Mega Monday: Three of Last Week's Four New Top-5 Songs Just Vanished From the Top 10
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.
By Song Reviews · October 19, 2026
What Mega Monday Is
Every Monday, Song Reviews takes the previous week’s Billboard Hot 100 top 10 and asks the one question a chart position can’t answer on its own: is the popularity deserved? Last week’s column flagged a deluxe-era rollout mechanism worth watching – four simultaneous new entries from one fanbase can flood the top five regardless of individual quality. This week’s chart is the fastest possible confirmation of that thesis.
This Week’s Chart
The Hot 100, week of October 17, 2026:
| # | Song | Artist | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Patient Zero | Taylor Swift | 5.8/10 – holds No. 1 for a second week. |
| 2 | Choosin’ Texas | Ella Langley | Settles at No. 2 after its outright-record 24-week reign at the top ended the week prior. Already given the full Feature Friday treatment, not re-reviewed here. |
| 3 | Boston | Stella Lefty | 8.0/10 – climbs three spots back to No. 3, still the top 10’s best-reviewed song by a wide margin. |
| 4 | Been by Now | Morgan Wallen | 7.3/10 – rises to No. 4. |
| 5 | Solar Eclipse | Drake & Don Toliver | 5.6/10 – new entry, debuts at No. 5. |
| 6 | Dracula | Tame Impala & JENNIE | 6.4/10 – jumps to No. 6. |
| 7 | Hate That I Made You Love Me | Ariana Grande | 6.0/10 – holds at No. 7. |
| 8 | stupid song | Olivia Rodrigo | 7.4/10 – rises to No. 8. |
| 9 | Nicole Kidman | Adéla | 7.1/10 – new entry, debuts at No. 9. |
| 10 | BbY WOW | KAROL G, Judeline & rusowsky | 7.7/10 – holds on at No. 10. |
Is the Popularity Deserved?
Start with what isn’t on this list anymore. Last Monday’s column covered four new Taylor Swift songs flooding positions one, three, four, and five off “The Encore”’s simultaneous deluxe rollout. One week later, three of those four – “Cleveland!,” “Babylon,” and “Pink Clouding” – have fallen completely out of the top 10, settling at No. 40, No. 34, and No. 38 respectively. Only “Patient Zero,” the single actually being pushed and promoted as a lead track, held its ground. That’s close to the cleanest possible demonstration of last week’s point: a coordinated streaming surge can put four songs in the top five for exactly one week, regardless of individual merit, and then gravity takes over once the surge itself isn’t being refreshed. The three weakest of the four are already gone. The score this column gave each of them a week ago – competent, not more – turned out to be a more durable prediction than their chart positions were.
The record that ended is still the most interesting story on the chart, and it got stranger this week rather than quieter. Ella Langley’s “Choosin’ Texas” settles at No. 2 after its historic 24-week, six-separate-ascent reign at No. 1 – the longest run atop the Hot 100 in the chart’s history, non-holiday or otherwise – came to a close. But the song isn’t fading into catalog the way most dethroned No. 1s do: this week’s new entry at No. 5, Drake and Don Toliver’s “Solar Eclipse,” builds its entire hook out of “Choosin’ Texas”‘s own melody and chorus line, Auto-Tuned and relocated into hip-hop/R&B territory with one word swapped for a drug reference. It’s an unusual kind of tribute – a song borrowing directly from the record it’s charting three spots behind – and Friday’s column will give the full relationship between these two songs, and the year “Choosin’ Texas” has had, the longer treatment it deserves.
Everything else this week sorts into the same two buckets this column keeps finding: songs the chart already knows are good (Stella Lefty’s “Boston” still the week’s best-reviewed holdover, Olivia Rodrigo’s “stupid song” and KAROL G’s “BbY WOW” both earning their spots the slow way, on streaming that kept building rather than a single promotional surge) and new arrivals leaning on something other than pure songwriting to get here. Adéla’s “Nicole Kidman,” this week’s other new top-10 entry, is the more honest version of that second category – a thin premise, turned into a hit mostly by a genuinely well-aimed music video and a real, unprompted Nicole Kidman co-sign, rather than a built-in fanbase or a borrowed hook. “Solar Eclipse” and “Nicole Kidman” are both charting on something other than the song underneath them. Only one of the two is honest with itself about it.
Hero image: Taylor Swift performing, 2019, by Glenn Francis, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.