![]() “I think the subtlety has made those songs a little less alarming. “Obviously we wouldn’t play anything that’s profane or blatantly offensive,” says Erik Bradley, assistant program director and music director of WBBM-FM in Chicago. Part of the reason these songs are taking off at Top 40 radio is because their drug references remain slyly packaged it’s easy to listen to “Can’t Feel My Face” and miss the lyrical messaging since no specific narcotic is presented in neon lights. The song’s dreamy chorus is Del Rey’s most accessible hook to date, and with “High By The Beach” posted atop the iTunes Songs Chart as of this writing, one can reasonably expect a strong Hot 100 debut and subsequent radio push. 10), the same day that the Weeknd officially crowned the Hot 100, Lana Del Rey released a new single titled “High By The Beach,” about… well, you can probably guess. 26 on the Alternative Songs chart and is catchy enough to hit pop radio. The chorus to Halsey’s latest single, “New Americana,” begins, “We are the new Americana/High on legal marijuana” the track is up to No. The success of “Can’t Feel My Face” follows Tove Lo’s perilously lonely smash “Habits (Stay High),” Sia’s slurred breakout “Chandelier” and Tiësto’s beyond-faded club staple “Wasted” (featuring Matthew Koma), all of which were Hot 100 hits in the past year. In some ways, popular music hasn’t been this high since the late 60’s, when the Beatles, the Doors and Janis Joplin were turning their trips into hit records. Occasionally an undeniable song like Amy Winehouse’s “Rehab” or Ed Sheeran’s “The A Team” will breach the mainstream, and winking references - like Miley Cyrus’ molly lyric on “We Can’t Stop” - sometimes dot pop songs that concentrate on other topics.īut the rise of “Can’t Feel My Face” underlines an interesting trend: the population of pop songs that don’t just passively nod to drug use, but make it their lyrical focal point. In the world of pop music, which is often delivered by more family-friendly artists and aimed at younger audiences, the drug anthem is something of an anomaly, however. Loads of modern hip-hop hits linger on hard drug use and addiction in the past year, for instance, OT Genasis and Fetty Wap have respectively turned “I’m in love with the coco” and “And I get high with my baby” into wide-reaching chants. ![]() ![]() 1 on Billboard Artist 100, While One Direction & Led Zeppelin Zoom to Top 5 He was popping pills and getting codeine visions on his 2011 debut mixtape House of Balloons, and on “Kiss Land,” the first single from his 2013 major-label debut of the same name, he admitted, “Goddamn I’m high/My doctor told me to stop/And he gave me something to pop/And I mix it up with some Adderall’s and I wait to get to the top.” The lyrical obsession continues on “Can’t Feel My Face,” but this time, the Weeknd is working with pop mastermind Max Martin and explicitly channeling Michael Jackson the result is an irresistible slice of radio fodder, a song that’s difficult not to sing along to and is likely already popping up at high school dances and wedding receptions. “Can’t Feel My Face” thematically fits in with the rest of the Weeknd’s catalog, mostly composed of gorgeously sung songs about getting high and slowly falling apart. The Weeknd then spends the rest of the song personifying drug dependency, most likely to cocaine, as a dangerous romantic partner. “And I know she’ll be the death of me, at least we’ll both be numb,” goes the song’s opening line.
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