SONG.REVIEWSReview major chart performers from the previous week. Not necessarily praise them — ask whether the popularity is deserved.
Negative reviews, disappointments, overrated songs, disastrous experiments, irritating trends.
Weird music, novelty tracks, AI music, bizarre production, strange genre combinations, internet phenomena, emerging edge cases.
Historical retrospective. One short review per major genre, deliberately jumping through different decades and eras.
The week's substantial centerpiece: one song gets the full treatment rather than a capsule review.
Independent/self-released/small-label artists and very small acts that normally don't receive significant music-press coverage.
Christian, gospel, worship, hymns, sacred classical, spirituals, and potentially other religious musical traditions.
Sophia Stel worked gardening, house-painting, and bartending jobs before a tiny label, Pack Records, put out her 2024 debut EP. Her actual debut album just landed on A24 Music -- the film studio's small, boutique record label -- titled, with a straight face, the greatest album of all time.
Dominic Fike's third studio album, How To Quit Smoking, arrives today. His first-ever Hot 100 top-10 single is 'Babydoll' -- a song he wrote eight years ago, on house arrest, for a SoundCloud EP nobody was watching, now a hit on the strength of a TikTok trend he had nothing to do with starting.
A novelty No. 1 born from a Karloff obsession, a drunken accident that became an American standard, an uncredited Michael Jackson hook, a song two horror franchises both adopted independently, and the Boris Karloff movie that also gave heavy metal its name -- five records, five genres, one week before Halloween.
South London's Fat Dog built their new album's title track out of a John Lennon diss track and an imagined Anatolian psych band under siege from a rave beat -- all in service of a straight-faced plea to be cancelled, because cancellation sounded easier than asking for rest.
Drake's Habibti (FOMO) carries a Metacritic score of 59 -- officially just 'mixed' -- but its sharpest reviews single out exactly the kind of song that got it there: a borrowed hook dressed up for a one-week chart spike. 'Solar Eclipse' debuted at No. 5 on that hook and vanished from the top 10 one week later, which is as literal a confirmation of a critic's complaint as this column has seen.
Taylor Swift's 'Patient Zero' holds No. 1 for a third week, Drake and Don Toliver's 'Solar Eclipse' vanishes from the top 10 entirely one week after debuting there, and Dominic Fike's 'Babydoll' -- a 98-second EP track he wrote on house arrest in 2018 -- finally breaks the top 10 on a TikTok resurgence eight years later.
'Rock of Ages' as recorded by Tennessee Ernie Ford, Johnny Cash, and Amy Grant with Vince Gill, plus three new songs -- from Kirk Franklin and GloRilla, Josiah Queen, and Anne Wilson -- about where identity and sustenance actually come from.
Thomas Dollbaum's Birds of Paradise, recorded live in four days for the small Chicago label Dear Life Records, is a goodbye letter to lost loved ones built on exactly the scale of operation a songwriter like him needs.
Ella Langley's 'Choosin' Texas' set the all-time Hot 100 record for weeks at No. 1 this fall. One week after losing that chair, its melody is still charting -- borrowed wholesale into Drake and Don Toliver's 'Solar Eclipse.' The full arc, from a Nashville writing retreat to a Top 5 hip-hop interpolation, is one story.
A posthumous No. 1, a drum break that never charted, a 43-year-old single revived by a skateboarder, a yacht-rock hit dragged back by a teenager's Twitter campaign, and a 1985 deep cut that became a bigger hit in 2022 than it ever was in 1985.
'I'm Back,' a nearly 12-minute AI-generated track mimicking Eminem's voice, dropped in September with no official AI label and now outranks his real songs 'Superman' and the original 'I'm Back' in YouTube's own search results for his name.
Taylor Swift's 'The Life of a Showgirl: The Encore' is dominating the Hot 100 top five while sitting on a 43 Metacritic score -- behind only Katy Perry's '143' for the worst-reviewed major pop release of the decade.
Taylor Swift's 'Patient Zero' holds No. 1 for a second week while three of its three 'Encore' labelmates fall out of the Hot 100 top 10 entirely, Drake builds a new single's entire hook out of the record he just helped end, and a Slovak pop newcomer's Nicole Kidman homage lands in the top 10 on a genuine celebrity co-sign.
