State Champ Radio Tracks Ranked
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Park your Lexus, throw your keys up and dig into Billboard’s preliminary ranking and review of Beyoncé’s eighth solo studio album.
03/29/2024
Midway through Everything I Thought It Was, Justin Timberlake makes a callback that he knows his fans are going to love. “Hey fellas! Hey fellas!,” he crows during the dance barnburner “My Favorite Drug,” to which he’s greeted with a chorus of manly “Yeahhhh”s. Timberlake then goes, “I know I did it before, but I’ma do it again!” And after that, of course, he pivots to the ladies: “I know you came here alone, but you gon’ leave with a friend!”
The nod towards the classic call-and-response hook of Justified classic “Señorita” is intentional, and emblematic of what Timberlake has set out to accomplish on his first album since 2018’s Man of the Woods. That album dabbled in country, Americana, traditional R&B and funk through a dance-pop lens; parts of Man of the Woods were captivating, other parts didn’t quite land, and the experiment earned Timberlake some of the harshest critiques of his career.
Six whole years have passed since then, multiple full eras of popular music along with them, and Timberlake has re-emerged with an album that plucks him out of the woods and better understands his core appeal. Everything I Thought It Was finds Timberlake playing the hits to a degree — shimmering rhythmic pop; crackling, Timbaland-helmed beats; disco grooves that aren’t contained to radio-single lengths; even the return of *NSYNC — but also does not represent a retreat into safe territory. Timberlake may be squarely in his forties at this point, but he still aims to have every moment of a sprawling, 76-minute album be considered thrilling. He’s a consummate entertainer who knows what he’s best at, and still finds occasions to operate in the margins of his aesthetic.
Since his last album release, Timberlake has faced newfound public scrutiny, both in regard to his past relationship with Britney Spears as well as for his role in the Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show controversy; Timberlake has revisited these issues himself, while also declaring in concert that he’d like to “apologize to absolutely f–king nobody.” Everything I Thought It Was is bookended by a pair of songs, “Memphis” and “Conditions,” that dissect his relationship to celebrity and the pristine image that he maintained for many years in the spotlight before blemishes began to be highlighted (“I’m less Superman, more Clark Kent/ You want a hero, I don’t know where he went,” he admits on the latter track).
In between those two songs is more than an hour’s worth of finely crafted, wholly satisfying pop, but the beginning and ending stand out, and fascinate, amid renewed scrutiny. Timberlake is known to take roughly a half-decade to craft full-length statements, but let’s hope he comes back sooner next time, and continues to balance sumptuous radio fodder with self-reflection.
While all of Everything I Thought It Was is worth checking out, which tracks are the early standouts? Here is a preliminary ranking of every song on Justin Timberlake’s latest album.
“Flame”
Ariana Grande’s deeply introspective, house-inflected seventh studio album is finally here. See how Billboard ranks each track on Eternal Sunshine.
The arrival of 1989 (Taylor’s Version) was always going to be a big deal: after all, her 2014 album was one of Taylor Swift’s critical and commercial high points, scoring three No. 1 hits on the Hot 100 and winning the album of the year Grammy after fully reinventing the country superstar as a pop […]
In an ever-evolving musical landscape where artists are increasingly unveiling their album release dates with plenty of lead time — unlike the unexpected album drops of yesteryear — Bad Bunny, the Puerto Rican pioneer of the unpredictable, gave fans only a few days’ notice, and revived the art of the surprise. Today, he once again […]
Another day, another Drake album. After nearly 10 months of teasing, delays, and an album campaign characterized by his first poetry book and a 21 Savage-assisted tour equally focused on music and bras, Drake has finally unveiled For All the Dogs. Arriving on the heels of three consecutive Billboard 200-topping projects that were all received […]
It somehow feels like both yesterday and a decade ago that Doja Cat lambasted her fans, told them to “get a job,” and lost nearly 250,000 Instagram followers. The road to Scarlet has been littered with potential blockades, but like a true feline, Doja Cat flexed her nine lives and turned the campaign for her new featureless album into a run that included not just her first unaccompanied Billboard Hot 100 chart-topper, but also the first hip-hop song to reach No. 1 on the chart in 2023.
