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deadcactuswalking · 2 years

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REVIEWING THE CHARTS: 03/09/2022 (Elton John/Britney Spears, David Guetta/Bebe Rexha, DJ Khaled’s ‘GOD DID’)

Welp, finally, “Afraid to Feel” has been knocked off the top by Eliza Rosa and Interplanetary Criminal, who grab their first #1 on the UK Singles Chart with “B.O.T.A. (Baddest of Them All)”, the 1400th #1 overall. The excitement this week doesn’t stop there either, so welcome back to REVIEWING THE CHARTS!

Rundown

I’m not sure if this counts as a “busy” week but there’s definitely a tad bit more going on than usual, and as always, we start with the notable dropouts. It turns out that all of the dropouts from the UK Top 75 – which is what I cover – were notable, exiting after either five weeks in the region or a peak in the top 40, so it’s a hefty list, including “Getting Started” by Sam Fender, “Massive” by Drake, “Brazil” by Declan McKenna, “Glimpse of Us” by Joji, “Vegas” by Doja Cat, “I Like You (A Happier Song)” by Post Malone and Doja Cat, “Hold My Hand” by Lady Gaga, “WAIT FOR U” by Future featuring Drake and Tems, “2step” by Ed Sheeran, bolstered by remixes including the biggest featuring Lil Baby, and finally, “Make Me Feels Good” by Belters Only and Jazzy. A lot of these are pretty longstanding hits so I do wonder what exactly is going to fill in the place of these songs.

Well, there are no returning entries to speak of, but in terms of notable gains, we have “2 Be Loved (Am I Ready)” by Lizzo at #58, “Another Love” by Tom Odell at #56, “KU LO SA – A COLORS SHOW” by Oxlade at #36, “Turn on the Lights again..” by Swedish House Mafia and Fred again.. featuring Future at #34, “Mary on a Cross” by Ghost at #33 and finally, our first song of three to newly enter the top 10 this week: “Big City Life” by Luude and Mattafix at #10. It’s Luude’s second and the first for Mattafix, even if the band seemingly broke up in 2010.

The top five on this week’s UK Singles Chart consists of “Green Green Grass” by George Ezra at #5, “I Ain’t Worried” by OneRepublic at #4, “Hold Me Closer” by Elton John and Britney Spears at #3 (hold on, we’ll get to it) and of course, “Afraid to Feel” by LF SYSTEM and “B.O.T.A.” as the top two. Now for some releases that did not impact the charts...

Off the Charts

Killer in Neverland – 4s4ki

I’ll keep it simple: we have just four pretty good to great projects to cover. This first one is 4s4ki’s most realised full-length album, with a mix of droned-out hyperpop bliss alongside more confrontational, nearly metallic textures that has defined her work to this point: I still think she leaves the killer tracks for her EPs, but this is a pretty exciting project, despite the filler. My favourite track is “sweet dream”.

LOUIE – Kenny Beats

This is technically Kenny’s first solo album, and for what is mostly a beat tape it sounds really developed and realised. Naturally, for an album that’s mostly different instrumentals not always seamlessly sequenced into each other, some of the beats just aren’t as good or don’t fit thematically but the sheer attention to detail into crafting some of these songs is pretty impeccable. It definitely sounds like its writing credits: a lot of people in one room bouncing off ideas, and then Kenny organically mixes everything together in post. My favourite track is “Hold My Head”.

The Forever Story – JID

Whilst I always liked JID as a rapper, this is the first full-length album he’s put out that has properly won me over, telling the rags-to-riches story in a way that doesn’t attempt to hide his past but rather embrace the elements of it that had bolstered his success, and celebrating that whilst never steering clear of the distance it creates as a result of fame. It’s less paranoid than a Drake, but it’s also a lot less gutless and squandering than his label head, J. Cole, it feels nuanced. Whilst as full songs, much like Kendrick Lamar who undoubtedly will be pulled into comparisons to this record, the song structure isn’t entirely there, meaning that some verses do not have half the impact they should, and the sequencing can end up a tad wonky or dull, but with production this dynamic and rapping this effectively eclectic yet still grounded, it takes a real nitpick to find much to complain about outside the one or two duds. My favourite track is “Kody Blu 31”.

