Is Kate Bush Having Another Netflix Moment?
Written by djfrosty on May 18, 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: Kate Bush makes it two years in a row with big gains from a Netflix hit, while Loreen enjoys a Eurovision bump on both sides of the pond and a pair of hitmaking Asian girl groups make inroads on U.S. radio.
Happy Mother’s Day to Kate Bush
Is it happening again? If you’ve checked Shazam’s real-time U.S. chart in the past week, you’ll see a familiar older name jostling with Lil Durk and J. Cole’s new “All My Life” for the top position: Kate Bush, she of the biggest sync revitalization of the decade so far. It’s not “Running Up That Hill” or Stranger Things this time, though: It’s her similarly beloved (and oft-covered) “This Woman’s Work,” used to great effect towards the end of the new hit Netflix action drama, The Mother.
“Work” has been used prominently in movies and TV shows for 35 years now – dating back to its original 1988 release on the She’s Having a Baby soundtrack – and The Mother, starring Jennifer Lopez and released last Friday (May 12, two days before Mother’s Day), uses the signature ballad over its closing sequence and end credits. The synch’s impact could be seen in the song’s streaming numbers – up from 21,000 daily official on-demand U.S. streams on May 11 to 55,000 by May 14, a 157% gain – along with digital song sales increasing from under 100 to over 500 over that period, all according to Luminate.
Thus far, the song’s explosive growth is still modest compared to the runaway success of “Hill” post-Stranger Things — which made it not only the biggest newly viral catalog of hit of 2022, but one of the year’s biggest overall hits of any kind. If this one starts crossing over from Shazam to TikTok in the same way that song did, though, there might still be plenty of “Work” for the Bush staple to do on the Billboard charts. – ANDREW UNTERBERGER
Left, Right, Up: FIFTY FIFTY & XG Hits Make Inroads at U.S. Radio
As Asian pop acts have established an increased presence in U.S. popular music over the past five years, one sector of the industry has long proven the most difficult to impact on a consistent level: pop radio.
While BTS smashes like “Dynamite” and “Butter” stand as exceptions, top 40 stations have generally shied away from the latest offerings from Asian pop collectives, even as those groups rack up seven-figure streaming numbers and headline arenas in the States. BLACKPINK, for instance, has only notched one non-collaborative single on Billboard‘s Pop Airplay chart to date (“Pink Venom,” which peaked at No. 32 last year), while groups like TWICE, Loona and (G)I-dle have only been able to achieve fleeting appearances on the tally.
Yet a pair of English-language singles from the relatively new collectives FIFTY FIFTY and XG are not only turning into profile-boosting breakthroughs for each – they’re receiving real, growing radio play as well.
For more info on this, check out our full article over at Billboard Pro.
“Tattoo” Looks to Ink Itself on the Charts
The winner at this month’s Eurovision song contest was the delectably dramatic Eurodance-pop banger “Tattoo” by Loreen, Sweden’s representative at this year’s competition. Loreen might already have been familiar to many watching as the singer behind 2012’s “Euphoria,” a single that topped charts throughout Europe and went to No. 3 on the U.K.’s Official Singles Chart – but “Tattoo” looks on track to do even better, currently ticketed for a top two debut on this week’s U.K. chart.
The song is also beginning to take off stateside. Though it’s been available on DSPs since February, the song has steadily risen on streaming since it triumphed in its first semifinal on May 9, and exploded following its ultimate victory on May 13. In all, the song has risen from 58,000 daily official on-demand streams on May 8 to over 226,000 on May 16 – a gain of 28%, according to Luminate. It’s a great start for the winner in the hopes of it following in the footsteps of recent U.S. Eurovision success stories like Måneskin and Duncan Laurence, though time will tell if “Tattoo” leaves more of a temporary or permanent mark on U.S. pop culture. – AU