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Billboard has revealed its year-end Hot 100 list, ranking the highest-performing singles of the year based on radio play, sales, and Internet streaming. Adding all those spins and sales up and placing them side by side produces some unexpected results. Some of the songs that seemed most inescapable this year—”Get Lucky,” “Royals,” “Locked Out of Heaven,” “I Knew You Were Trouble”—didn’t even crack the top ten. Even Katy Perry’s “Roar,” which has been mercilessly dominating the pop charts for the past few months, only came in at number ten.
There’s no clearer example of mediocrity’s continued reign over the pop charts than the fact that after a landmark year for hip-hop that included works by Kanye, Drake, Kendrick Lamar, A$AP Rocky, and dozens of other performers that not only will probably go down as career-defining recordings but are responsible for pushing the form into fascinating new aesthetic territory, the number one rapper of the year according to Billboard‘s metrics is Macklemore, whose “Thrift Shop” tops the year-end chart, followed by “Can’t Hold Us” at number five. The next rap song on the list is Jay-Z’s disappointingly weak “Holy Grail” at number 22.