Ultra Pool – salute

I mean... it’s a speed garage EP, with blissful tropical house undertones that feel like a dazed sunset, but always locked behind these more rigid grooves that don’t really let up for the soundscape more often, which is largely to its benefit. These four tracks are all hypnotising, and whilst you could complain about there being less complexity or personality to the loops used, why would you want that in what is largely a chill-out EP? Given the transcendence of the first three tracks, and the more locked-in groove of the title track, getting seasick on the evening cruise of the rest of the EP, I’m tempted to treat this as an ambient release, where the textures and how they resonate will largely differ between listeners, but if they work for you, they’ll just click into place. My favourite track is “Heaven”, but it’s a 10/10 project: I recommend it. Now, back to your regularly scheduled programming...

NEW ARRIVALS

#67 – “BEAUTIFUL” – DJ Khaled featuring Future and SZA

Produced by DJ Khaled, TM88 and KXVI

Is it really worth wasting any time on that DJ Khaled album? GOD DID debuted at #4 on the UK Albums Chart and as always with Khaled, there’s very little to it other than some expensive features that provide leftovers on beats that are on an impressive level of bad in terms of mixing. Some of the features will go hard, most won’t. Some of the beats will be cool, most won’t. You know what rarely ever works with Khaled, or at least hasn’t since “Wild Thoughts”? The pop-R&B crossover tracks. I’m actually glad this one charted because it might be one of the most pathetic failures on the album, despite having a decent base with its chipmunk soul sample and piano lead that both sound barely implemented once the beat gets going. The drums are decently mixed and actually not trap-adjacent for once for Future, and this kind of sell-out pop-R&B track is nothing new for either artist so it shouldn’t sound so... foreign and alien, but it ends up somehow doing so. I can blame a lot of that on Future’s weird delivery on a clearly unfinished verse where he mumbles ad-libs and parts of the verses he hadn’t figured out yet, with some extra editing to fill up space when there is an awkward blank because he clearly hasn’t finished the verse. The plastic electric guitars that barely pop in during the first verse sound ugly, sure, but it’s not an inherently awful production. It’s the refrain and the chorus where the songwriting just makes no sense to me. Part of what was clearly a verse from Future is chopped from the verses and used as a refrain, but the problem is that it actually wraps around the first chorus from SZA, so after the break in the chorus it just returns to the same refrain instead of a second verse, but not as a pre-chorus because it goes straight back to a half-assed second verse, so it just sounds like Future is repeating himself for no reason. The vocal mixing on SZA’s chorus is really awkward and lacking in harmonies that should have clearly been recorded, instead going for these filtered ad-libs and pitch-shifted backing vocals that have no reason being there over a filtered, bass-heavy production that has no cover for how badly both artists were recorded here – you can hear the beat coming from Future’s recording. Then, after the beat starts to build up in Future’s second verse, which kind of acts as a bridge, with the piano swell coming back in... it breaks instead again, for a copy-pasted SZA chorus that clearly should have had more swell to it. There was a build up and it would make a lot of sense to introduce the chorus and then have a more melodramatic repetition later on in the song: that’s how choruses work! I have no reason to believe Khaled wasn’t going for a pop sell-out in the first place, so he rids the song of the one cliché it could have accurately and effectively done, before meandering to obnoxious vocal riffing from him and Future. Just, why does this song exist? It’s not fundamentally broken but all of the elements seem to collapse onto each other. Since I listened to the album, this and “FAM GOOD, WE GOOD” with Gunna and Roddy Ricch have just pre-occupied weird spaces in my mind where I can’t exactly tell what went wrong but it was clearly catastrophic. The best song from the album, barring the Jadakiss interlude that goes harder than anything else, also debuted so if there are any DJ Khaled stans out there, that should be some reassurance.

#66 – “complex (demo)” – Katie Gregson-MacLeod

Produced by Katie Gregson-MacLeod

Okay, first of all: this is not a demo. Gregson-MacLeod is a newcomer singer-songwriter from Scotland who got a pretty disproportionate industry recognition for this TikTok “demo” from all kinds of singers paid to—I mean, happening to comment on her page. She’s already the face of Spotify playlists. If not a studio recording, it’s still a well-produced track and far from the bedroom demo that it could connote. The whole song acts as basically a Phoebe Bridgers reference, but more widely is about wasting your youth, specifically in the chorus by giving a lot more in the relationship than she’s getting back, which sounds pretty exhausting and unsatisfying. Her whispery delivery is full of the uncertainty you’d get from this kind of situation, but compositionally, it does feel a bit basic, which I guess is the demo aspect: there clearly should have been some more elevation given the second pre-chorus depicting her wanting to kill this guy, but the final chorus doesn’t really change in tone or lyrically. I get that the faux routine and dependency is very much part of this relationship, but it really could have done with some more melodrama or at least some kind of resolution in sight: she dismisses killing him pretty quickly, so I guess much like a demo – and the song’s content – it’s unsatisfying and I can’t find more catharsis here. It’s definitely listenable, but runs way too long and doesn’t really go anywhere either for excusing laziness or not wishing to sacrifice the “demo” marketing tactic... or probably both.

#63 – “Calm Down” – Rema

Produced by Andrevibez and London

Rema is a Nigerian singer who has had a pretty large fanbase in his home country called the “Ravers” for years but this seems to be his biggest western breakthrough yet, with a pretty simple love song, and I REALLY like this. The slightly glitchier Afrobeats percussion adds a really punctuated rhythm to this cute, mellow acoustic guitar not too dissimilar to an emo-pop ballad, and Rema is similarly relaxed in his lovey-dovey platitudes, before he starts stuttering for the post-chorus breakdown with all the chirping beeps and harder but not overwhelming bass. Some of the percussion fills give this really soaring feel to the song which just makes it feel really sincere, not that other songs in this vein aren’t and there is still a lot of focus on the body even if he does paint a narrative, but the genuine profession of love seems to mean a lot from Rema. This is especially true when the strings come in for the post-chorus and Rema just blends in perfectly, swimming in an ocean of slightly tempered happiness and naive excitement. The Selena Gomez remix that probably gave it the needed boost to debut this week is also pretty good, but it doesn’t really provide the missing detail or second perspective it should, and she has nowhere near the amount of personality of Rema does, so I think prefer the original here. Either way, I’m glad this is a hit and I hope to see it continue scaling the chart.

#50 – “GOD DID” – DJ Khaled featuring Rick Ross, Lil Wayne, JAY-Z, John Legend and Fridayy

Produced by DJ Khaled, STREETRUNNER, Tarik Azzouz and Fridayy

Let’s be clear: This song has one reason to exist, and it is JAY-Z, so let’s get him out of the way first. His verse is impeccable, with his recently breathless delivery only serving into the noxious, gauzy melodrama of the album through some pretty hyper-capitalist BS that serves as a hard flex in this context (and really, this context alone – Saul Williams said it better than I ever could, so do check his response to JAY-Z sometime). Regardless of the socio-political context, the wordplay is tight and at some times pretty impressive, with a lot of little details popping up relating to the biblical themes – really, the only attempt from anyone outside of Vory to relate GOD DID to its titular character, even if JAY gets borderline blasphemous with it – as well as an ability to just astonish the person listening at sheer length. Just as you think he’s ran out of bars, he stops rambling on about another topic yet never rejecting the lineage between each narrative, as they really all pull back into one: “JAY-Z has so much money and is awesome”. I mean, he does have more money than probably half the people charting this week combined, so he’s not entirely wrong. With that said, that verse is four minutes of an otherwise eight-minute song, and the rest of it is far from great. Khaled is ridiculous as he hams it up before Fridayy’s oddly solemnly-delivered hook in his lower register that I think actually sounds pretty great once the harmonies and the strings hit. Sadly, it’s practically copy-pasted every time, but the other verses aren’t bad either. Rick Ross has a pretty guttural yelp as always, but his verse is kind of abrupt and covered in sound effects that distract from it, including the production which is just overly busy. Lil Wayne has some pretty funny lines and a confident delivery as always, but the flow is slightly awkward and the Auto-Tune sounds really cheap. John Legend is just there on the outro for John Legend’s sake, but really, when the song is this full of ugly levels of rap opulence, it’s easy to just focus on the incredible JAY-Z verse and treat everything else as a decoration because, really, that’s how both JAY and Khaled are thinking, and I still do recommend it if you have the patience.

