20 October 2017
My brain, stretched to breaking point by all this listening and mulling on Ireland’s historically WTF music purchases, evidently only has room for one chart-topping track called ‘Rockstar’, as this 2017 number one has been overwritten by a number one of the same name from 2020. Another explanation is that this one is particularly easy to forget.
In the more recent times of 2024 Post Malone topped our charts by going all country-bro with Morgan Wallen on ‘I Had Some Help’. Back in 2017 on ‘Rockstar’, though, he’s a rapper. I should qualify that by saying he’s a rapper à la Drake and ‘Hotline Bling’, if leaning more into a trap sound, but that still makes ‘Rockstar’ yet another number one rap single to file under White Rapper Does Cultural Appropriation To Chart-Topping Reward. The lyrics are all manner of player stereotypes about guns and drugs and unsavoury epithets for the vast swathe of young ladies he says he’s been squiring. The video is a bloodbath of hyper-stylised samurai violence in the Kill Bill manner. I should have trusted my brain on this one.
