Saturday, May 25, 2024

Post Malone & Morgan Wallen debut at #1 with “I Had Some Help”

I Had Some Help

Post Malone with Morgan Wallen

Writer(s): Austin Post, Morgan Wallen, Louis Bell, Ryan Vojtesak, Jonathan Hoskins, Ernest Keith Smith, Ashley Gorley, Chandler Paul Walters (see lyrics here)

Released: May 10, 2024

First Charted: May 18, 2024

Peak: 1⁶ BB, 1⁵ BA, 1² DG, 1² ST, 1¹ RR, 11 AA, 1¹ A40, 1⁷ CW, 2 CW, 1³ CN, 1¹ AU (Click for codes to charts.)

Sales (in millions): 5.0 US, 0.6 UK, 5.88 world (includes US + UK)

Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -512.28 video, 850.27 streaming

Awards:

Click on award for more details.

About the Song:

In the same year that Beyoncé got a lot of attention and flack for making a country album, singer and rapper Post Malone dipped his toes into the country pool as well. In fact, he’d guested on “Levii’s Jeans” on Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter country album. On his sixth album, F-1 Trillion, Post recorded songs with heavy hitters in the country world including Luke Combs, Tim McGraw, Brad Paisley, Dolly Parton, Blake Shelton, Chris Stapleton, and Hank Williams Jr.

The album’s lead single, “I Had Some Help,” paired Malone with Morgan Wallen, the hottest name in country music. His song “Last Night” from the previous year not only spent a whopping 25 weeks atop the country chart, but with 16 weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100, it was one of the biggest #1 pop songs of all time and Billboard’s song of the year.

The song gave Wallen his second trip to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 and Malone’s sixth. The song became the first in history to debut atop the Billboard Hot 100 and country chart and hold that spot for its first five weeks. ^WK It also set a single-day streaming record on Spotify for a country song – 14 million streams. ^WK Just four weeks earlier, Malone had another high profile duet debut atop the Hot 100 – “Fortnight” with Taylor Swift.

“I Had Some Help” is “about the messy realities of a love gone south.” ^SF Malone and Wallen trade verses about women with whom they’re breaking up. While the women accuse the men of being the problem, Malone and Wallen assert that the women “share the responsibility for the relationship’s demise.” ^SF

The song was a true collaboration between the two musicians’ camps featuring Malone’s producer Louis Bell as well as Wallen’s regular co-writers Charlie Handsome, Ashley Gorley, and Ernest. “I Had Some Help” won the People’s Choice Country Award for Song of the Year and garnered Grammy nominations for Best Country Song as well as Best Country Duo/Group Performance.