1. Usher f/ Ella Mai - "Don't Waste My Time"
Usher's music since Confessions has been good and/or successful more often than not, but it's hard to come down from a peak that high without people saying you fell off. So it's a bit predictable that Usher is prepping an album called Confessions 2 and just reunited with Lil Jon and Ludacris for a single. But the single that preceded that with Ella Mai feels a lot breezier and effortless and unburdened by pressure to evoke or equal his commercial heyday, their voices sound really good together. Here's the 2020 singles Spotify playlist that I update with new songs every month.

2. Justin Moore - "Why We Drink"
Late Nights And Longnecks was my favorite country album of 2019 in part because of its many drinking songs. And "Why We Drink" is a a niceas catchy and clever as anything from Toby Keith's 2000s streak of songs about beer, certainly a cut above the last half dozen generic hits about whiskey. Country radio has been surprisingly slow to embrace "Why We Drink" but it's finally gotten into the top 20 and I hope it continues to rise.

3. Neon Trees - "Used To Like"
I don't think most people liked Neon Trees' two big snappy new wavey hits from the early 2010s as much as I did, but those were great songs that have aged pretty well, and I always thought they disappeared from the mainstream far too quickly after the frontman came out of the closet and their 3rd album underperformed. A couple decent singles in 2015 and 2017 went nowhere, but "Used To Like" broke them out of their rut and got them back on alt-rock radio, with a chorus that feels appropriately meta for a band that people used to like. 

4. Charlie Wilson - "Forever Valentine"
Charlie Wilson released this Bruno Mars-penned single back in January and it's continued growing well past Valentine's Day to become one of the biggest hits of his solo career. I kinda wish Bruno wrote for other artists more often, because he's obviously skilled at studying and emulating the sounds of classic R&B artists, and he served a perfect Uncle Charlie track here with a steppers anthem and lots of space for oowee ad libs. I hope they do more stuff for his next album, that would the best possible look for him, not counting Kanye's empty promises to produce a Charlie album.

5. The Weeknd - "Blinding Lights"
Lots of artists release one single for pop radio and one for urban radio, and let them do a tortoise-and-hare race for the top of the charts. But The Weeknd is the only one who has done it for two separate album cycles and gotten both singles to #1 each time. In 2015, the pop crossover "Can't Feel My Face" got to #1 but the darker "The Hills" replaced it and stayed there for much longer. This time around, the Metro Boomin-produced "Heartless" raced to #1 for one week at the end of 2019, but "Blinding Lights," which was released the same week, very slowly rose to #1 over the next 3 months. I always prefer The Weeknd's slicker Top 40-oriented singles, so I'm happy that the "Take On Me"-style synth pop of "Blinding Lights" eventually got to #1 for a longer stay.

6. Volbeat f/ Neil Fallon - "Die To Live" 
Last year the Danish arena rock band Volbeat won me over with their brightest and catchiest single to date, "Last Day Under The Sun." And the follow-up single is almost as good, a cartoonishly heavy metal version of a Jerry Lee Lewis-style '50s rocker, with a guest appearance by Neil Fallon of Maryland's favorite cult hard rock band Clutch. 

7. Sam Smith - "To Die For" 
I like everything I've heard off the upcoming Sam Smith album, particularly this would-be title track, really think I'm gonna enjoy it more than their previous records. But they decided to push the album back because of the pandemic, and very understandably decided it wouldn't be good to release an album called To Die For at this moment in time. 

8. Trouble f/ Boosie Badazz - "Ain't My Fault" 
Boosie has been kind of been off of rap radio's radar since he got home from prison in 2014, the last song he had in rotation was an older song released around that time. So it's fun to hear him on a pretty good radio hit paying homage to a No Limit classic, he always had some of his best commercial moments on features anyway. And he tends to get so much more attention for saying stupid or gross things online than for his often good albums that it's good to see some of his actual music do well. 

9. Rapsody - "Afeni" 
I was never sure whether Rapsody's very deserved acclaim and Grammys recognition would translate to radio play, and this song didn't stand out to me as an obvious single when Eve was released last year. But it sounds good on the radio, that 2Pac sample works really well, particularly because they used an a cappella performance instead of the studio version of "Keep Ya Head Up" so it has this loose feel with lots of tape hiss, adds a great texture to the song. 

10. SZA & Justin Timberlake - "The Other Side" 
After the soundtrack to the first Trolls movie surprisingly gave Justin Timberlake his first #1 single in almost a decade, it was reasonable to think that the second movie's soundtrack could generate a hit too. But when SZA and Meek Mill both released songs with Timberlake in February that did nothing on the charts, it kinda feels like everybody involved vastly overestimated the public's interest in hearing these relatively young hip stars work with JT. "The Other Side" ain't a bad song, Justin and SZA's voices sound good over that glossy disco beat, but it definitely doesn't have that it factor to make the unexpected combination work. 

The Worst Single of the Month: Alicia Keys - "Underdog"
There's an Amazon ad campaign that features "Underdog," and every time I hear it the ad fools me into thinking I like the song by focusing on the only good part (that brief soaring "everybody rise up" bridge). But then I listen to the whole song again and it's this incredibly earnest dull song that only the combination of Alicia Keys and Ed Sheeran could produce.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 13, 2020 at 7:56 AM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.