'Be Thou My Vision' as recorded by Van Morrison, Audrey Assad, and Keith & Kristyn Getty, plus three new songs -- from Katy Nichole, Lauren Daigle, and Forrest Frank with Thomas Rhett -- about what it actually takes to let go of control.
SPIKE FUCK's long-anticipated debut, evidence, fuses new wave, glam, and soul on Sacred Bones Records -- a small Brooklyn label built on exactly the kind of records major labels won't risk.
Taylor Swift's 'The Life of a Showgirl,' across its original and deluxe 'Encore' editions, now has fourteen Hot 100 top-10 hits -- the most ever from a single album. The record's 44-year history says more about how albums are built now than about any one song on it.
Across five genres and six decades, the version of the song everybody knows almost always wasn't the first one made -- rejected by its first singer, written for someone else entirely, or left to sit unnoticed for years before the right voice found it.
The San Jose Sharks quietly retired their custom goal song, 'Power Bite,' after internet detectives traced its producer to a Suno-generated remix with the same lyrics -- a one-season run that ended the moment anyone actually checked.
Ariana Grande's comeback single drew a wave of fans calling it AI-made with zero actual evidence -- a reflex that's becoming pop fandom's go-to insult for 'I don't like this,' right as real, documented AI-music cases keep piling up elsewhere.
Taylor Swift's 'The Encore' places four new songs in the Hot 100's top five, ending Ella Langley's outright-record 24-week run at No. 1 -- and bumping last week's own No. 1 and No. 4 clean out of the top 10 in the process.
Mahalia Jackson, Judy Collins, and Brandon Lake take on Fanny Crosby's 1873 hymn of total certainty, while Jonathan McReynolds, Josiah Queen, and Sinach all write new songs that earn their certainty the slow way instead of declaring it upfront.
Asher White has self-recorded and self-released indie rock for a decade, put out two full albums in 2026 alone, and just followed a Rolling Stone 'Future 25' nod with a seven-song Bandcamp surprise, Attic Tapes Vol. 1, built from four-track demos she'd been sitting on since 2023.
'Man I Need' had already topped charts on four continents and cleared a billion Spotify streams before it ever touched the US Hot 100. It just took the slowest-moving chart in American music ten weeks to notice.
Nat King Cole, Billy Joel, the Bee Gees, MC Lyte, Nickelback and BTS -- six records, 1951 to 2020, each one the single song that ended up defining everything its artist did afterward, for better or worse.
'Costume Change' packs a trap verse, a lounge-singer bridge, a ten-second hardcore breakdown, and a gospel outro into two minutes and fifty seconds, and somehow mostly holds together.
Taylor Swift's 'I Knew It, I Knew You' debuted at No. 1 on the strength of a Toy Story 5 credit and nothing else, and it's the clearest current example of a trend that's quietly hollowed out one of pop's oldest, most legitimate forms.
The best-reviewed song on the Hot 100 top 10 for ten straight weeks finally reaches No. 1, dethroning Ella Langley's record-setting 23-week run, while ADÉLA's 'Nicole Kidman' cracks the top 10 for the first time.
'Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing' as sung by the Tabernacle Choir, Sufjan Stevens, and Forrest Frank, plus three new songs -- from Ella Langley, CeCe Winans and Shirley Caesar, and Steven Malcolm with for KING + COUNTRY and KB -- about doubt, longing, and being told yes.
I Lost My Way for Centuries is The Drin's 23-track, roughly 75-minute double album -- recorded and engineered by the band in an attic, released September 18 on Cincinnati's independent Feel It Records, and drawing Spacemen 3 and Amon Düül comparisons from critics.
ADÉLA's 'Nicole Kidman' looks like a novelty built on a name-drop, and it has just jumped from No. 45 to No. 22 on the Hot 100 and taken the top spot on Spotify's daily U.S. chart. What's actually holding the joke up is a 1986 gospel record and a chart run the joke alone can't explain.
Iron Maiden, New Order and four Early Influence honorees from the Rock Hall's class of 2026 -- each with a record whose origin story begins with a poem, a sleeve, a bombing, a raid, a slur or another writer's lyric.
King Ayisoba plays a homemade two-string lute and sings in three voices, one of them his grandfather's -- and Pure Confusion, cut live in a single afternoon, then handed to an On-U Sound dub producer and a Yardbirds harmonica player.
Four new songs were bolted onto a year-old album, announced on a Wednesday and out by Friday, and Spotify says they broke a 2026 single-day record. Reviewers split on whether the new songs add anything, and the split points at a bigger problem with the deluxe-edition treadmill.
Ella Langley's 'Choosin' Texas' logs a 23rd week at No. 1 and takes sole possession of the longest run in Hot 100 history from Mariah Carey, while a reshuffled top 10 leaves the three lowest-scored records in the top 10 sitting at Nos. 4 through 6.
'Precious Lord, Take My Hand' as recorded by Mahalia Jackson, Al Green, and Ledisi, plus three new songs -- from Mariah Carey and The Clark Sisters, Jamie MacDonald, and Anne Wilson with Cole Swindell -- about the vows and releases that follow a plea.
applied communications bites the big one is Max Wood's nine-track, 23-minute return to a project he first launched in 2005 -- released September 25 on the project's own Bandcamp page, and named Bandcamp Daily's Album of the Day the same day.
Beck released 'Ride Lonesome' in April with no album attached. Seven days ago the record it turned out to open finally arrived, his first in seven years, and the reviews are split between 'drop-dead gorgeous' and 'repetitive' -- a fight that starts with this one song.
Six songs from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 2026 Performer class -- Phil Collins, Luther Vandross, Billy Idol, Sade, Wu-Tang Clan and Oasis -- and a shared fact: none of them topped the Hot 100 or the UK singles chart.
A three-year-old AI polar bear image, a date that never had an event attached, and Oliver Tree's 'Life Goes On' -- how the strangest meme song of September got assembled, and what nobody can say about why.
Macklemore was dropped from Ed Sheeran's Loop Tour after two shows, four more acts walked out within hours of Sheeran's statement, and his Philadelphia apology for unspecified 'mistakes' left everyone unsatisfied. This is a story about how a tour got managed, not about which side is right.
Ella Langley's 'Choosin' Texas' logs a 22nd week at No. 1 and ties 'All I Want for Christmas Is You' for the longest run in Hot 100 history, while KAROL G, Judeline and rusowsky's 'BbY WOW' climbs 16-10 to become the top 10's only new arrival.
'Great Is Thy Faithfulness' made famous, showcased, and made congregational -- by George Beverly Shea, Carrie Underwood and CeCe Winans, and Shane & Shane -- plus three new Dove-nominated songs about admitting what you're actually afraid of.
MOIREMOIREMOIRE, self-released direct from Ruairi O'Brien's own Bandcamp with no label anywhere near it, landed in Bandcamp Daily's Essential Releases and drew comparisons to Alex G and Car Seat Headrest for good reason.
Three weeks after Dolly Parton's death, her catalog is still moving on the charts in real time -- and on the September 12 Hot 100, '9 to 5' quietly passed 'Jolene' to become her highest-charting song, a title 'Jolene' had held since 1974.
From Eric Carmen splitting royalties with Rachmaninoff's estate to Nas building a children's-education single around 'Fur Elise,' five different decades of pop, disco, and hip-hop all borrowed the same source material: the classical repertoire.
Muse spent a quarter-century writing songs about surveillance, control, and technology closing in on the individual -- and this week, an actual AI agent named Muse took the band's own social media handles.
Josh Fawaz's AI-assisted club remix of 'Like a Prayer' topped Australian radio, then got caught -- and the fallout pushed ARIA into becoming the first national chart body anywhere to formally ban wholly AI-generated recordings.
Ella Langley's 'Choosin' Texas' logs a 21st week at No. 1, one week from tying 'All I Want for Christmas Is You' for the longest run in Hot 100 history, holiday songs included -- while Bruno Mars' 'Risk It All' quietly re-enters the top 10 seven months after release.
'His Eye Is on the Sparrow' covered across nearly sixty years by Ethel Waters, Lauryn Hill and Tanya Blount, and Whitney Houston, plus three new songs that each hand a grief or a testimony to someone you wouldn't expect to be carrying it.
The Lemoine Point is the debut LP from Blind Yeo, a lockdown-born Cornish collective who record wherever they can find room -- out now on the tiny Geneva label Bongo Joe Records, and drawing real comparisons to Stereolab and Gong from critics who found it before most of the industry did.