The last time Doja put out a studio album, she went intergalactic. Wrapping in trap, Afrobeats, slinky R&B and sugar straightforward pop, Planet Her netted Doja a No. 2 peak on the Billboard 200, her first Grammy, and a litany of hits, including the SZA-assisted “Kiss Me More” (No. 3), “Woman” (No. 7), “Need to Know” (No. 8), “You Right” (No. 11, with The Weeknd), and “Get Into It (Yuh)” (No. 20).
Prior to that, the cross-genre marvel joined forces with Nicki Minaj for her first Hot 100 No. 1 single, “Say So” — a nu-disco quarantine anthem that helped launch both its parent album (Hot Pink) and Doja’s career to staggering new heights. In many ways, Scarlet — with its moody overtone and horrorcore-nodding aesthetic — is a response to the precariousness of those heights and the pressures they place on an artist who simply just wants to make music and find happiness in her life.
In many ways, Doja prepped Scarlet as a back-to-basics record that would focus on flaunting her skills as an emcee. She launched the era with the boom-bap-indebted “Attention,” doubled down on the pop-rap with the Dionne Warwick-sampling “Paint the Town Red,” and dabbled in punk-rap and lo-fi on promotional singles “Demons” and “Balut,” respectively. As a complete unit, Scarlet finds Doja flexing her muscle in different rap subgenres as she relies on a fiery new love to release from the twisted hamster wheel of the fanatic-artist dynamic. From jazz rap and punk rap to neo-soul and pluggnb, Doja is at the height of her chameleonic powers on Scarlet.
With a plethora of new songs to sort through and a tour on the horizon, which tracks are the true highlights of this record? Here is a preliminary ranking of every song on Doja Cat’s Scarlet.
“Shutcho”
“Writing songs is my therapy,” Ed Sheeran told his fans upon announcing his new album, –. “It helps me make sense of my feelings.” In early 2022, Sheeran required that outlet: although his latest album, =, had produced a new batch of smashes in “Bad Habits” and “Shivers,” he had been taken to court due to a copyright lawsuit over “Shape of You,” his best friend Jamal Edwards had passed away suddenly at the age of 31, and his pregnant wife was diagnosed with a tumor that couldn’t be treated until after the birth.
That all occurred within the span of a month, and Sheeran’s world was upended — so he decided to examine his feelings through his craft. As suggested by muted lead single “Eyes Closed” and a rollout focused squarely on the acoustic nature of the project, – is not your typical Sheeran album, and doesn’t contain the no-brainer radio hits that have colored his full-lengths over the past five years.
Yet if – marks a searing left turn in Sheeran’s recording career, his songwriting has long been working up towards an unfiltered, emotionally intelligent statement like this. A superstar who grew from busking on the street to playing stadiums — with just himself onstage, no less — over the course of a decade, Sheeran has been gradually improving his song construction without relying too much on pop machinery, and sounds ready to meet this moment.
Bringing in Aaron Dessner, The National polymath who helped Taylor Swift explore the indie-folk woods on Folklore and Evermore, to help produce this vision was a wise decision. Dessner helps Sheeran understand when to assemble a city of instruments around his pain, and when to leave it unadorned.
Some moments are more affecting than others, but ultimately, – succeeds due to its unabashed honesty: from unyielding grief to thoughts of ending it all, Sheeran never shies away from the most curdled pieces of his soul here. The album may not become a blockbuster, but commendably, Sheeran’s intent is catharsis, not commercial returns. More A-listers should take risks like this.
So which tracks represent the early standouts? Although all of Sheeran’s new album is worth exploring, here is a preliminary ranking of every song on the standard edition of –.
“Spark”
On “Spark,” Sheeran and his romantic partner set fire to their troubled past, tossing petty arguments and unnecessary tears into a metaphorical flame, then concluding, “We hope the spark survives.” The song gets off the ground conceptually, its orchestral sweep is marked by an elliptical piano line — and while other songs on the album allow this particular sound to take flight more memorably, “Spark” serves as capable connective tissue in the album’s back half.
