Monthly Report: November 2021 Singles
1. Lil Nas X f/ Jack Harlow - "Industry Baby"
Of the three big Lil Nas X hits that have hit #1, I think "Industry Baby" is by far the best -- "Old Town Road" and "Call Me By Your Name" were catchy and audacious but I got my fill of them a lot quicker. And the Jack Harlow verse is definitely a big part of that, the first thing since "Whats Poppin" that has that same kind of breezy, assured confidence to it -- apparently Nicki Minaj was the first person approached to do a guest verse, but I think it turned out much better this way. It's also cool to hear Lil Nas do a banger that works on rap radio, where he quotes Waka Flocka and Harlow flips a Rowdy Rebel line, even if pop radio is playing it more. Kanye co-produced "Industry Baby," and it's actually the first song he's worked on that's topped the Hot 100 in over a decade, the last one was Katy Perry's "E.T." Here's the 2021 singles Spotify playlist I add songs to every month.
2. Halsey - "You Asked For This"
Unsurprisingly, Halsey's big risky album with Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross is doing slightly better on alternative radio with "You Asked For This" than on pop radio with "I Am Not A Woman, I'm A God." And this is really one of my favorite songs on the album, I'm glad they really tore up a couple of big guitar-driven tracks like this amidst the more moody textural stuff, I'd love to see her perform one of those songs with NIN at an awards show or something.
3. Carly Pearce f/ Ashley McBryde - "Never Wanted To Be That Girl"
29: Written In Stone is one of my favorite country albums of the year, and it has a great duet with the woman who made my favorite country album of last year. Pearce and McBryde co-wrote "Never Wanted To Be That Girl" with producer Shane McAnally, and I'd love to know who contributed what, but it definitely reminds me more of McBryde's solo stuff, that eye for detail and way of unspooling a narrative.
4. Kehlani - "Altar"
Kehlani's stuff has always been hit and miss for me and I sort of listened to and discarded her last album really quickly, but "Altar" is just fantastic and really raises my expectations for the forthcoming Blue Water Road, I hope Pop Wansel produces a lot of it like her first album.
5. Dua Lipa - "Love Again"
Here we are more than 2 years out from the launch of Future Nostalgia's lead single, and the album is still making the rounds on the radio, which is very deserved. And I'm glad "Love Again" finally got a turn in the singles campaign even after the iffy new song for the re-release "We're Good" quickly came and went, it was always a standout. That said, hearing it on the radio with the "goddamn" edited out is awkward, almost makes me wish it wasn't a single because the clean edit just doesn't really work. In the Netflix "Song Exploder" episode about "Love Again," it kind of surprised me to learn that they basically wrote the whole song before they decided to add the horn sample from White Town's "Your Woman," but it really speaks to how it'd be a good song with or without a nostalgic sample in there.
6. Marzz - "Countless Times"
Another song that's kind of marred by the clean version, although one of my local R&B stations keeps playing an edit that reverses the "fuuuuck you" on the chorus and it just sounds so awkward that it takes me out of the song every time, much more enjoyable to listen to at home on Spotify.
7. J. Howell - "Something About Ya"
Another good song from a new artist that's been breaking through on R&B radio lately, I was pretty sure J. Howell was a guy the first time I heard it but there are a few lines in there where it really sounds like a woman's voice, in any event he's a really impressive vocalist.
8. Dead Sara - "Heroes"
"Weatherman" and the first Dead Sara album are almost a decade old and still totally kick ass and I return to them regularly, so I'm glad they recently came back with their first album in a while. "Heroes" is kind of a midtempo song that doesn't necessarily require the full force of Emily Armstrong's huge voice, but she lets that shriek go anyway, and I love her for that.
9. Volbeat - "Wait A Minute My Girl"
"Wait A Minute My Girl" is Danish hard rock band Volbeat's 9th #1 song on Billboard's Mainstream Rock chart, but it's only their third song to make a dent on the Alternative charts too, which is weird because it's basically a 1950s-style rock'n'roll pastitche with piano and saxophone parts straight out of a Jerry Lee Lewis song.
10. Elle King f/ Miranda Lambert - "Drunk (And I Don't Wanna Go Home)"
I liked Elle King's Dierks Bentley collaboration and the songs she plays banjo on more than her other stuff, so her transition into doing more country stuff feels a little inevitable, and this song is fun and highlights the similarities between King and Lambert's voices.
The Worst Single of the Month: Drake f/ Future and Young Thug - "Way 2 Sexy"
I genuinely like Right Said Fred's "I'm Too Sexy," it's really catchy and knowingly silly and makes great use of a sample (in this case Hendrix's "Third Stone From the Sun"), and the fact that it was a #1 hit kind of makes it even funnier. Someone might say the same of "Way 2 Sexy," but I cannot. Every Drake album has one or two asinine comedy tracks, but Certified Lover Boy is the first one where those songs are the 2 biggest hits from the record, the other being the "say that you a lesbian, girl, me too" song. Future, probably the best singles artist of the last 10 years, has long suffered the indignity of his biggest Hot 100 hits being mostly middling Drake collaborations, but it's still really disappointing that his first #1 is him saying "I'm too sexy for the trap, too sexy for this syrup" on one of Drake's most Lonely Island songs ever.
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