A View From The Top #40

So here we are. This week’s A View From The Top is undeniably similar to the last fourteen as Drake refuses to let go of the throne. It is summer sixteen for sure, and Champagne Papi himself must be gleefully rubbing his hands together, saving every dollar he makes for his next club blow out. At this point it’s more than possible that Drake will blast through the longest held UK number one, the practically unlistenable Everything I Do, which lasted a ridiculous sixteen weeks back in 1991. It’s close, but I worry that public opinion might be wearing thin. Not only is One Dance at the top, but Too Good is hovering around at number three. We’ve been playing Drake buckaroo for weeks now, and I think his time is almost up.

Personally, I think the Drake-centric current charts are amazing. I don’t know if I can tell you a Drake song that I don’t think is great. He’s my most played artist of the year, and there’s something about his smooth yet insecure demeanour that I can’t get enough of.

But Adele is there, waiting, pulling an Ed Sheeran. Send My Love (To Your New Lover) is pretty good as well, and she’s wearing a great dress in the video. If people are getting sick of the Six God this will be enough to knock him out for a while. It’s such a nice change of pace (not exactly a change of tone; she is nothing if not consistent in that regard) to hear a faster tempo Adele song, and it’s even got a summery kick. It’s at five right now, up one place from last week, and I think it’ll creep further up.

Controlla has slipped down to number 23 but will always be in my heart and in my headphones, so what will come next from Views? I’d love it to be Childs Play (please go and listen to it if you haven’t, it’s about him fighting with his girlfriend in The Cheesecake Factory) but I think it might be Hype. It’s sonically different, more like Worst Behaviour, which might go down well now that we’ve had so much of Drake trying to seduce us that you’d be tempted to unmatch him on Tinder for coming on too strong.

Rihanna is having a great time as a featuring artist right now too, tempering Drake on Too Good, and making Calvin Harris interesting on This Is What You Came For, which is down from its peak at number two, but sitting comfortably at number four. There’s a lot of throwaway house tracks, all of which are fun to dance to but completely forgettable. Sia is hanging around at the bottom of the top 10 with another song so perfectly crafted and individual that I can’t tell it from her last. It’s not that I don’t like Sia, it’s just that listening to her music just makes me feel incredibly fearful. She’s the pop music version of Judge Dredd, the authoritarian law of what creativity is.

To sign off a fairly still week in the charts, I foresee a dark cloud creeping in. Shawn Mendes is up nine places, cropping up at twenty this week. He cannot be more than a one hit wonder, I absolutely refuse to let this happen again. Anyone who cites John Mayer as a musical influence is, quite frankly, not to be trusted.