Ghost-style repetitive fountain of predictable Drake ridicule. But seriously, let's talk about "Nonstop," which epitomizes a trend of the streaming era: every track on a big album tends to peak high on the Hot 100 after its release, and inevitably the first track does well (or the first non-intro full song, in the case of "Nonstop") and gets some spins whether or not it would be considered a potential single under any other circumstances. "Nonstop" is now a top 10 radio record and I would like to go ahead and be hyperbolic and say it's one of the worst songs of his career. Even setting aside the weird muttering flow he does with the ad libs, it's chock full of lines that would each individually ordinarily be the worst line on the song: "bills so big I call 'em Williams," "like I went blind, dog, you gotta hand it to me," "they'll be mournin' you like 8am," this song is honestly such a turgid piece of shit it almost makes the more famously bad "I'm Upset" seem alright by comparison.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 14, 2018 at 12:39 AM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.