Each week we take a look the Billboard Country Airplay chart and grade the top 30 songs. The grading format I use each week is every song will receive one of the following scores: +5, +4, +3, +2, +1, 0, -1, -2, -3, -4, -5. These will then be tallied up for an overall score, or pulse of the current top thirty country songs, with the highest possible score being a +150 and the lowest possible score being a -150. How do I determine the score for the song? The review grade it received on the site or myself will determine this. If it hasn’t been reviewed yet, then I will make the call. The grade it has received or I would give it determines its Pulse score. The grading key: 10 [+5], 9 [+4], 8 [+3], 7 [+2], 6 [+1], 5 [0], 4 [-1], 3 [-2], 2 [-3], 1 [-4], 0 [-5].
The goal of this exercise is to evaluate the current state of mainstream country music and determine if it’s improving or getting worse. Let’s take a look at this week’s top thirty…
- Sam Hunt – “Make You Miss Me” -4 (Up 1)
- Jake Owen – “American Generic Country Love Song” -2 (Up 2)
- Kelsea Ballerini – “Peter Pan” -1
- Dierks Bentley & Elle King – “Different For Girls” -3 (Up 2)
- Dan + Shay – “From The Ground Up” +1 (Down 4)
- Justin Moore – “You Look Like I Need A Drink” +2 (Down 1)
- Blake Shelton – “She’s Got A Way With Words” -3 (Up 3)
- Kenny Chesney & Pink – “Setting The World On Fire” -2 (Up 4)
- Tucker Beathard – “Rock On” -3 (Up 2)
- William Michael Morgan – “I Met A Girl” +3 (Up 3)
- Billy Currington – “It Don’t Hurt Like It Used To” +2 (Up 3)
- LoCash – “I Know Somebody” -5 (Up 3) [Worst Song]
- Luke Bryan – “Move” -4 (Up 4)
- Cole Swindell – “Middle of a Memory” -2 (Up 4)
- Zac Brown Band – “Castaway” +1 (Up 1)
- Brett Young – “Sleep Without You” -2 (Up 4)
- Jason Aldean – “A Little More Summertime” 0 (Up 5)
- Miranda Lambert – “Vice” +3 (Up 1) [Best Song]
- Big & Rich (feat. Tim McGraw) – “Lovin’ Lately” +2 (Up 2)
- Tim McGraw – “How I’ll Always Be” +3 (Up 4)
- Drake White – “Livin’ The Dream” +1 (Up 4)
- Old Dominion – “Song For Another Time” -3 (Up 4)
- Maren Morris – “80s Mercedes” -1 (Up 4)
- Granger Dibbles Jr. – “If The Boots Fits” -4 (Up 4)
- Florida Georgia Line (feat. Tim McGraw) – “May We All” -3 (New to Top 30)
- Brett Eldredge – “Wanna Be That Song” 0 (Up 3)
- Brothers Osborne – “21 Summer” +2 (Up 3)
- Lauren Alaina – “Road Less Traveled” -3 (New to Top 30)
- Keith Urban – “Blue Ain’t Your Color” -4 (New to Top 30)
- Chris Stapleton – “Parachute” +3 (New to Top 30)
The Current Pulse of Mainstream Country Music: -30
The pulse drops five spots this week. It’s going in the wrong direction!
Songs That Dropped Out of the Top 30 This Week:
- Chris Lane – “Fix” -5 (Good bye and good riddance! May we never see another Chris Lane song in the top 30 ever again.)
