DaBaby, Kanye West and Marilyn Manson perform during the Kanye West Donda event on August 26, 2021 in Chicago, Illinois.
Brian Prahl/MEGA/GC ImagesTracks from Kanye West’s Donda overwhelmed the latest Rolling Stone Top 100 Songs chart, led by “Hurricane,” which incorporates vocals from a pair of stars, Lil Baby and the Weeknd. “Hurricane” garnered more than 27 million streams, beating out Megan Thee Stallion’s remix of BTS’ “Butter” to top the chart. This marks his first Number One RS 100 hit.
All 27 tracks off Donda reached the RS 100 — the second most simultaneous in RS 100 history after Lil Uzi Vert — with four debuting in the Top Ten: the muscular, distortion-slathered “Jail” with Jay-Z (22.9 million streams), the thunderous “Off the Grid” with Playboi Carti and Fivio Foreign (22.6 million), the whimsical ballad “Moon” with Don Toliver and Kid Cudi (19.3 million), and the sludgy, slamming “Praise God” with Baby Keem and Travis Scott (18.1 million). West launched another six tracks into the Top Twenty, and every one of Donda‘s 27 tracks debuted on the RS 100.
Only a select few artists were able to withstand the Donda wave. “Butter” stood at Number Two thanks to robust sales. The Kid Laroi and Justin Bieber’s “Stay” dropped to Number Three (25.4 million streams). And Lil Nas X’s latest hit, “Industry Baby” with Jack Harlow, was pushed down but not washed out of the Top Ten — the single settled at Number Eight with 18.8 million streams.
Donda impressive debut partially obscured the success of other new singles. Baby Keem’s brassy, triumphant “Family Ties,” which features a whirlwind, chest-thumping verse from Kendrick Lamar, launched at Number Nine with 16.2 million streams. Meek Mill’s “Sharing Locations,” a scrappy, low-slung collaboration with Lil Baby and Lil Durk, also performed well, picking up 13.9 million streams and debuting at Number 15.
The Rolling Stone Top 100 chart tracks the most popular songs of the week in the United States. Songs are ranked by song units, a number that combines audio streams and song sales using a custom weighting system. The chart does not include passive listening like terrestrial radio or digital radio. The RS 100 chart is updated daily, and each week Rolling Stone finalizes and publishes an official version of the chart, covering the seven-day period ending with the previous Thursday.
Halsey earned a new hit with “I Am Not a Woman, I’m a God,” which appeared on her album If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power. The track, which is produced by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, launched at Number 54 with 6.6 million streams. Other than that, West thoroughly dominated the songs chart.
Next week, expect a similar performance from Drake’s Certified Lover Boy. The album has already amassed over 400 million streams in the U.S., according to Alpha Data, and Drake is responsible for every single one of the Top Twenty most popular songs in the country so far this week.
See the full RS 100 here.
NEWS
Paul McCartney welcomed around 50 fortunate fans into Abbey Road Studios on Tuesday, May 5, for an intimate preview of his upcoming album, ‘The Boys Of Dungeon Lane’. During the special listening session, he opened up about the inspiration and memories behind many of the songs featured on the project.
After attendees handed over their phones, they were guided into the iconic Studio Two, the same room where The Beatles famously recorded much of their catalogue. Before the event officially began, McCartney’s voice could already be heard from the control room as fans looked around hoping to spot the music legend. He later walked downstairs into the studio, where a cosy set designed like a personal living room had been arranged with vinyl records, framed pictures, and decorative pieces, including a street sign displaying the album’s title.
“Hello, welcome to Abbey Road,” McCartney greeted the audience as he settled into his chair. “I’m going to play the new album for you and try and think of stuff to say about it.” Over the next hour and a half, he reflected on moments from his childhood in Liverpool and the earliest years of his bond with his Beatles bandmates.
He explained that the album includes “quite a few” tracks that revisit earlier parts of his life and shared why he often finds himself writing about the past. “It occurred to me that that’s where your big bank of information is,” he said. “If you’re Charles Dickens, you’re gonna write about how your dad was in prison or something. [The past] is a very rich field of information.”
One of those reflective tracks is ‘Down South’, an acoustic driven song that recalls McCartney hitchhiking with George Harrison when the pair first became close. “It would be me who’d suggest to John [Lennon] and George, ‘Let’s go hitchhiking’,” he remembered. “I can’t see John doing that, or George. It was my thing.” He then jokingly exaggerated his Liverpool accent while recreating the moment, before sharing a story about getting a ride on a milk float with Harrison, who ended up sitting on the battery and burning himself when the zip on his jeans touched it.
“Memories are a weird thing,” he said while wrapping up the story. “I was talking to Olivia [Harrison, George’s widow] and she said, ‘Oh yeah, George told me about that and how you got the zip burn!’ I swear it was George!”
‘Days We Left Behind’, the first single from ‘The Boys Of Dungeon Lane’, includes references to Lennon, who McCartney admitted he still gets “emotional talking about” to this day. Another track, ‘Home To Us’, reflects on life growing up in Liverpool and the working class neighbourhoods McCartney, Harrison and Ringo Starr came from. “The three of us were raised in quite poor conditions,” he told fans, laughing that when he describes the housing estates to Americans, “it sounds like Downton Abbey”. “No matter how rough it was, it was home to us.”
The song also features Starr on drums and vocals, with the two musicians trading lines throughout the track. McCartney explained that Starr originally recorded the drum parts at producer Andrew Watt’s Los Angeles studio, though the drummer became frustrated after not hearing the recording appear anywhere. McCartney later asked Watt to replay the session and described the performance as “really good – very Ringo”, which motivated him to complete the song and send it back to Starr, telling him, “‘Here you are, this is what you wanted’”.
Paul McCartney credit: Sonny McCartney / MPL Communications
When McCartney later invited Starr to contribute vocals, the drummer only returned chorus parts, leaving McCartney unsure how he felt about the song. “I thought, ‘He must hate it!’” he admitted. After speaking directly with Starr, the pair eventually understood each other properly and completed what McCartney described as the first “Paul-Ringo duet”.
Elsewhere on the album, McCartney revealed that ‘The Boys Of Dungeon Lane’ includes the first song he has ever written about his parents, ‘Salesman Saint’, which centres on perseverance through difficult periods “because they had to”. Other songs include ‘Mountaintop’, inspired by the “hippy mood” surrounding Glastonbury, and ‘Ripples In A Pond’, written as a love song dedicated to his wife Nancy.
Throughout the listening session, McCartney enthusiastically mouthed the lyrics, pretended to play drums and guitar along with the music, and occasionally grabbed an acoustic guitar to demonstrate certain melodies for the crowd. While discussing ‘Life Can Be Hard’, he played the main guitar riff live. After accidentally hitting the wrong note, he laughed and admitted, “I haven’t been practising. You’d think if you knew you were doing this, then you’d have practised.” Smiling afterward, he added: “But I don’t care!”
‘The Boys Of Dungeon Lane’ arrives on May 29 and was produced by Watt across sessions in Los Angeles and East Sussex.
Just hours after the playback event ended, it was also revealed that McCartney will appear as a guest on The Rolling Stones’ forthcoming album, ‘Foreign Tongues’. The collaboration follows his contribution to the band’s previous release, ‘Hackney Diamonds’.
