Monthly Report: October 2020 Singles
1. AC/DC - "Shot In The Dark"
It was an odd, bittersweet experience last week, to hear about Eddie Van Halen's death and, presumably, the end of Van Halen, and then a day later get a new song from another hard rock institution that not long ago seemed like they'd never return. But AC/DC is back, with 3 longtime members that had left the band over the past decade, recording songs Angus Young co-wrote with his brother before Malcolm passed away. And while AC/DC has never been full of surprises, especially in recent decades, "Shot In The Dark" is a solid entry into their long line of anthems, with a classic clever/stupid chorus where the title refers to drinking from a shot glass in dim lighting. It might be my favorite AC/DC single since the last great one, 1993's "Big Gun," and kind of comes at a time when that familiarity is welcome. I've been playing a lot of AC/DC around the house lately too, my 5-year-old's favorite song is "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap." Here's the 2020 singles Spotify playlist I update every month.
2. Morgan Wallen - "7 Summers"
For years, countless hit rap songs have been previewed in little viral videos of the artist in the studio, performing or just vibing along with a snippet that fans obsessively listen to over and over until they get to hear the full song. And it's been interesting to see that dynamic migrate over to country music: Luke Combs previewed "Beautiful Crazy" on Facebook months before the studio version came out and became an enormous quadruple platinum hit. Morgan Thee Wallen posted a demo of the breezy, nostalgic "7 Summers" on Instagram in April, and the buzz for the song was so huge by the time it came out in August that it debuted in the top 10 of the Hot 100, basically the first non-Swift country song to do so in decades. Social media has been good and bad for Wallen lately, though -- after footage of him partying without a mask circulated on TikTok, he got dropped from performing on "Saturday Night Live" last week for not observing their Covid guidelines. Country radio, orderly and regimented as ever, seems intent on letting the also good "More Than My Hometown" have its turn as a hit before putting "7 Summers" into rotation, but that seems inevitable.
3. 24kGoldn f/ Iann Dior - "Mood"
Rap and pop punk/emo have been intermingling and influencing each other for a long time, but they've mostly stayed cordoned off in their respective radio formats, Fall Out Boy over here and Lil Uzi Vert over there. But this year it feels like they've fully collided: on alternative radio right now, All Time Low and Blackbear are #1, the single from Machine Gun Kelly's lousy rock album is #2, Juice WRLD's guitar-driven posthumous hit with Marshmello is in the top 10, and a little further down the chart is "Mood," the huge crossover blockbuster emo rap hit by two previously little known rappers from California and Texas, respectively. "Mood" is anachronistic in the sense that it's about a person who's in a mood, not a person who is a mood, but otherwise it feels like a very 2020 song that kind of encapsulates this very specific cultural moment. A lot of 24kGoldn's other top streaming songs are guitar-driven, so I'm curious if he's gonna remain an alt-rock radio staple after this song.
4. Megan Thee Stallion - "Girls In The Hood"
Megan has been on a great run these past 2 years, but one of the emerging trends of her career is that the songs that emerge as hits after she's released a project ("Big Ol' Freak," "Savage," "Cash Shit") tend to be much better than the songs released as singles from the jump ("Hot Girl Summer," "Sex Talk," "B.I.T.C.H."). And that seems to be turning around lately with "Girls In The Hood" and "Don't Stop," which are both great and feel like she just heard the beat and loved it and made a hot song, rather than like she was trying to make a single. "Boyz-n-the-Hood" is one of those '80s classics that really clashes with modern rap production values, I particularly thought the Jim Jones single that sampled it sounded awkward, but Scott Storch did an impressive job of situating the sample in something that sounds current, this and the Chloe x Halle single are really reviving his career.
5. Bastille f/ Graham Coxon - "What You Gonna Do???"
3 of the 4 members of Bastille play guitar, but most of their songs are pretty synth and bass-driven, and perhaps their most guitar-heavy single to date gets an assist from the guitarist from Blur. It's a brash little 2-minute blast, not quite as loud as "Song 2" but only 9 seconds longer. Bastille's other new song "Survivin" is really good, too, and sounds completely different.
6. Zedd f/ Jasmine Thompson - "Funny"
Zedd was all over my list of the top 100 pop singles of the 2010s, and I remain a sucker for his singles, especially the ones that follow the same sonic template as "Stay" and "The Middle," which this does.
7. DaBaby f/ Young Thug - "Blind"
Young Thug has quietly been everywhere this year, on one of the Travis Scott #1s, on the album with Chris Brown that had a big hit, and on Meg and DaBaby's current follow-ups to huge records. There's a vocal contingent on social media that has insisted lately that DaBaby's career is basically over, even during the 2 months "Rockstar" was at #1, and another kind of slick guitar loop track like"Blind" probably won't change anybody's mind about that, but it's a good song.
8. Ne-Yo f/ Jeremih - "U 2 Luv"
I enjoy almost everything that both Ne-Yo and Jeremih have ever put out, but I never really expected to hear them on a track together, and "Computer Love" and "Juicy Fruit" have been sampled so many times that it felt like R&B nostalgia overkill to have them both on a track. But "U 2 Luv" has really grown on me as it's quietly become Ne-Yo's biggest song on R&B radio in 8 years, and biggest solo single on R&B radio in 12 years.
9. City Girls - "Jobs"
I don't know what compelled JT and Yung Miami to compose a song in honor of the 2013 film Jobs, but they really captured the spirit of Ashton Kutcher's acclaimed portrayal of Apple founder Steve Jobs.
10. Marshmello & Demi Lovato - "OK Not To Be OK"
I like this song, but it's really puzzling to me that it doesn't have any writers in common with Khalid's "Better" despite a near identical keyboard line at the heart of both songs, and that little has been said about the similarity even in these litigious and plagiarism-obsessed times. Maybe it came from a creative commons loop pack or something.
The Worst Single of the Month: Ritt Momney - "Put Your Records On"
Most of the heretofore unknown artists that TikTok memes have launched onto the Hot 100 have had weird and terrible names, but a Mormon from Salt Lake City doing a Com Truise-style spoonerism of Mitt Romney's name really takes the cake. The Corinne Bailey Rae original is a perfectly nice song, and this version is wholly unnecessary, and it's just awkward listening to a pasty kid from Utah sing "gotta love that afro hairdo."
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