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Fire's Chill Pick - September 2026

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  Hi everyone, it’s Fire here and it’s time for the monthly Chill Pick article!! So what track am I serving y’all up with this month? Olivia Rodrigo - serena joy Release: August 21, 2026 Genres: Post-Punk Revival, New Rave, New Wave, Dance-Punk Revival, Indietronica I gotta be honest, 2026 has been a really good year for me so far. I hope everyone else is feeling the same way... Oh... OH. Oh god... Yeah, 2026 has clearly been a very turbulent year for current events, and it kinda makes me feel guilty that I’m having a really good year when so many aren’t. I kinda had to teach myself that just because you’re having a good year while so many aren’t doesn’t mean you have to deny your own self-happiness. But I can acknowledge that my experience is very far from the rule, and in such a difficult time for so many, I can imagine that people are desperately looking for a cathartic release. And thus, we got “serena joy”, a song that Olivia Rodrigo actually recorded in the midst of creating ...
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The Top 10 Best Hit Songs of 1994

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  The Top 10 Best Hit Songs of 1994 Hey y’all!! It’s Fire back for the top 10 BEST hit songs of 1994!! As I expressed in my worst list, 1994 is arguably the year the 90s officially started. The 80s leftovers had mostly disappeared outside of very few legacy acts. It felt like the decade was finally starting to gain an identity—hip hop and eurodance had great years alongside R&B, alt-rock, and whatever fascinating oddities managed to break through. I still would hesitate to call it a great year, but you could absolutely call it a good one! And while most of the worst hits of 1994 were just tedious and boring, the best stuff was pretty great, even if it doesn’t quite hit the highs of other years of the 90s. As usual, the songs eligible for this list must have met at least one of these rules: They debuted on the 1994 Hot 100 YE Repeating songs are eligible if they beat or matched their previous standings on this YE Any songs in the YE Top 20 are eligible regardless of the first tw...
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Billboard's Top 20 Songs of The Summer 2026 - Ranked WORST to BEST

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  Billboard's Top 20 Songs of The Summer 2026 - Ranked WORST to BEST Hey guys, it’s Fire back with something new!! I’m ranking Billboard’s 2026 Songs of the Summer from worst to best!! Every summer, Billboard compiles a 20-song list of the best-performing songs of the summer. They use Hot 100 data tracking from Memorial Day through Labor Day. When I was still on Pulse, I would participate in their annual rankdown of the list. But since I left Pulse earlier this year, this article is kinda my way to still stay in touch with what’s popular during the summer. It’s also a way to assess my thoughts on a year in popular music about halfway through before my year-end lists in January of next year. And as for my thoughts on 2026’s pop music...WOW, I can’t remember the last time in my 9 years of chart-watching where I was this off from the consensus. I’ve seen so many critics and TikTokers call this one of the worst years ever for music so far, and I genuinely don’t agree. I guess 2019 is t...
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The Top 10 Worst Hit Songs of 1994

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  The Top 10 Worst Hit Songs of 1994 Hey everyone, welcome back to Fire’s Flaming Hot Takes for another retro year-end list! Today, we’re looking at the top 10 worst hit songs of 1994!! So 1990-91 were flat-out awful years for the Hot 100, 1992 was very good, if kinda overrated, and 1993 was very...okay. Now as for 1994...it feels like a blend of 1992 and 1993 in a way. Like 1992, it seems to generally be considered a good year for the Hot 100 and I see why—you’ll see much of the great trends in 94 on my best list. But I also ended up seeing a LOT more duds than people remember. This ultimately balanced everything out to make 1994 a pretty okay year for music, like 1993. Music trends rarely, if ever, neatly fall into one decade. It often takes a few years for the biggest trends of the decade to really start. 1994 is probably what you could consider as more or less the start of the 90s. The 80s backwash that plagued the early 90s was finally gone, save for a select few legacy acts. ...
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