Sam Fender wrote 'Rein Me In' as a solo album track. It only became a duet because Olivia Dean joined him on stage and the crowd wouldn't let it go back to being anything else -- and it went on to break a UK chart record that had survived since 1953.
From a 1946 bluegrass waltz to a 1992 Tejano standard, this week's six-genre, six-decade run keeps turning up the same twist: the songwriter, the session player, or the credit line wasn't who the record made famous.
Thorn Wych carves her own instruments out of tree branches in her Lancashire backyard and records them alone at home -- and Aesthesis, freshly repressed and back in Bandcamp Daily's Essential Releases, sounds so deliberately ancient that the only thing that gives it away as a 2025 record is the effects pedal.
Suno ran an ad of Mary J. Blige seemingly endorsing its AI music platform, then admitted she never approved it -- days after a federal lawsuit accused the same company of encoding artists' identities into its model without consent. Neither is a one-off.
Ella Langley's 'Choosin' Texas' logs a 20th week at No. 1, moving past a tie into sole possession of the longest non-holiday reign in Hot 100 history -- while the rest of the top 10 is the same chart this column already reviewed, with only Dracula and I Can't Love You Anymore swapping two spots.
'It Is Well with My Soul' covered three ways across nearly sixty years, plus three new religious songs each carrying real, documented weight behind the writing.
Love Aggregates is Asher White's second Joyful Noise Recordings album of 2026 -- a breakup record that moves from threadbare folk to horn-charted power-pop to string writing that owes more to contemporary classical music than to the singer-songwriter tradition.
A 30th-anniversary reissue of Ben Folds Five's self-titled debut pairs the album everyone knows with Shelved First Attempt, a scrapped early session Ben Folds found on his own forgotten DATs -- and 'Underground' is the one song that survives both takes.
Six genres, six decades, one shared trait: every record here hits an even 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, or 80 years old in 2026.
Engelbert Humperdinck's Faithfully turns KISS, Journey, the Beatles, Aerosmith, and Ozzy Osbourne into orchestral supper-club numbers -- with several of the original songwriters and players guesting on their own material.
$TARFACE isn't terrible because Tyga used AI -- it's terrible because the record itself, by every account including some sympathetic ones, doesn't hold up, and he told everyone why before the reviews even ran.
Ella Langley's 'Choosin' Texas' hits 19 weeks at No. 1, tying the longest run in Hot 100 history -- while the rest of the top 10 is nearly identical to last week's, with Stella Lefty's 'Boston' the only real mover.
'How Great Thou Art' covered three ways across sixty years, plus three new religious songs that each broke through a different way -- a viral TV moment, a TikTok trend nobody planned, and plain vocal craft.
Primate House's self-titled LP started as sessions in 2016, sat unfinished through a years-long hiatus, and got mixed into existence this year by the band's own bassist -- and it's genuinely one of the sharpest-sounding indie rock records of the year.
ANOTR and 54 Ultra's 'Talk to You' was already a real dance-chart hit before John Stones pranked Thomas Tuchel to it in a World Cup dressing room -- now it's a Song of Summer contender that neither act built for a football tournament.
Six genres, six decades, one theme: a piece of gear that could have stayed a gimmick, and instead became the reason each of these records is still remembered.
River Cain isn't a person -- and the fabricated act got real iTunes chart placements on the back of AGT audition footage that never happened.
Slayr's Vocaloid-sampling single was a real win — until part of the reaction to it turned into exactly the kind of racism the vocaloid fandom keeps failing to deal with.
Launching Mega Monday with the full Billboard Hot 100 top 10 for the week of August 22, 2026 — where the chart and the criticism agree, and the three specific places they don't.
Launching Sacred Sunday's standing format: two different artists covering one well-known hymn, and two new religious songs about the gap between the room a song is written in and the room it ends up filling.
Softcult's debut LP is self-written, self-recorded, self-produced, and self-engineered by two Ontario siblings in a home studio — and the record is genuinely good on its own merits.
Ella Langley's 'Choosin' Texas' has spent 18 nonconsecutive weeks at No. 1 with no gimmick, no feature, and no sample — just a dance-hall breakup song and one very specific idea.
Launching Throwback Thursday with ten records across ten genres and fifty-four years — each one famous for a call that very nearly went differently.
Launching Wack Wednesday with two AI-music charting hits that took opposite paths on disclosure — one got caught, one never hid anything.