VP 2017-08 FINAL FOR WEB (1)

VP/MUSIC
‘Despacito’ Drops From Top
of Billboard Hot 100!
Luis Fonsi & Daddy Yankee’s “Despacito,” featuring Justin Bieber, cedes the
summit to Taylor Swift after a record-tying 16 weeks at No. 1, while Logic &
Payne earn their first top 10s.
As previously reported, Taylor Swift’s “Look What You Made Me Do” leaps from No. 77 to
No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100chart (dated Sept. 16), following its first full week of data
tracking. It soars to the top with the highest weekly streaming and sales sums for a track
in 2017, and breaks the record for the most weekly streams ever for a song by a woman.
Also in the Hot 100’s top 10, Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee’s “Despacito,” featuring Justin
Bieber, departs the summit after a record-tying 16 weeks at No. 1; Logic’s “1-800-273-
8255,” featuring Alessia Cara and Khalid, bounds 29-9; and Liam Paynebecomes the third
member of One Direction to notch a solo top 10, as “Strip That Down,” featuring Quavo,
pushes 11-10.
Down to No. 2, “Despacito” remains tied with Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men’s 16-week
1995-96 No. 1 for the most weeks spent at the apex in the Hot 100’s 59-year history.
“Despacito” also drops to No. 2 on the Digital Song Sales chart after a record 17 weeks at
No. 1, with 76,000 downloads sold (down 6 percent) in the week ending Aug. 31, according
to Nielsen Music.
On the Streaming Songs chart, it slips to No. 3 after a record 16 weeks on top, with 39.5
million U.S. streams (down 11 percent) in the week ending Aug. 31. (Swift’s “Look” takes
over atop both tallies, ruling the latter with the top total ever for a song by a woman:
84.4 million.) On Radio Songs, “Despacito” descends 5-6 (after five prior weeks at No. 1),
drawing 87 million in all-format airplay audience (down 17 percent) in the week ending
Sept. 3. “Despacito” remains atop Billboard’s Hot Latin Songs chart, which it leads for a
31st week.
Cardi B’s breakthrough hit “Bodak Yellow (Money Moves)” holds at its No. 3 Hot 100 high.
It keeps at No. 2 on Streaming Songs (42.2 million, up 1 percent); slips 8-10 on Digital
Song Sales (35,000, down 4 percent); and bumps 20-17 on Radio Songs (55 million, up
11 percent). The track spends a second week at No. 1 on the Hot Rap Songs chart and
becomes Cardi B’s first No. 1 on Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs(2-1).
After the trio performed the track at the MTV Video Music Awards Aug. 27, Logic’s “1-800-
273-8255,” featuring Alessia Cara and Khalid, vaults 29-9 on the Hot 100. The song soars
22-3 on Digital Song Sales (69,000, up 258 percent) and 15-12 on Streaming Songs (20
million, up 20 percent) and debuts at No. 41 on Radio Songs (30 million, up 21 percent).
The song, from Logic’s first No. 1 album on the Billboard 200, Everybody (which debuted
atop the May 27-dated chart), marks the rapper’s first Hot 100 top 10. (“1-800-273-8255”
doubles as the phone number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.)
Khalid also earns his first Hot 100 top 10, while Cara collects her fourth, following her
own “Here” (No. 5, February 2016) and “Scars to Your Beautiful” (No. 8, February 2017) and
her duet with Zedd, “Stay” (No. 7, May).
Meanwhile, Quavo logs his fourth solo Hot 100 top 10, after scoring one as a member of
Migos, whose “Bad and Boujee,” featuring Lil Uzi Vert (who debuts at No. 1 on the Sept.
16-dated Billboard 200 with Luv Is Rage 2, his first leader on the list), topped the Hot 100
for three weeks in January-February.
VP/SPORTS
Why are we praising Conor
McGregor for losing to Floyd
Mayweather?
“You don’t know a damn thing about boxing.”
Listen to people argue about the sport (and all fight fans ever do is argue) and you’ll
inevitably hear that accusation. It’s the standard way of dismissing someone who doesn’t
agree with you about some piece of boxing arcana, but it’s also so commonly thrown
around because two men beating each other up with their fists can look simple -- and
boxing is anything but.
So it’s my turn: It’s still strange to see how many people don’t seem to get what they
watched last Saturday night.
Conor McGregor deserves a lot of credit for landing this fight, taking his preparations
seriously and committing to tryi Let’s start with a basic observation. It appears McGregor
did not learn much about boxing during his training camp. He did not learn how to throw
a punch. He doesn’t know how to start the motion in his legs and hips and transfer his
body weight through the punch. He doesn’t have even average power in the ring. He also
did not have any grasp of the basic rules. It was quite shocking to hear McGregor admit
in the postfight press conference that he was “using valuable energy here to get to this
man’s back and we’re just being reset.” Was he under the impression that he could throw
punches to an opponent’s back? Not to mention all the holding of the head and rabbit
punches. It makes one wonder what the point was of having referee Joe Cortez attend
McGregor’s training camp leading up to the fight.
But the ruse gets pretty obvious when one observes the simple things Floyd chose not
to do to win given his limited resources in boxing skill and experience. What he shouldn’t
be given credit for is his performance -- for “lasting” 10 rounds with a historically elite
fighter (who is no longer elite).
The truth is McGregor was merely a prop in a perfectly executed piece of theater. He didn’t
survive 10 rounds with Floyd Mayweather, he was carried for 10 rounds by Mayweather.
Until Mayweather had enough and stopped the fight.
Fighters get aggressively offensive for a few reasons: They realize their opponent needs
time and space to work and they want to deny that time and space. They realize their
opponent is tiring and looking for ways to rest and they want to deny opportunities for
rest. Or, they realize their opponent doesn’t have enough power to hurt them and so they
want to get in range to get off their offense because they’re not worried about being hit.
McGregor himself can be forgiven for the hilarious assertion that he was outboxing
Mayweather early. With Floyd throwing 28 total punches in the first three rounds
according to CompuBox, it might have felt that way to him. More bizarre was his assertion
that he thought he hurt Floyd during the fight. When? And with what? The much talkedabout
uppercut that McGregor landed in Round 1 is illustrative. It was well timed and
landed clean -- and had precisely zero effect on Mayweather.
None of this should make anyone upset. Together, the two men put on a performance that
left the audience satisfied. But let’s not pretend we got a better fight than we expected;
there was no fight. What the two men delivered, or rather, what Mayweather was able to
engineer, was the entertaining show he had promised all long.
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