Carly Rae runs away with a fifth week at #1 while continuing to secure three other slots in the top ten. Felix Cartal and Nikki Yanofsky jump into the top five; Alessia Cara, Andrew Ripp, and Grace Mitchell all move into the top twenty. Inside the top fifty, Cam rebounds with a new peak for “Burning House” at #46; below, Maddie & Tae and Justin Bieber each make big climbs. EZA is the week’s highest debut, returning with a new single, “We Keep The Lights Out.” New tracks from Montaigne, Maddie & Tae, CRUISR, Grace Mitchell, and Max Frost also notch their first weeks, while Audien and Lady Antebellum’s collaboration “Something Better” returns to its original peak of #94.

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Walk The Moon notches a second week at #1 with “Shut Up And Dance,” while Ellie Goulding moves into the top three with “Love Me Like You Do.” Two songs also enter the top ten: Taylor Swift’s “Style” moves 11-5 and Tori Kelly’s “Nobody Love” climbs 25-9 in its second week. Fancy makes a big thirty-position jump to #23 with “Goodbye,” dwarfed only by Max Frost’s jump of 34 positions as “Let Me Down Easy” leaps to #60. Emily Hearn makes the week’s highest debut, with “Volcano” exploding in at #36. Additional new entrants are Imagine Dragons, COIN, Tor Miller, Leon Bridges, Youth Club, and Mikky Ekko.

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After a fourteen-week run at the top, Martin Luke Brown slips out of the pole position as Walk The Moon’s “Shut Up And Dance” ascends to #1 in its 21st week on the chart. The rest of the top ten gets a slight shake-up as well, with Walk The Moon’s “Aquaman” also moving into the top three, Ellie Goulding continuing her upward momentum as “Love Me Like You Do” goes from #6 to #4, and Carrie Underwood’s newly-announced single “Little Toy Guns” moving 12-10. Tori Kelly scores the week’s highest debut, with new single “Nobody Love” entering at a lofty #25. Toward the bottom of the chart, XOV, Max Frost, and Sam Smith re-enter the chart, while new songs come in from Train, Coasts, Justin Mauriello, and Lee Ann Womack.

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As the music industry wakes up from its holiday slumber and begins the new year, attention shifts to developing new artists whose careers are beginning to build. Below are forty hand-picked artists of varying genres and current levels of success. Some are completely independent, while others have already topped charts. Regardless, all of them show potential to be even bigger names, particularly in America, in the coming year. Listen to the artists through this SoundCloud playlist, and check back later in the year to see how these predictions turned out. Continue reading “Class Of 2015: 40 promising artists to watch this year”

With the top ten completely frozen in the week before Christmas, the most action is further below: big jumps come from Carrie Underwood, Purity Ring, and BØRNS. Eleven new songs make their debuts, but the highest is a lowly #82 entry for Prince Royce and Snoop Dogg’s “Stuck On A Feeling.” Additional debuts include new songs from CAFUNÉ, Brandi Carlile, and Max Frost, as well as newcomers Caitlyn Smith and Jason French charting their first entries.

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These are one hundred songs that stayed in my heavy rotation throughout 2013. In a year that saw personal advancements including eight weeks studying abroad in France and graduation from college, these songs soundtracked my year, each song appealing to me through instrumentation, lyrics, or just its overall mood. Read on for descriptions of each track, access the whole playlist on SoundCloud to listen, and judge away.
Continue reading “Kurt’s 100 Favorite Songs of 2013”