Trending Up: Bonnie Raitt’s Grammy Win Results in Streaming Boom, Morgan Wallen’s New Songs Lift His Slightly Less New Songs & More
Written by djfrosty on February 8, 2023
Welcome to Billboard Pro’s Trending Up column, where we take a closer look at the songs, artists, curiosities and trends that have caught the music industry’s attention. Some have come out of nowhere, others have taken months to catch on, and all of them could become ubiquitous in the blink of a TikTok clip.
This week: Just like she did 33 years earlier, Bonnie Raitt rides a surprise Grammy win to a big commercial boost, while a rising tide lifts all 2023 Morgan Wallen singles and a new remix proves that two viral sensations are better than one.
And “Just Like That…,” Bonnie Raitt’s Post-Grammys Sales & Streams Are Way Up
Few Grammy watchers expected Bonnie Raitt to take home song of the year at Sunday’s (Feb. 5) awards — perhaps least of all Raitt herself, as judged by her heavily memed surprised reaction to the announcement — for the devastating, self-penned title track to her 2022 album Just Like That. The song was easily the least commercially visible of the 10 tracks nominated, the other nine of which were all top 20 hits on the Billboard Hot 100. (Raitt has not reached the Hot 100 since 1995.)
That lack of commercial profile for “Just Like That” to that point, however, has just meant that there’s plenty of curious listeners now intrigued enough by the song’s big Grammy win to check it out for the first time. The song absolutely blasted off on streaming services following its song of the year victory, spiking from just over 10,000 daily official on-demand U.S. streams two days before the Grammys (Feb. 3) to a whopping 697,000 the Monday after (Feb. 6) — a gain of around 6,700%, according to Luminate.
Click here to read the full story over at Billboard Pro.
Morgan Wallen’s New Hits Are Big Enough to Boost His Older Ones
Morgan Wallen’s One Thing at a Time is most likely going to be one of the biggest albums of 2023, if its pre-release tracks are any indication: As noted earlier this week, nine songs have been released so far from the 36-song project, and seven of them have already hit the top 10 of the Hot Country Songs chart. The trio of songs that Wallen issued last week — “Last Night,” “Everything I Love” and “I Wrote the Book” — are doing so well, in fact, that their releases have spurred notable streaming gains for a pair of the country star’s previously released hits.
Since its Jan. 31 release, “Last Night” has established itself as the breakout hit of the new three-pack, with daily U.S. official on-demand streams exceeding 3.38 million through Feb. 5 and peaking at 4.68 million on Feb. 3, according to Luminate. The track debuted at No. 3 on Country Streaming Songs, and became Wallen’s ninth No. 1 on the Country Digital Song Sales chart. Meanwhile, “Everything I Love” and “I Wrote the Book” have each been logging seven-figure daily streams since their releases, peaking at 2.22 million and 2.26 million, respectively, on their release dates.
Yet the new trio of songs have also generated enough interest around Wallen to boost streams for the One Thing at a Time title track, which was released in December, as well as “Thought You Should Know,” a promotional single unveiled in November. On the day that the three-pack was released, U.S. on-demand streams for “One Thing at a Time” jumped 88% to 1.45 million, while “Thought You Should Know” scored a 42% uptick to 1.47 million streams. Both songs’ daily streams hovered above the 1 million mark through Feb. 5.
One Thing at a Time is due out Mar. 3, and Wallen has announced a stadium tour in support of the follow-up to 2021’s Dangerous: The Double Album. “Last Night” should have a major chart bounce during its first full tracking week — we’ll see how much his other songs continue to benefit alongside Wallen’s latest hit.
Song’s a Hit: PinkPantheress Song Boosted to Breakout Status by Ice Spice Remix
Before 2023, pop&B singer-songwriter PinkPantheress and rapper Ice Spice were two of the decade’s most exciting young artists yet to score a Billboard Hot 100 hit, both finding TikTok success, social media buzz and critical acclaim for their early singles but not yet quite getting all the way overground. Ice Spice got on the board this January, however, with the release of her Lil Tjay collab “Gangsta Boo” (debuting at No. 82 on the Hot 100) from her Like..? EP — and now she might be the key ingredient in getting PinkPantheress her first entry there, too.
Ice Spice adds a guest verse for the new remix to PinkPantheress’ streaming hit “Boy’s a Liar” — titled “Boy’s a Liar, Pt. 2” — which debuted last Friday (Feb. 3). Since the release of the new version (which for Billboard chart purposes, gets grouped along with the original when it comes to consumption numbers), daily official on-demand U.S. streams of “Boy’s a Liar” have steadily ballooned from 464,000 on Feb. 2 (the day before) to just under 3 million on Feb. 6, a 541% gain, according to Luminate. As the numbers keep growing, “Liar” seems on pace to become easily the biggest chart hit yet for both artists — and perhaps one of pop music’s biggest breakout stories of early 2023.