#45 – “Energy” – Bugzy Malone and MIST

Produced by WhYJay, Rymez and LiTek

I feel like this is a mixed episode genre-wise, but if there’s something that sticks out, it is the amount of hip hop here, and this is the first of two British rap duos we’ll be hearing from today. I’ve never been a big fan of Birmingham’s MIST or especially Manchester’s Bugzy Malone, but at least it’s not a trap or drill track that could have been increasingly frustrating given these two and their... questionable approaches to flow. Instead, this is a fun enough grime-esque garage beat with some blasting, noxious synth brass in the pre-chorus and a decently catchy groove in the hook. The verses are okay, with both Bugzy and MIST being pretty non-descript with their signature flows, and I like how they trade bars but neither have anything interesting or even funny to say, so the song lives and dies on its beat, which is just okay. This really isn’t that far a step away from Bad Boy Chiller Crew, but I’m not sure who’s ready to admit that yet.

#41 – “Beat the Odds” – Lil Tjay

Produced by KXVI, Desirez beats and KBeaZy

On 22 June, Lil Tjay and a friend were shot in New Jersey, and whilst his friend was in good condition, Tjay was still hospitalised at least as late as July and has been recovering slowly but considerably since. Police think they have a suspect and have charged him but for now, Tjay still plans on releasing music, with this newest song apparently being recorded in hospital. You can tell this shooting – if not having effected him lyrically that much – has lent extra pathos to his gang violence and paranoia, with the references to death sounding particularly distraught and closer than ever when compared to the more distant threats from some of his other work. The beat, really, is your typical Lil Tjay fare with a vocal drenched in echo and a solemn piano melody backed by finger snaps and a trap-esque beat that sounds particularly despondent with the thin snares and somewhat overwhelming bass. In his verses, he justifies his gun ownership with his paranoia which stems from a genuine fear of death in the streets, as well as being generally grateful for his success considering that he could be dead without it, but acknowledging that it could all be gone really quickly and ultimately would his death more tragic. There are some gripes I have, like with the abrupt ending and the beat not being all that interesting, and I’m not sure the reckless move of ending his verse by referencing his deceased “opps” is going to make much sense in the long run, but overall, I can’t complain that much. It’s solid, and I hope Lil Tjay recovers as well as he can and is back up and running in no time.

#40 – “Man in the Mirror” – D-Block Europe

Produced by R14 Beats and Eight8

This feels misleading in so many ways. First of all, this is not a song by D-Block Europe: it’s just Young Adz, with no Dirtbike LB in sight. Secondly, it doesn’t sample the Michael Jackson classic at all, and whilst that wasn’t guaranteed, you’d think in the era of sample drill, they’d at least try. II don’t really like the beat at all here, and the main piano lead in the intro reminded me in terms of progression of a... particular song that we might be revisiting in the top 10, with the typically weird percussion and bass mixing that comes from DBE. Whilst there’s a slightly more conscious tinge to some of Adz’s one verse here, with some flashbacks to his father and his history in the drug trade that gives extra credence to what Adz has been rapping about his whole career, and it does touch on some systemic issues but is covered in a lot of flexing and vague threats that just don’t interest me at all. I know this was a short section but I fail to see much that stands out here, even if it’s far from outright bad.

#38 – “There’d Better be a Mirrorball” – Arctic Monkeys

Produced by James Ford

The Sheffield boys are back and even though they’ve been somewhat inconsistent – really, I can only endorse their debut and the latest album in full – I do still get excited when they release because at least the singles are usually quality and really, they’re one of the few rock bands nowadays that are able to easily get this high on the charts, and just with a few days of tracking even. How’s the new lead single for The Car sounding in that case? Well, I like it, building off of what Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino had started doing with a higher emphasis on piano and strings that really emphasises and further alienates Alex Turner’s drunken poetry style of vocal delivery nowadays. The drums sound dusty, the synths sound primitive and the strings are just as punchy as they can be waivering and free-flowing to parallel the warp of the keys, which fits the content, or at least my interpretation of what’s going on. I could see this being framed in two situations: a post-one night stand willingness to still get romantic with this girl that he thinks shouldn’t mean as much as she does to him, or the events after a fight in a more established relationship, and both seem to fit the phrasing used by Turner to varying extents, especially since the main through-line for most of the song is to put the rose tint on the events and pretend that everything is just as romantic as it is in song. The airiness and wistfulness drags his partner’s “cynicism” – which is probably just a realistic view of events – and reeks of a desperacy that really shows in Turner’s falsetto and the rising strings. It’s a great composition, an interesting lyrical display – even if it can feel like a slight fragment, and an immaculately-produced track that leaves no sonic stone unturned. I almost wish the Monkeys could have gotten this into the top 10 with a full tracking week, but instead...