“Borderline”
There aren’t many popular artists who could handle an all-falsetto chorus like the one Sheeran deploys on “Borderline,” a piano-led rumination on lingering depression — but he powers through in his upper register, blurting out confessions and rhetorical questions with a naked fragility. And the way Sheeran comes down from that high — yearning through plain-spoken lines like “Guess I should take this on the chin / But I don’t even know how all of this began” — makes “Borderline” an even more compelling listen.
“Colourblind”
Sheeran has always been adept at engineering a waltzing love song, but “Colourblind” offers a twist on the formula of “Thinking Out Loud” and “Perfect” thanks to a newfound maturity — instead of focusing on exploding romance, Sheeran sings about being able to relax with a partner, and wash away all of the day’s brightest hues during a quiet night together. “Colourblind” captures the personal evolution of Sheeran, no longer pluckily searching for love and instead writing about his own grounded reality.
“Vega”
While all of us experience personal hardships, Sheeran has done so as one of the most famous musical artists on the planet — and on the hushed, confessional “Vega,” he admits to struggling as he’s dealt with difficult moments (here, his wife’s diagnosis), especially under the brightest spotlight. “Vega” shines thanks to its lyrical detail: when Sheeran sings, “Need rest, bite, bleed time dry / She’ll be fine, she’ll be fine” as the strings swell, the listener can picture him pacing in a room, alone with his desperation.
“Life Goes On”
Remember back in 2017, when Sheeran launched his ÷ album by releasing “Shape of You” and “Castle on the Hill” on the same day? Consider the back-to-back placement of “Eyes Closed” and “Life Goes On” early in the – track list as a one-two gut-punch that tackles a shared theme of grief through wholly different approaches: here, Sheeran does away with anything hummable, reflecting on his friend’s death with uncluttered folk and a cracked voice.
“Boat”
“Boat” was apparently stripped down from a heavily orchestrated track into a simple acoustic guitar song, although some of the strings and grand piano can still be heard in the mix. Sheeran was correct to pivot: “Boat” works better as both an album opener and an anthem of resilience due to its simplicity, his voice gathering strength as he repeats the line, “But the waves won’t break my boat.”
“Curtains”
Dessner packs “Curtains” with ornate production details — playing a whopping 11 instruments himself on the track, while recruiting his brother (and The National band mate) Bryce to play a few as well — but the drums, courtesy of James McAlister, hit the hardest, and offer some rare rock-band tumbles. “Curtains” ponders the moment when it feels okay to whisk away the shades and bask in the sun following personal devastation, and its combination of driving tempo and rousing messaging makes the song an easy choice for a future single.
“No Strings”
Immediately following “Sycamore,” a panicked song about preparing for the worst news imaginable, on the album’s track list, “No Strings” acts as both a sigh of relief and affirmation: the worst has passed, and now, Sheeran and his partner can overcome anything together. “We tore the walls down to build them up / Never was in doubt,” Sheeran sings with brimming confidence — and that’s before the drums kick in to add heft to the graceful piano and Sheeran’s soothing words.
“Dusty”
“There’s more than sadness we got within us / Let’s put some color into the grey,” Sheeran softly declares on “Dusty,” a restrained electro-pop track inspired by listening to Dusty Springfield with his young daughter. After a run of wrenching songs, “Dusty” offers a calm reprieve: the synths, programmed drums and guitar congeal into a midtempo sway-along, and Sheeran’s voice is often doubled, as if he’s finally arrived at a supported moment.
“Salt Water”
In between the two pre-release songs on the – track list, “Boat” and “Eyes Closed,” sits perhaps the darkest song of Sheeran’s career: “Salt Water” finds the singer-songwriter prodding his own suicidal thoughts, belting out, “I’m free in salt water / Embrace the deep and leave everything” over a tangle of guitars, cello and tambourine. With its backing vocals on the chorus, “Salt Water” soars as a folk-pop sing-along when divorced from its lyrical context — but as it stands, the longest song on the album is ambitiously unnerving.
