This week on Scoreboard the fall chart competition heats up with Lil Uzi Vert and Taylor Swift taking #1
Billboard Artist Top 10
For the magazine dated September 16, 2016
See the full chart at http://www.billboard.com/charts/artist-100
| Billboard Artist Top 10 | Name | Billboard 200 Album Rank | Billboard Hot 100 Singles | Highest Charting Single |
| 1 | Taylor Swift | 38 | 1 | 1:Look What You Made Me Do |
| 2 | Lil Uzi Vert | 1 | 11 | 16: XO TOUR Llif3 |
| 3 | Queens Of The Stone Age | 3 | – | |
| 4 | XXXTentaction | 2 | 8 | 31: Jocelyn Flores |
| 5 | Imagine Dragons | 12 | 2 | 6: Believer |
| 6 | Kendrick Lamar | 5 | 4 | 14: Humble |
| 7 | Ed Sheeran | 13 | 1 | 11: Shape Of You |
| 8 | Bruno Mars | 21 | 2 | 17: That’s What I Like |
| 9 | Shawn Mendes | 30 | 1 | 8: There’s Nothing Holdin’ Me Back |
| 10 | Old Dominion | 7 | 1 | 46: No Such Thing As A Broken Heart |
After Labor Day the competition on the charts heats up and this week there are new #1s across all three major Billboard charts. On the Billboard 200 the winner is Lil Uzi Vert and his new album Luv Is Rage 2. On the Hot 100, the record-tying #1 run of “Despacito (Remix)” by Luis Fonsi, Daddy Yankee, and Justin Bieber has been stopped by Taylor Swift‘s new single “Look What You Made Me Do,” which becomes @taylorswift’s fifth career Hot 100 #1. The new single also returns Swift to #1 on the Artist 100 where she holds the record of most weeks at #1 by any artist (the chart only began in 2014).
Queens Of The Stone Age have the week’s #3 album with Villains
Lil Uzi Vert’s Luv & Rage
Philadelphia rapper Symere Woods, better known as @liluzivert, first made it on the Billboard Hot 100 last summer with debut single “Money Longer.” Six months later he was at #1 as a featured artist on the Migos hit “Bad And Boujee.” This week Uzi takes #1 on the Billboard 200 with his debut studio album Luv Is Rage 2 (the first Luv Is Rage was a mixtape), also placing 11 songs from the album on the Hot 100. Uzi’s quick rise to the top was helped by his melodic and rapid delivery, which contributed to his breakthrough on “Bad And Boujee.” @liluzivert’s solo showcase that followed was “XO TOUR Llif3,” a #7 hit on the Hot 100 on which listeners hear an unfiltered argument between Uzi and ex-girlfriend Brittany Byrd on which she tells him she is “not afraid to die,” to which Uzi replies “all my friends are dead,” referring to the dead presidents in his wallet.
On Luv Is Rage 2 fans get XO Tour Life, the album. The highest-charting of the new songs is “The Way Life Goes,” a smooth hip-hop jam on which Uzi comforts a friend (perhaps Byrd) whom he tells “you’ll find another life to live.” Yet Uzi is not just a softie, on “Sauce It Up” he is the life of the party, on “For Real” he sings about his diamonds, and on “Neon Guts” Uzi gets together with Pharrell and sings about being “higher than Elon Musk.” And although rapping about bling or about how high you are is boilerplate hip-hop, Lil Uzi Vert’s cloud trap and distinctive cadence set him aside as one of the hottest new voices in hip-hop.
@liluzivert was victorious at the MTV Music Video Awards, winning Song Of The Summer for “XO TOUR Llif3”
Taylor Swift’s Comeback Begins
The gap between Taylor Swift’s last album 1989 and her forthcoming album Reputation is the longest in her career. By nearly all counts 1989 was Swift’s biggest album – three #1s on the Hot 100, an Album of the Year Grammy, and the highest global album sales among all Swift albums. Following that up is not easy and the only Swift sighting we’ve had since 1989 was “I Don’t Wanna Live Forever,” a turgid duet with Zayn from the soundtrack to Fifty Shades Darker.
Now that @taylorswift has new music out at least it doesn’t sound like “I Don’t Wanna Live Forever.” What we get instead is “Look What You Made Me Do,” the new Hot 100 #1 with a too-big-to-fail music video featuring more Swifts than “Shake It Off,” the megahit that ushered in 1989. In the video, Swift takes on the many controversies of her past while also burying the old Taylor on a phone call. It’s all very Swift-ian and no doubt the haters gonna hate. What is most remarkable about “Look What You Made Me Do” though is the song itself. The pop of 1989 is gone and instead we get a whispered trap that channels Meghan Trainor‘s “Me Too” and Right Said Fred‘s “I’m Too Sexy.” It is less catchy and more mean than “Shake It Off” and is unlikely to dominate the Hot 100 for a long stretch. Indeed, Swift has already released a second single from Reputation, the EDM trip “…Ready For It.” But she did take #1 on the Hot 100 and the Artist 100, so the first week of the reputation comeback worked out according to plan. Check out the video for “Look What You Made Me Do” below and check Scoreboard every week to see who is #1: