1 – Beauty Behind the Madness – The Weeknd – A
2 – Badlands – Halsey – B-
3 – Kill The Lights – Luke Bryan – C-
4 – 1989 – Taylor Swift – A
5 – Compton – Dr. Dre – C+
6 – X – Ed Sheeran – C+ –
7 – Start Here – Maddie & Tae – C
8 – Depression Cherry – Dream House – C+
9 – Brand New – Ben Rector – D
10 – Immortalized – Disturbed – C
Comment: Beauty Behind The Madness is the best mainstream pop album since 1989 and while obviously, Max Martin is what they have in common, well, so do 58 other top ten hits, what they really have in common is they use Martin to sugar coat extremely personal material. Meanwhile, except for “New Americana”, Halsey is way too manufactured to be taken seriously, but there is a huge difference between a manufactured popstar who is ignored and one who is a huge hit. Half white, half black, hip hop production on Americana songs and attitude with a soupcon of Lorde and a little more than that of Lana Del Rey… hey, apparently it worked, with 115,000 units (of which 97,000 are pure album sales), any other week it would be # 1.