“Eyes Closed”
Lead single “Eyes Closed” translates so many of Sheeran’s top 40 trademarks — the earworm intro, the emphasized first line of the chorus, the post-refrain vocal hook — into a quiet, mournful song about not knowing how to move forward after losing a loved one. On an album like –, “Eyes Closed” makes for the perfect radio offering, crystallizing the project’s sorrow and presenting the emotion as a catchy, universal product (Max Martin, Shellback and Fred Again.., who produced the track alongside Dessner, surely helped with that effect).
“The Hills of Aberfeldy”
Sheeran began dreaming up the idea of – years ago, and that idea kept getting pushed back and shape-shifted — but “The Hills of Aberfeldy,” written with Foy Vance when Sheeran was an aspiring singer-songwriter, was always intended as the closing track whenever that album came out. Today, “Aberfeldy” sparkles in its wide-eyed intimacy, a rustic love song with string interludes and a sense of patience — as if its message was always meant to endure, after the song was so long preserved.
“End of Youth”
Longtime Sheeran fans slightly thrown off by this album’s shift in tone, and looking for a song to unlock the heaviness, should consider starting with “End of Youth,” which distills all of Sheeran’s best qualities — his sense of melody, his impactful lyricism, his ability to let his voice roam into both huge falsettos and patient rapping without losing its center — into the full-length’s darker shades. The meditation on losing your innocence is purposely bleak, but over a steady beat, Sheeran is firing on all cylinders.
“Sycamore”
Sheeran wrote “Sycamore” in a state of dread, attempting to focus on a beautiful tree while his wife’s pregnancy complications were unraveling the fabric of his world. That fear resulted in one of the most gorgeously rendered songs of the singer-songwriter’s career: in the same way that “Sycamore” finds Sheeran’s life evolving while overcoming devastation, he uses the song to grow his craft, tossing out open-ended questions and ideas of love’s cyclical nature within straightforward melodies and full-hearted vocals. “Sycamore” will possibly make you cry; within Sheeran’s growing catalog, it will definitely stand out.
Morgan Wallen has lots to say on his third album, One Thing at a Time, and it’s almost all fermented in alcohol. If albums came with an alcohol content warning, the 36-track One Thing would easily register 180 proof. Though that’s no surprise, given the undeniable success Wallen has experienced referenced drinking in his previous two albums, when listening to One Thing in one take, the constant liquor references start to blur into each other, aided by the plethora of similar-sounding mid-tempo tracks. How many ways can Wallen try to dull the pain of heartache with alcohol? It turns out the answer is infinite.
Speaking of proofs, the Joey Moi-produced One Thing at a Time has already entered the record books via its lead single, “You Proof,” which became the first 10-week No. 1 in the history of Billboard’s Country Airplay chart. With Wallen’s previous set, Dangerous: The Double Album, still sitting in the top 5 of the all-genre Billboard 200 albums chart in its 111th week of release, his fans show no sign of fatigue.
When Wallen announced the new set, out on Big Loud/Mercury/Republic today (March 3), he said the songs represent the last few years of his life and drew upon the three musical genres that have influenced him the most — country, alternative and hip-hop. While there are traces of the latter two on the album (including “180 (Lifestyle),” which interpolates Rich Gang’s 2014 rap smash, “Lifestyle”), most of the set falls squarely in the contemporary country pocket that has made Wallen the genre’s biggest star of the past five years.
Wallen co-wrote 14 of the tracks, but makes even the 22 compositions he didn’t write his own. Vocally, he sounds more assured than ever before, letting his twangy voice slip and slide over the melodies. For devout Wallen fans, too much of a good thing can just be wonderful. For the rest, best to take the album in smaller bites.
Below are our recommendations for the best 10 tracks on One Thing, listed in order of their appearance on the album.
“Born With a Beer in My Hand”
Image Credit: Matt Winkelmeyer/GI for iHeartRadio
Written by Wallen with buddy HARDY and Zach Abend, the album opener sets a tone that runs through much of the release: Wallen wrestling with his alcohol-fueled dark side. Here, as he catalogs how he comes from a long line of drinkers, he also paints a picture of someone trying to stay in the light no matter the temptation as he embraces sobriety, at least for a while: “I ain’t saying I swore it off for good/ I’m just sayin’ I’m doing the best I can,” he sings in this mid-tempo swayer.
