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Rihanna conquers a new radio format with her long-awaited comeback single, “Lift Me Up.” The track, from the soundtrack to the film Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, crowns the Adult R&B Airplay list dated Dec. 24. It’s her first No. 1 — and top 10 — on the chart and her ninth charting song on the list to date.
“Lift” jumps from No. 3 after a 24% surge in plays that made it the most-played song on U.S. monitored adult R&B stations in the week ending Dec. 18, according to Luminate. Thanks to the double-digit improvement, the new champ captures the weekly Greatest Gainer honor for the biggest increase in plays among the chart’s 30 titles.
“Lift” seizes the throne from Jazmine Sullivan’s “Hurt Me So Good,” displacing the latter after two weeks in charge. “Hurt” is pushed 1-2, despite a 5% gain in plays at the format.
With “Lift,” Rihanna registers her first Adult R&B Airplay No. 1 upon her ninth appearance on the list. Before the new champ, her previous career peak was a No. 13 result from her and Bryson Tiller’s featured slots on DJ Khaled’s “Wild Thoughts” in 2018. As a lead act, her prior best was her maiden entry, “Take a Bow,” which reached No. 21 in 2008.
Elsewhere, “Lift” continues its run across several other formats. It repeats at No. 5 on the R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay chart, where it registered 17.1 million in weekly audience impressions, an 18% upswing from the prior week. With that boost, the single captures that chart’s Greatest Gainer honor, too. On Rhythmic Airplay, it holds at its No. 6 peak thus far, though it gained 3% in weekly plays in the latest tracking week. The single moves 9-8 on the Mainstream R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay chart to return to its peak, first reached two weeks ago, and added 5% more plays. And though it slides 14-17 on Adult Pop Airplay, “Lift” registered a 4% bump in weekly plays at that format.
One week after SZA’s first anniversary at No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart, the singer-songwriter returns to the summit for her second career chart-topper thanks to “Kill Bill.” The track debuts at No. 1 on the list dated Dec. 24 and is one of seven SZA titles in the top 10, all from her new album, SOS.
“Kill Bill” traces its chart-topping start largely to 36.9 million official U.S. streams in the week ending Dec. 15, according to Luminate, for a No. 1 opening on the R&B/Hip-Hop Streaming Songs chart. The track also sold 1,000 downloads in the same period and pulled 22,000 in radio audience impressions. The low radio audience is due to the song not being an actively promoted single to radio stations — “Shirt” is the current track at R&B/hip-hop stations, while “Nobody Gets Me” is targeted toward the pop and rhythmic sectors.
Before “Kill Bill,” SZA reigned on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart with “I Hate U,” which likewise earned its chart-topping rule by debuting in the top slot. The single arrived in the penthouse on the chart dated Dec. 18, 2021, and led for one week. As both “I Hate U” and “Kill Bill” appear on SOS, the album is the first to yield two Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs leaders since The Weeknd’s After Hours sparked No. 1s in “Heartless” and “Blinding Lights.”
SOS also arrives with chart-topping accolades. The set storms in at No. 1 on the all-genre Billboard 200, Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums and Top R&B Albums charts with 318,000 equivalent album units. Of that sum, 310,000 units derive from streaming — equal to 404.6 million official on-demand U.S. streams for the album’s songs, a new one-week record for any R&B album. On the former two charts, SOS grants SZA her first No. 1, while she picks up her second on the lattermost, after Ctrl reigned in 2017 upon its original release and again, earlier this year, following its deluxe edition’s premiere on the set’s fifth anniversary.
