#congratulations u funky lil twink | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

deadcactuswalking · 5 years

Text

REVIEWING THE CHARTS: 2nd December 2018

Finally, we’ve gotten to December – this’ll be a busy month for me considering all the end-of-year lists and such, but it’s also the holiday season, so let’s look at how the charts reflect that jolly spirit? Oh, a new 6ix9ine song? Okay, well, we’ll get to that in a bit. Welcome to REVIEWING THE CHARTS.

Top 10

Staying at the top for a fourth week today is “thank u, next” by Ariana Grande, which has recently been knocked off in the US by “SICKO MODE”, but it’s still reigning pretty strong here.

The runner-up spot hasn’t shifted either, as “Woman Like Me” by Little Mix featuring Nicki Minaj is still at number-two.

Actually moving this week, however, is “Thursday” by Jess Glynne, up only one space whilst still entering the top 3 at number-three.

Also climbing this week is “Without Me” by Halsey, now at number-four after a two-spot increase.

Unfortunately, this means “Shallow” by Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper has suffered, being pushed down two spaces since last week to number-five.

At number-six, after an initial surge due to TikTok and Snapchat, we have Ava Max somewhat proving longevity here with her first ever UK Top 10 hit, up seven spots from last week, “Sweet but Psycho”. Congratulations.

“Funky Friday” by Dave and Fredo hasn’t moved at number-seven.

“ZEZE” by Kodak Black, Travis Scott and Offset is actually up two spots to number-eight this week. “Guess we all made for each other”, whatever that means in the context of the song – listen, I reviewed the song in full and any time I’ve heard it since have felt like A-level physics tests, without any equation sheets.

“Sunflower” by Post Malone and Swae Lee from the Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse soundtrack is down a spot to number-nine.

Finally, to round off our top 10, Freya Ridings’ “Lost without You” is down a space to #10.

Climbers

Surprisingly on this slow week, we have quite a handful here. George Ezra’s “Hold My Girl” is obviously up eight spaces after the single push to #25, nearby “Baby” by Clean Bandit featuring Marina and Luis Fonsi up six spots to #26 – which will also get the album boost next week. “Mo Bamba” by Sheck Wes continues to rise ten positions to #27 (and I couldn’t be happier for it), while “I Found You” by benny blanco and Calvin Harris is up 11 spaces, taking me by surprise to #29. I didn’t necessarily think this would catch on that well, but I guess clubs are interested so I’m not going to be complaining – I like the song.

Fallers

Wow, we have much less of these than I expected. I knew it was a slow week but most slow weeks at least come with a lot more fallers than gains, yet we just have a spoonful. “Let You Love Me” by Rita Ora gets its streaming cut that takes it down nine or so pegs to #14, while The Greatest Showman hype dies down for P!nk’s “A Million Dreams” and James Arthur and Anne-Marie’s “Rewrite the Stars”, down five and one positions respectively at #16 and #17 – this isn’t happening soon enough, frankly. Since “Back and Forth” by MK, Jonas Blue and Becky Hill couldn’t possibly have a streaming cut, I’m just going to assume it absolutely collapsed this week down a whopping 23 spots to #37. Yikes.

Dropouts

“Leave a Light On” by Tom Walker drops out again from its #36 return last week, while of course “Broken Homes” by Nafe Smallz, M Huncho and Gunna is out from #38 as that type of grime-trap never does all too well unless it’s named after a Cadbury chocolate apparently. “Strip” by Little Mix featuring Sharaya J is also unfortunately out from #25, whilst the hilariously awful “No Stylist” by French Montana featuring Drake is taken with it from #22. “The Greatest Show” covered by Panic! at the Disco is also expectedly out from #39, but otherwise that’s all. Now, let’s get to the bigger story.

Returning Entries

Okay, cool, “Remember Us This Way” by Lady Gaga is back at #39, “Goodbye” by Jason Derulo and David Guetta featuring Nicki Minaj and Willy William is back at #40, but the main headline is of course going to be the start of the influx of Christmas music. While I may need to deal with more of this when I potentially change the format next year, we still get enough in the top 40 over December so I apologise for the Returning Entries sections eventually becoming smaller and more monotonous as we go on – naturally by two years we won’t have any returning entries we haven’t talked about, other than special occasions like “Three Lions”, so this December month is pretty much the end of this section and also the start of me attempting to review Christmas music, which is harder than you think. While “Fairytale of New York” is at #66 and “Last Christmas” is at #52, the one that reigns over all, and is currently already at #14 in the US, is this classic.