#7 – “I’m Good (Blue)” – David Guetta and Bebe Rexha

Produced by David Guetta and Timofey Reznikov

Are you kidding me? Are we really at the point where we’re sampling novelty Eurodance hits on the modern-day equivalent to a novelty Eurodance hit, using vocals from someone whose career pretty much equates to a glorified session vocalist to try and reinterpret the original song into being a party anthem, which... completely misses the point of the original? Well, we were actually at that point in 2017 but because of the ongoing Hellscape we live in, the snippet of them playing it live at festival went viral so they “finished” the song and shipped it out to success I did not really expect to be this immediate. Okay, first of all, have you ever gone back to that original song, or realistically, the famous Gabry Ponte mix? “Blue (Da Ba Dee)” by Eiffel 65 was made fun of at the time, even during its three-week run at #1 in the UK, but was a genuine worldwide semi-phenomenon with its uniquely uncanny CGI video and the nonsensical lyrics that make it charming, I guess, but it’s a flubbery, gross song that despite having the meme factor has not aged well. The mix clips through the rote hardcore kicks and the spacey synths that are way stiffer and more awkward than you remember. The drop doesn’t really hit at all, and sure, there are some iconic wacky line delivers that save it, but that’s all that the song really has going for it in my opinion. So what happens when you replay the main lead in a stock-sounding piano preset and replace the nonsense in the egregious vocal lead with an actually good singer singing actual words? A normal song, that’s what, and that seems like a complete misstep. The song is goofy as Hell, and Bebe Rexha can play into that – she did it on “I’m a Mess” and “Hey Mama”, she is very much willing to not take herself too seriously, but the song just does nothing. Sure, the drop hits harder than the original, but it’s largely because of this grating, fuzzy synth bass that doesn’t sound too far away from the brostep era. There’s only one actual verse apart from the bridge that has somehow taken the detail of “clipping mix” from the original and implemented that too, and no, I’m not even going to recognise the existence of an “extended” version... which is still only three minutes. This isn’t the worst thing ever, but I feel like a classic happy hardcore or Eurodance track could have easily been made from this, but there’s not enough of that cartoony Aqua-esque bubblegum fun to make this any different from the rest of its house competition, which is a shame because the ingredients were literally staring Guetta in the face.

#3 – “Hold Me Closer” – Elton John and Britney Spears

Produced by watt and Cirkut

This song doesn’t exist to be a song. It exists to be a stat pad much like the chart itself, and just like “Cold Heart”, we have a mash-up of at least two different Elton John songs in a little gift box topped off with a guest feature that lends her signature voice only to be melted into something intentionally anonymous. The disco groove is bizarrely ugly here, and even if I didn’t like PNAU’s production on “Cold Heart”, at least that stiff rhythm was actually a rhythm, and kind of awkwardly fit “Rocket Man” – this version of “Tiny Dancer” is just placed onto a robotic remake of the track that spits in the face of the original, especially with both Elton and Britney sounding tired of it all, and having zero chemistry. I hope that you can tell from these two songs debuting in the top 10 that nothing is ever sacred in the world of pop music, not even “Tiny Dancer” and not even “Blue (Da Ba Dee)”. I’m still deciding whether the fact that Elton actively contributed and wrote off on this garbage makes it better or worse. At least when Junkie XL was remixing Elvis Presley in the early 2000s, he was calling them remixes and not trying to pass them off as anything else. If Elton really is using these songs to be stat pads, I won’t even cover the chart success of the two songs mashed together, and Hell, let’s see if you can recognise the song that isn’t “Tiny Dancer” without looking it up, because he’s really digging deep into his worst material to find some speck he can reuse and recycle for another shameless plug.

Conclusion

“Hold Me Closer” by Elton John and Britney Spears gets the Worst of the Week, sadly ending the episode on a downer, and really, for once, it had some competition, given that the Dishonourable Mention is going to “BEAUTIFUL” by DJ Khaled featuring Future and SZA. There were a couple candidates for the best also, to be fair, with the Honourable Mention going to... the Arctic Monkeys for “There’d Better be a Mirrorball” because, of all people, Rema is getting the Best of the Week for “Calm Down”. I didn’t expect to like it as much as I do, but I hope it sticks around. We’ll see what happens in the near future, but for now, thank you for reading and I’ll see you next week!

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