Scoreboard: Green Day, OneRepublic, Bruno Mars

For Week 7 of Fall ’16, Scoreboard highlights new albums from Green Day and OneRepublic, and a new single from Bruno Mars.

Billboard Artist Top 10

For the magazine dated October 29, 2016

See the full chart at http://www.billboard.com/charts/artist-100

On this week’s Billboard Artist 100, Twenty One Pilots notch their third week on top, fending off a number of artists moving up the Scoreboard. Green Day land at #2 and OneRepublic at #10 after new album releases, while Bruno Mars is back in the Top 10 thanks to a new single.

With only a few weeks left in Billboard’s music year @champagnepapi is a lock for Artist of the Year

Green Day’s Revolution May Be Televised

90’s nostalgia has been a recurring theme on the Scoreboard this year, with the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Blink-182, and Britney Spears all making the Artist Top 10 with new albums. This week, you can add Green Day to the list. Billie Joe Armstrong and co. have had an uneven run since their American Idiot smash 12 years ago. After releasing a mostly forgettable trilogy of albums in 2012, their new album Revolution Radio brings @greenday back to the sound that made them popular first as rebellious youths, and more recently as critical culture commentators. Revolution Radio comes in at #1 on the Billboard 200 this week and lead single “Bang Bang” addresses mass shootings in America through the voice of a deranged shooter (“bang bang, give me fame / shoot me up to entertain”). Political commentary is what set Green Day apart from the similar sounds of Blink-182 and even Weezer in the 2000’s, but @billiejoearmstrong’s opinions never crossed into Bono save-the-world polemics, and the new album also offers plenty of non-political punk rock and even provides a Jason Mraz-like closer “Ordinary World.” Will this revolution be televised? Maybe. Green Day’s North American tour starts in March.

Amazingly, Green Day’s first #1 album was 2004’s American Idiot

OneRepublic Make You Say Oh My My

If Green Day’s peer set consists of punk rock groups that got their start in the 90’s, OneRepublic’s competitors would be pop-rock makers that emerged in 2000’s, such as Coldplay and Maroon 5. Like Chris Martin and Adam Levine, Ryan Tedder leads the @onerepublic mothership, evolving the band’s sound to fit latest trends in pop music. Back in the late 2000’s Tedder exploited the crossover between pop and hip-hop with the band’s breakthrough “Apologize” (ft. Timbaland) and the double punch of Beyoncé‘s “Halo” and Kelly Clarkson‘s “Already Gone,” both of which were based on the same Tedder demo. Since then, OneRepublic moved away from hip-hop into a more rocking territory, with 2013’s “Counting Stars” becoming the band’s biggest hit since “Apologize.” On new album Oh My My, which debuts at #3 on the Billboard 200 and puts the band at #10 on the Artist 100, @onerepublic continues down the road established by “Counting Stars,” with first single “Wherever I Go” sticking to the formula and current single “Kids” drawing on electronic style of M83. The singles so far have underachieved on the charts, but given the slow climb of previous OneRepublic hits, it is not too late to apologize for the band’s current performance.

OneRepublic bring legendary Peter Gabriel to sing about artificial intelligence on the new album, oh my indeed

Bruno Mars Returns, Channels MJ

On the Scoreboard we have hits and then we have HITS. An example of the latter is Mark Ronson‘s collaboration with Bruno Mars “Uptown Funk,” which spent 14 weeks at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100, was named the #1 hit of 2015 by Billboard, brought Bruno back to the Super Bowl, and won the Grammy for Record of the Year, the highest award a single can get. @brunomars has taken his time working on the sequel and this week, he is back with “24K Magic,” which borrows from “Uptown Funk” and from the Michael Jackson catalog. In the music video, @brunomars has left uptown for Las Vegas, but his boys are still with him and the Magic has put him at #5 on both the Hot 100 and the Artist 100 and took him to Saturday Night Live. Check out the video below and check the Scoreboard this fall to see if the 24 karats can make it all the way to #1 on the Hot 100.