Harm's Weekly Top 40 - August 31, 2017

If your name is Charli

If your name is Kylie

If your name is Kumi

bounce bounce

...to the top of my charts.

Yes, Bounce by Charli XCX has taken the #1 spot this week. Kylie Minogue dominates this week's chart with a total of 13 entries. Along with her we see a few entries from Japanese R&B/pop singer Koda Kumi. I listened to five of her albums this week and found at least two immediate standouts from each of them, some of which charted. A lot of J-Pop albums are full of ballads and the like which I can't appreciate as much as I should since I can't understand them, but bops are a universal language and I can get into them much more easily.

On the flipside, we say goodbye to Cherry by Lana Del Rey which did extremely well on my chart for 6 weeks straight. It finally got a bit old to me but I can't blame myself since it has already clocked in over 150 plays on last.fm alone, if I were to count non-scrobbled plays the number would be over 200. Enchanted and Hungry by Fergie continue to stick around though, but I definitely predict they'll wear out next.

Chart Highlights:

#2. Koda Kumi - Black Cherry: That's right, I'm not highlighting #1 this week since I don't have anything else to say about it. Instead we start this section with one of my new favorite J-Pop artists and one of my favorite songs of hers - Black Cherry. This song actually sounds a lot like It's Like That by Mariah Carey which I also enjoy a lot. This song, like Bounce last week, nearly took the #1 spot but was shy just 1 play. No worries though, Kumi got more entries than Charli this week in the end.

#3. Kylie Minogue - Heartstrings / #4. Kylie Minogue - Sleeping with the Enemy: The Kylie domination begins here with these two great, rare tracks. Heartstrings, a bonus track from Aphrodite, and Sleeping with the Enemy, a bonus from Kiss Me Once. I consider both of these songs to be up there with the best from their respective albums, especially the latter. Kylie has some of the best B-sides and rare bonus tracks I've ever heard.

#8. Koda Kumi - Under: Kumi's 2nd entry on the chart and another great song from her album Kingdom. While not quite as catchy as Black Cherry it does have a part right before the chorus that hooked me right into the entire song.

#9. REOL - 宵々古今: Where do I even begin with this one? This song is an absolute banger and at the same time it's absolute bonkers. There's so many different things that happen throughout and it hardly leaves you time to breathe. I gotta thank my friend for showing me this one, it absolutely pops off.

#13. Kylie Minogue - Slo Motion: Adding to the rare bonus tracks that have charted so far, we have this rarity from Body Language that I only found out about very recently. Admittedly it's not as strong as all my favorites from the album and I can see why it's only a regional bonus track but that doesn't stop it from still being yet another piece of the slow-jam brilliance that is Body Language.

#16. マクロスMACROSS 82-99 - Fun Tonight: Now for something pretty different. Something I'm lowkey a fan of is Vaporwave, though normally I just spin a couple Vaporwave albums late at night while I'm relaxing and they really help me fall asleep. Not often do I keep Vaporwave tracks in my music library, though the sub-genre Future Funk is an exception. This MACROSS 82-99 was my first introduction to Future Funk (and I think Vaporwave in general) and it's such an earworm of a bop. I recommend checking it out for sure.

#18. Koda Kumi - TABOO: A pretty good piece of mid/late 2000s pop, it sounds straight out of Blackout or The Fame despite being J-Pop and I think that's why it stands out so much to me. It's something I'd love to hear in Britney Spears' discography.

#25. Anri - Remember Summer Days (マクロスMACROSS 82-99 Bootleg): Another fantastic work of MACROSS 82-99, this time being his own spin on an old 80s J-Pop track by Anri. This is actually my favorite Future Funk track out of everything I've heard and it's the perfect song to soundtrack a fun summer day. I've labelled the song under Anri's name rather than MACROSS 82-99's since it's technically correct however I did consider putting it under MACROSS 82-99 for convenience.

#31. BoA - VALENTI: A song that has charted a few times before so I figured it's about time to highlight it. Yet another J-Pop song that sounds like it could come from a Britney album, more specifically an early 00s one. Valenti has been one of my favorite J-Pop songs for years and I 100% recommend giving it a listen if you like the old 00s sound.

Biggest Dropouts This Week:

Lana Del Rey - Go Go Dancer: #3 -> OUT

Britney Spears - Heaven On Earth: #6 -> OUT

Mariah Carey - Meteorite: #7 -> OUT

Lana Del Rey - Be My Daddy: #8 -> OUT

Nicki Minaj - Shanghai: #10 -> OUT