Hot 100 Haus: Jonas Brothers’ ‘Sucker’

Welcome to Hot 100 Haus, where writer Chris Will breaks down each No. 1 single on the Billboard Hot 100 for 2019.

Hot 100 – No. 1 for the week of March 16, 2019:

“Sucker” – Jonas Brothers

Written by: Nick Jonas, Kevin Jonas, Joe Jonas, Ryan Tedder

Produced by: Frank Dukes, Louis Bell

But Why:

Say what you will about the Jonas Brothers (and honestly why would you say anything bad about them anyway), but they sure as hell know how to stage a comeback. They announced their reunion with a very sleek and sexy single cover less than 24 hours before dropping the accompanying comeback single and video, which is a great way to incite mass hysteria while giving absolutely no time for it to cool down. And the hype was not only effectively built, but the single effectively delivered, a true megazord of indie-rock turned radio pop anthems, with hints of Fitz & The Tantrums, Foster The People, Portugal. The Man and just about every other alt-pop band from the past decade scattered throughout the track. Joe and Nick’s careers outside of the Joe Bros have also clearly paid off, not only in their solo success but in their development as musicians in that away time, as the two sound better than they ever did playing off of each others’ vocal styles.

The music video is also a high budget and relatively strange affair, the brothers gallivanting around a lavishly decorated mansion with their high-profile beaus, getting into all sorts of cheeky situations with their partners. An impeccable comeback announcement from a former top 40 stable, paired with a perfectly polished pop song and a visual feast of a video? Sounds like a sure recipe for success to me!

Stats On Stats: Per Billboard.com’s weekly top 10 article, “Sucker” is the group’s first ever Hot 100 No. 1, debuting at the Hot 100 summit. It also debuts at No. 1 on the Streaming and Digital Song Sales Chart, with 43.7 million streams and 88,000 downloads sold in the tracking week (March 1 – March 7). It also debuts at No. 46 on the Radio Songs chart with 22.6 million audience impressions.

Next Week’s #1: Maybe “Sucker” again? “Shallow” is back on top of the iTunes song chart, but without any real traction from other new songs, and the inevitability that “Sucker” will grow even bigger at radio, this could be No. 1 for the second week in a row!

Feel Old Yet: Per Billboard, the last time a boy band led the hot 100 was over a decade and a half ago, when B2K’s “Bump, Bump, Bump” topped the chart in late January/early February of 2003.

I Have Feelings: From the moment I saw Nick in those pastel pink pants, I knew that “Sucker” was gonna be a bona fide BANGER. There are so many individual parts of “Sucker” that work, and they’re all so perfectly put together that it seems almost improbable that it was created with so little outside help. This is the kind of effortless chart-topper that entire rooms of writers languish for weeks over trying to create, but apparently this was the three Joe Bros sitting down with Ryan Tedder and writing a song about loving their lovely lovers. I mean, that bassline?? The melody in that pre-chorus (“I’ve been dancing on top of cars, and stumbling out of bars / I follow you through the dark, can’t get enough” may be my favorite line of the whole song)?? Those distorted guitars in the first half of the chorus?? Perfect, 10/10, no complaints from me.

AND THE VIDEO. Between Sophie, Pryianka and Danielle, the three make the video for “Sucker” utterly captivating and whimsical, each adding their own lewks, slayage and general badassery and generally eclipsing the sleek sexiness of the Joe Bros. The director’s cut is wayyy better than the original video, magnifying the endearing quirkiness of the original while also beefing up the ridiculous opulence. But the most exciting part about this? Now that the Jo Bros have a No. 1 debut, there’s really no telling where they’ll go next. Hopefully, they’ll be making more spacey arena pop-rock in the vein of “Paranoid,” which is still (and probably always will be) my favorite Joe Bros song.

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