“Everything I Love”
Wallen, a co-writer here, kicks it old-school country on this chugging tune framed by solid slide guitar. Though the melody is ridiculously bouncy (think Kenny Rogers mid-‘80s), Wallen is shattered that he can’t go to any of his old haunts or enjoy his old lifestyle because everything reminds him of the gal who broke his heart. An interpolation of The Allman Brothers’ “Midnight Rider” includes several lyrical references to “one more silver dollar.”
“Devil Don’t Know”
The mid-tempo ballad, written by Travis Denning, Jared Mullins and Ben Stennis, highlights what Wallen does best — wallow in love’s misery. “I’ve been tryin’ to drown these demons, but damn if they don’t swim,” he sings as the knowledge that the one he loves is with someone else sinks in. “Even the devil don’t know this kind of hell,” he sings convincingly.
“One Thing at a Time”
Image Credit: John Shearer
Just try not to sing along to this toe-tapping tune that features one of the most infectious melodies that Wallen has ever recorded. It’s pure pop — so much so that it feels like it should be played back-to-back with Kelsea Ballerini’s similar ear worm, “Heartfirst.” Except since it’s Wallen, there’s no joy, only the acknowledgement that if he’s going to have to give up his ex, he can’t relinquish his cigarettes and liquor too. “If you ain’t gonna kiss me/ Then I’ll take some whiskey,” he sings. Facing her loss sober is a bridge too far.
“Thought You Should Know”
This genial ode to Wallen’s mom sits at No. 1 on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart this week, his second chart topper from One Thing at a Time, following “You Proof.” But the two songs couldn’t be more different: Written by Wallen with Nicolle Galyon and Miranda Lambert, this track, bolstered by the great Paul Franklin’s steel playing, is his end of a phone conversation with his mother while he’s on tour. Wallen’s eager to let her know that “all those prayers you thought you wasted on me/ must’ve finally made their way through.”
“Neon Star (Country Boy Lullaby)”
Grab your boots and get ready to do a slow two-step to this finger-snapping tune that would sound right at home on a Thomas Rhett album. Wallen’s girl’s gone, and he’s gone straight to the local watering hole to drown his sorrows. He’s “wishin’ on a neon star” hanging behind the bar that “there’s a u-turn in your car” and she’ll return home.
“Wine Into Water”
In a song that could be part two of “Neon Star,” Wallen wraps his vocals around this woeful tale of regret as he waits on the porch for his love to return so he can apologize and they can sink into the bottle he’s brought. Country lyrics are known for their clever wordplay and this song is no exception, as Wallen hopes to put their problems behind them “and turn this wine into water under the bridge.”
“Single Than She Was”
Image Credit: Brian Friedman
Wallen is charmingly confident as he woos a woman in a bar who’s possibly been stood up by her beau, and by the time they say good night, he’s liking his odds that he may soon be the replacement: “I ain’t sayin’ her and her mans got any plans on breakin’ up/ But I tell you what/ She’s a little more single than she was,” he boasts as the mid-tempo track progresses.
“Don’t Think Jesus”
Written by Jessi Alexander, Mark Holman and Chase McGill, the introspective “Don’t Think Jesus” features Wallen’s strongest vocal delivery on the album as he slides from a growl to a falsetto, taking on the persona of a boy living life way too fast who realizes he’s moved far from Jesus’s teachings even when it comes to turning the other cheek: “World likes to rear back and throw a few stones/ So boy wants to throw a few stones of his own/ But Lord knows I ain’t perfect, and it ain’t my place/ And I don’t think Jesus done it that way.”
“Dying Man”
After pulling the listener down to the depths of his despair, Wallen closes the set on an optimistic tone, letting us know he’s found happiness and he’s no longer “bound to hit a wall before I ever hit the brakes.” Though he once thought just as “Codeine it got Elvis/ Whiskey it got Hank,” he’d find a similar premature fate, he’s found a love that has brought him contentment and a reason to live. Maybe it’s coincidence that the song opens with a guitar intro nearly identical to “Born With a Beer in My Hand,” but it feel more like Wallen is bringing the listener full circle.
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