“Kill Bill” leads a parade of SZA cuts onto Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, with seven tracks in the top 10 and 20 on the chart overall. Here’s a rundown of all her placements this week:
No. 1, “Kill Bill”No. 2, “Nobody Gets Me”No. 3, “Blind”No. 6, “Low”No. 7, “Shirt”No. 8, “Love Language”No. 9, “Seek & Destroy”No. 11, “Snooze”No. 12, “Used,” featuring Don ToliverNo. 13, “SOS”No. 16, “Special”No. 17, “Ghost in the Machine,” featuring Phoebe BridgersNo. 19, “Gone Girl”No. 20, “Notice Me”No. 23, “Smoking on My Ex Pack”No. 24, “Open Arms,” featuring Travis ScottNo. 27, “Conceited”No. 29, “Far”No. 30, “Too Late”No. 35, “Forgiveless,” featuring Ol’ Dirty Bastard
Plus, in addition to “I Hate U,” another prior SOS single, “Good Days,” reached No. 3 in 2021.
The SZA takeover also extends to the Hot R&B Songs chart, where the hitmaker posts eight tracks in the top 10 and 18 songs on the 25-position list. “Bill” leads the pack and becomes her third No. 1 on the list, after “The Weekend” and “I Hate U” each ruled for one week in, respectively, 2018 and 2021.
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The holiday spirit is in the air on Billboard’s Hot Trending Songs chart, powered by Twitter and sponsored by Xfinity Mobile, as Red Velvet and aespa’s “Beautiful Christmas” tops the Dec. 24-dated list.
Billboard’s Hot Trending charts, powered by Twitter and sponsored by Xfinity Mobile, track global music-related trends and conversations in real-time across Twitter, viewable over either the last 24 hours or past seven days. A weekly, 20-position version of the chart, covering activity from Friday through Thursday of each week, posts alongside Billboard’s other weekly charts on Billboard.com each Tuesday, with the latest tracking period running Dec. 9-15.
“Beautiful Christmas,” the first collaboration – holiday or otherwise – between South Korean labelmates Red Velvet and aespa, premiered Dec. 14, with a teaser going up on Dec. 12.
It’s the first No. 1 on the weekly Hot Trending Songs chart for both groups; aespa previously peaked at No. 6 with both “Savage” (2021) and “Girls” (2022), while Red Velvet reached No. 16 with “Feel My Rhythm” earlier this year.
Further chart appearances for the song are possible upon its first full week of tracking, running Dec. 16-22 and for the Billboard charts dated Dec. 31.
“Beautiful Christmas” is followed by NewJeans’ “Ditto,” which was teased during the latest tracking period and released in full Dec. 19. An additional to-be-released song from the South Korean quintet, “OMG,” bows at No. 5.
Keep visiting Billboard.com for the constantly evolving Hot Trending Songs rankings, and check in each Tuesday for the latest weekly chart.
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In 2022, Spanish-language music comprised a big chunk of what was being streamed beyond just Spanish-speaking countries and households. This year, Latin – which is defined as music predominantly sung in Spanish – saw a continued steady growth in the U.S. market and across the globe.
Latin’s big year was led by Bad Bunny’s game-changing release Un Verano Sin Ti, which is (of course) included in our 25 favorite Latin albums of this year. The 23-track genre-hopping set became the first all-Spanish album to be ranked No. 1 on the Billboard 200 year-end albums chart, and it also earned the first-ever Grammy nomination for album of the year for an all-Spanish release.
Genre-blurring albums were a trend this year. Perhaps the most experimental was Rosalía’s Motomami, which is impossible to box into one particular style or genre. Instead, the 16-track set, which won album of the year at the Latin Grammys, was an invitation into the Spaniard’s global-spanning inspiration. She isn’t afraid to go on an exploratory journey where jazz and reggaeton can coexist in one song.
That experimental nature was also found in Mexican music albums such as Eslabon Armado’s history-making Nostalgia and Ivan Cornejo’s Dañado. The faces of a new generation of regional Mexican acts, these artists may be labeled as sierreño artists but, at their core, they’re fusing their songs with the sounds (rock, alternative, pop) that inspired them growing up as a Mexican-American kid in the U.S. There was also Natalia Lafourcade’s masterpiece De Todas Las Flores, Romeo Santos’ third installment of his La Formula series and Jorge Drexler’s poignant Tinta y Tiempo.
Here are our 25 favorite Latin albums from this year, in alphabetical order.