- Florida Georgia Line – “H.O.L.Y.” -2
- Jon Pardi – “Head Over Boots” +3
- Brad Paisley & Demi Lovato – “Without A Fight” +2
Songs That Entered The Top 30 This Week:
- Florida Georgia Line (feat. Tim McGraw) – “May We All”
- On the surface this song should be decent. After all Tim McGraw is all involved and he’s consistently been churning out the most quality country singles at country radio the past couple of years. Surely his quality could rub off and help Florida Georgia Line produce their third good song ever. If anything it should be better than the vanilla “H.O.L.Y.” Well after listening thoroughly to this track, I can say no to both of these. This song is a good reminder that Joey Moi is still the producer of this duo. There’s no other way to put it: the production on this song flat-out sucks. It’s obnoxiously loud and in your face while trying to be pop, country, rock and hip-hop all at once. Then you get to the lyrics, which look like leftovers from the bro country era. We also get a line throwing together Travis Tritt and Tupac, who are both fine artists but don’t really need to be name dropped together. Everything about this song is just so lazy and the only redeeming quality it has is Tim McGraw, who kind of mails in his performance. I don’t blame him and I imagine he had to do this song so he could release songs like “Humble and Kind” as singles. 2/10
- Lauren Alaina – “Road Less Traveled”
- This is the newest On The Verge pick, in case you were wondering why Lauren Alaina went from irrelevant to rising at a meteoric pace on the airplay chart. This is the same feature that has brought us craptastic artists such as Sam Hunt, Chase Bryant, Canaan Smith and Tucker Beathard. Now let me state right up front that I think Alaina is a talented vocalist that is capable of producing great music. Alan Jackson picked her to open for him on tour this year for a reason. I would take her over Scotty boy any day and she should have won American Idol over him. But this song is just not good and quite frankly not country. It’s a catchy pop song with a generic message of never giving up. There’s not a lot of meat and whole a lot of fluff to this song. I wanted to like it, but I just can’t. More unfortunately is I don’t see this giving her career a big boost. Once this song gets its fake rise to the top of the chart I don’t see the follow-up doing much because this is still country radio where they don’t play women. Alaina and her fans need to enjoy the ride to the top now because the crash back to reality later isn’t going to feel too good. 2/10
- Keith Urban – “Blue Ain’t Your Color”
- Keith Urban is on a race to the bottom of the barrel! His single choices in the Ripcord era have been downright pathetic and reek of an older artist that is desperate to remain relevant and in the spotlight. With this single Urban releases the worst yet. This is a straight rip off of Sam Hunt’s mega hit “Take Your Time.” Just like that song it’s about a sleazy douche who acts all innocent and will fein genuine caring for a broken-hearted girl at the bar all in the hopes he can take her pants off later in the night. It’s disgusting, in bad taste and Urban will fool tons of people into believing his phoniness. The only thing that saves this from the very bottom and makes it slightly better than Hunt’s “Take Your Time” is the well composed instrumentation that is wasted on garbage lyrics. Congrats Keith Urban on losing any shred of respect I had left for you. 1/10
- Chris Stapleton – “Parachute”
- My God! Is it really a Stapleton song in the top 30? After the first three new arrivals this song is a huge breath of fresh air. While it’s not on the level of the previous single “Nobody To Blame,” this is a pretty damn good song. The catchy guitar riffs will instantly get stuck in your head and Stapleton absolutely belts the chorus of this song. There are better love songs on Traveller, but I found this to be one of the most enjoyable tracks on it. Hopefully this song has a long stay on the chart and ultimately has a good showing. I give it a solid shot at reaching the top ten, especially since I imagine Mercury will push this for a while being that it’s pretty much a lock that it’s the final single from Traveller. But once again we have Stapleton music in the top 30 and that’s something we should all be happy about. 8/10
Song I Predict Will Be #1 Next Week:
- Jake Owen – “American Generic Country Love Song”
Biggest Gainers This Week:
- Lauren Alaina – “Road Less Traveled” – Up 29 from #57 to #28
- Keith Urban – “Blue Ain’t Your Color” – Up 19 from #48 to #29
- Jason Aldean – “A Little More Summertime” – Up 5 from #22 to #17
Biggest Losers This Week:
- Chris Lane – “Fix” – Out of the Top 30 (& Finally Done)
- Florida Georgia Line – “H.O.L.Y.” – Out of the Top 30 (& Done)
- Jon Pardi – “Head Over Boots” – Out of the Top 30 (& Done)
- Brad Paisley & Demi Lovato – “Without A Fight” – Out of the Top 30 (& Done)
Songs I See Going Recurrent & Leaving The Top 30 Soon:
- Dan + Shay – “From The Ground Up”
On The Hot Seat:
- Zac Brown Band – “Castaway” (It’s been struggling for weeks and a couple of songs seem to leap-frog it each week. At the very least it’s something to keep an eye on.)
Next Four Songs I See Entering Top 30:
- Jerrod Niemann & Lee Brice – “A Little More Love” (Why is Donkey guy coming back?)
- Carrie Underwood – “Dirty Laundry”
- Eric Church (feat. Rhiannon Giddens) – “Kill A Word”
- Chris Janson – “Holdin’ Her”
Note: Thomas Rhett’s “Vacation” appears to be on its last legs, as it lost over 400k in audience this week. So it looks like it won’t be reaching the top 30 and is hands down a major flop. And to think I had the rant of all rants lined up for this song. I guess I’ll have to save it for the end of the year where it’s almost a lock to win Country Perspective’s 2016 Worst Song of the Year.
As always be sure to weigh in on this week’s Pulse in the comments below.
