I like Cottonwood 2 and "Ain't Gonna Answer" is easily one of the best tracks, I'm glad it's doing well at radio. I'm a sucker for "Triggerman"-sampling NOLA bounce throwbacks, especially ones with a good Lil Wayne verse, and I enjoy the nod to one of my favorite Wayne songs, "Stuntin' Like My Daddy." And "Back That Azz Up" came out in '98, Wayne has been killing features for 25 goddamn years. Here's the 2023 singles Spotify playlist I update every month. 

Last year I wrote about how Doja Cat has had several hit rap songs that get played exclusively on pop radio, but she gets more respect as an MC than, say, Flo Rida. So I wondered if there was gonna be a point where she crossed back over to R&B radio with her rap tracks. In the months since then, Doja has announced that her next album is all hip-hop, spent a ton of time on Twitter berating her fans and calling her last two huge albums mediocre "cash grabs" (I have to admit I felt a little vindicated by that, because I've been saying that her low-selling debut Amala is her best album and that she doesn't even seem to fuck with a lot of her own music). So "Attention" has a lot riding on it, especially with Doja's first arena tour coming up, and it's already doing pretty badly, debuting at #31 and sinking down the Hot 100 while her last lead single debuted in the top 10 and stayed there for months. But I really like it, she puts a lot of her grievances with fans and Twitter trolls into a more appealing song form in two 20 bar verses with a really memorable melodic hook, it's kind of a shame that this is considered too much of a curveball for pop radio. 

I recently wrote about how I only just started to hear the name of British producer Fred Again.. everywhere but apparently he's been making pretty major moves for years and years. And here I see him again, co-producing Pink's biggest song on pop radio since "What About Us" 6 years ago. Love the vocal melody on this one, kind of wish Pink went for it with big dance tracks like this more often. 

I'd never heard of Des Rocs before I heard this on the radio last week, but apparently he's about to release his second major label album, has opened for a lot of big acts, and was in a band called Secret Weapons that had some success. But man, this song really kicked my ass from the first listen, looking forward to the 

I'm used to Fall Out Boy being a slightly embarrassing band to like, but I found it pretty frustrating that they just released their best album in about 14 years, and then quickly followed it up with a big publicity blitz for a cover of Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start The Fire" with (badly) updated lyrics. They grazed the lower reaches of the Hot 100 with their gimmick cover, but hopefully that won't stop one of my favorite songs from So Much (for) Stardust from continuing to get airplay on alternative radio. 

Another moment I enjoyed in my Jackson Dean interview was finding out that he's pretty good friends with Maryland's other current country stars, Brothers Osborne. I really love their music so I'm glad to hear those guys are nice. 

I enjoyed their 2005 breakthrough single "Bat Country," but Avenged Sevenfold always seemed like kind of a one trick pony and I've mostly ignored their dozen hard rock radio hits since then, other than the one that I made fun of for sounding exactly like Metallica's "Sad But True." But I heard "Nobody" on the radio recently and that big noisy grinding riff kinda rules. 

Luke Combs's 15th #1 on country radio is also his biggest Hot 100 hit to date, a cover of Tracy Chapman's 1988 classic "Fast Car." I tend to roll my eyes when country artists get crossover success with a cover of a non-country song, but Combs seemed to arrive at it pretty organically -- when he released his 14th country radio #1, "Going, Going, Gone," he talked about how "Fast Car" was one of his favorite songs and he was trying to write something with a similar memorable acoustic guitar part. A lot of people hearing Luke Combs for the first time right now are pissed off that his "Fast Car" is charting higher than the original and isn't good as Tracy Chapman's version -- of course it isn't, how could it be? But I think he did it justice, and maybe reminded a lot of people how great it is. 

Kind of shooting fish in a barrel to say that Jared Leto did something crappy, but I did like some of Thirty Seconds To Mars songs from when they were an actual rock band, and I'm kind of disappointed that they're continuing in the Imagine Dragons-y vein of America.