#34 – “All I Want for Christmas is You” – Mariah Carey

Well, this is one of the first times on the show I’ve reviewed both Christmas music and one of my favourite songs of all time. There’s something in the joy of those twinking bells and synths, Mariah’s sweet yet powerful delivery and most importantly the freaking sleigh bells, that make me want to involuntarily smile. The lyrics are simplistic yet they’re now just iconic, aren’t they? If you haven’t sung the chorus to this song, and you have a working voice-box, I doubt you’ve lived through even one Christmas. It’s not like the verses are anything to scoff at, either, hell, the bridge is arguably where Mariah really excels, especially with the male choir behind her providing some vocalisation that really has that carol feeling to it, especially with the main reason this song is so fantastic, other than the choirs, other than Mariah Carey being the vocal powerhouse she is (seriously, that final chorus is transcendent), and other than the joyful vibe, those sleigh bells combined with the driving percussion which just give the song such a punch that you need for a Christmas song to work as well as they can when you do them right. Even if Mariah Carey flops for the rest of her career, she’ll always be making bank out of this timeless tune which I hope stays for more than a while during the holiday season. Sadly, I can’t give this Best of the Week, but you’re damn sure I would if I had that choice. Sadly, not all of our Christmas returning entries will be this good over the weeks, although I’m sure this entirely makes up for it.

NEW ARRIVALS

Now you’ve got in that festive mood, how about we kiss under the mistletoe to aggressive trap-rap about gang violence? It’s that time of the year again.

#38 – “KIKA” – 6ix9ine featuring Tory Lanez

Listen, I don’t want to seem like I enjoy 6ix9ine’s music or defend his actions. He deserves that 25-to-life sentence, he’s an awful human being and most of his music reflects that in every way. If I really had the strength in me, I’d do what I did with “FEFE” and just ignore it completely, instead talking about 6ix9ine’s legal troubles, but this is Tory Lanez’s first ever UK Top 40 (and 6ix9ine’s third) so I don’t want to seem disrespectful to Tory, hell, he’s easily the best part of the song... which, yet again, I hate to admit, I like quite a bit.

The beat here really reminds me of the tropical trap stuff like “ZEZE”, and just like that song, Tory Lanez doesn’t let the melody go any further than a few seconds before he hops in for the hook, which is insanely catchy and I do like the dude’s voice, so he can pull off lines that may seem cliché like “I do my own stunts, Jackie Chan with it” with enough charisma, but then 6ix9ine comes in and just interrupts Tory with some repetitive, mindless bars that reek of “I wrote this in two minutes”, but it’s over quick and we do get a pretty funny reference to Bobby Schmurda’s hat, so we can quickly get to the kick that builds into the great hook again, hell, and in the second verse, after Tekashi steals a Lil Pump line (seriously?) and claims that he’s on some “Ray Charles, John Cena s**t” because he “can’t see the b****”, which is actually hilarious, Tory interrupts 6ix9ine in return with an admittedly funny skit with him replacing “TR3WAY”, a word 6ix9ine cannot legally say anymore despite his catchphrase “it’s f***in’ TR3WAY!”, with other words such as the Trojan brand of condoms, and the American chain Target, before bursting into laughter. Uh, yeah, I’m hesitant but this is a good ‘un, despite its many, many charming flaws – it’s clearly supposed to be funny, so that’s how I’m enjoying it.

Oh, and my friend Prez wanted me to talk about “WAKA” and while I do love A Boogie wit da Hoodie’s singing voice here, with a pretty catchy hook, I’m not sure how I feel about the song in general. The beat has a pretty intense string melody which I can dig, with Boogie actually developing a story which is interesting enough, until 6ix9ine literally shoots the song up, with gunshot and explosion effects that’d make you think he’s Joe Budden, but his part isn’t that awful and it’s insanely short because he’s the feature on his own album for the most part, so, yeah, this is a damn good Boogie song with a few intrusions from the Skittles-man. If we had a version without Tekashi, I’d like it even more.

#20 – “AirForce” – Digdat

Who’s Digdat? Good question. How did his first ever single debut in the top 20? I don’t know, but congratulations, I guess. Since I’ve looked more into British hip-hop, I actually recognised the name but didn’t know much about his particular brand of reggae or pop-infused grime-trap, so I did some research, and yeah he’s pretty okay, albeit a tad boring, so I didn’t expect him to get a hit on his own – and that’s because he didn’t. This song charted because of a remix from much bigger grime duo Krept & Konan, but since that has less streams, we’re talking about the original, and again while I appreciate the dark string-based production and Digdat’s blunt and fast delivery, it’s a bit too generic, I’m sorry. There’s too much bass here that overpowers the actual beat, and the first minute essentially being a bunch of synth-air with producer tags is a bit of an odd choice. The beat is pretty good but the mixing somewhat ruins it, but not enough to be all that noticeable. It just rounds out to a perfect, balanced, “I don’t care”. Hope Digdat gets some more recognition after this, though, the dude has potential.

Conclusion

I don’t feel like I can really give Digdat a Dishonourable Mention or Worst of the Week, but “KIKA” is just clearly so much better, so yeah, Best of the Week goes to Tory Lanez, whilst I don’t think I can really be that mean to DIgdat, so he gets Honourable Mention for “AirForce”. See ya next week, when I’m guessing there will be an influx of Christmas music!

0 notes