Monthly Report: February 2022 Singles
1. Maren Morris - "Circles Around This Town"
After Kacey Musgraves got passive-aggressively kicked out of country Grammy categories and radio playlists on her last album, I'm glad Maren Morris is still getting country airplay for her new single which, while produced by Greg Kurstin and co-written by Julia Michaels, sounds sufficiently country. I love how the second verse is kind of Maren's origin story with references to her first two successful singles, "My Church" and "'80s Mercedes." Here's the 2022 singles playlist I update every month.
2. The Weeknd - "Sacrifice"
I had fun writing my GQ piece about Dawn FM but the album is as hit-and-miss as The Weeknd has always been for me, and predictably what I really like best is one of the more pop-leaning singles. It's kind of funny that Swedish House Mafia and Max Martin produced a Weeknd song that sounds like the Weeknd/Daft Punk collaborations probably should have sounded, love how they flip the Alicia Myers sample.
3. Muni Long - "Hrs And Hrs"
It's such a rare blue moon occurrence that it's kind of exciting just to see a pretty traditional R&B slow jam like "Hrs And Hrs" from a relative unknown do really well on the Hot 100, I guess it took off on TikTok as things tend to now. Interestingly, Muni Long is the new stage name of Priscilla Renea, who had a major label deal a decade ago and had one really bad Benny Blanco-produced synth pop song, "Dollhouse," on Top 40 radio for a second, definitely feels like she reinvented herself into something better.
4. Sam Fender - "Seventeen Going Under"
Sam Fender's second album was awesome, really glad to see the title track getting some traction on American rock radio. The second verse of "Seventeen Going Under," that's just great songwriting.
5. Blu DeTiger - "Blondes"
I wrote about Blu DeTiger in Spin's "artists to watch in 2022" piece on the strength of the EP she released last year, but while the article was in the works she signed with Capitol and released this new single, which is really excellent, hope it blows up.
6. Key Glock - "Proud"
I can't really imagine what it's like to be a close friend and collaborator of someone like Young Dolph when they die tragically, and Key Glock was sort of his main protege for years and had just scored his first top 10 solo album right before Dolph's death. And Key Glock's song on the new Paper Route tribute project Long Live Young Dolph is great, not an overly sentimental "I'll Be Missing You" sort of thing but pissed off and anguished and defiant, moving in its own way, with Dolph's ad libs at the end kind of encouraging Glock from the afterlife.
7. Ella Mai - "DFMU"
I was recently lamenting on Twitter that Ella Mai's career had seemingly stalled after she had a huge multi-platinum debut album, then released one underperforming single and kind of disappeared, releasing nothing for 16 months. So when she released a new single a couple days later, I felt like I'd kind of willed it into existence. "DFMU" is co-produced by Mustard but is a little more in the vein of "Not Another Love Song" than her earlier hits, so I don't know how it's going to do on radio, but I like it, hopefully she gets that second album out this year.
8. Nardo Wick f/ Lil Baby and Future - "Me Or Sum"
Nardo Wick's breakthrough single "Who Want Smoke?" got much bigger from an all-star remix, so it really feels like he's going big on features from established rappers to get a follow-up hit, which is probably smart, he's really not much of a rapper. Future in particular really carries "Me Or Sum," pretty much does the whole intro section himself, so it's kind of funny when he says "Nardo, you got you one with this one" at the end.
9. Ne-Yo f/ Yung Bleu - "Stay Down"
Like Nardo Wick's "Me Or Sum," this song has kind of a intro beat switch where the first minute or so sounds completely different from the rest of the song, feels almost more like the structure of something like Franz Ferdinand's "Take Me Out" than recent trendy beat switch rap hits like "Sicko Mode" that feel like random parts stitched together. I'm not much of a fan of Yung Bleu becoming absolutely inescapable on rap radio, but this song is pretty good, I'm glad Ne-Yo is still in the mix and making hits.
10. Jessica Darrow - "Surface Pressure"
Last month I wrote about the breakout success of Encanto's "We Don't Talk About Bruno," which is now #1 on the Hot 100. And I'm not surprised that "Surface Pressure," which in some ways is the most 2022-sounding pop song in the movie, is also a top 10 hit in its own right.
The Worst Single of the Month: Polo G - "Bad Man (Smooth Criminal)"
I'm not the biggest Polo G fan but I respect the way he's carved out his own lane and has succeeded with an identifiable sound of his own. But it feels like he's taken it as far as he could and now he's just desperate to keep getting bigger and this horrible Michael Jackson interpolation is the hackiest way he could do it. MJ would be embarrassed by this, shit even Alien Ant Farm should be embarrassed by this, Polo should've just shelved the song after he performed it at Rolling Loud and nobody liked it. Somehow it's even worse than the "Hey There Delilah" interpolation on the new Rod Wave single.
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on Tuesday, February 15, 2022 at 9:43 AM.
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