Trending Up
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Welcome to Billboard Pro’s Trending Up newsletter, 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: Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery reveals gains for its titular Beatles cut and other soundtrack favorites, Yellowstone‘s Luke Grimes takes a step towards stardom in a second medium and a decade-old Miguel hit may be gearing up for another chart run.
‘Glass Onion’ Hits Streaming, Boosts Music Streams for… “Glass Onion”
“Looking through the bent-backed tulips/ To see how the other half lives/ Looking through a glass onion,” Paul McCartney sings on The Beatles’ White Album classic “Glass Onion.” There are some subtle clues to the plot of Glass Onion – the latest Knives Out mystery, a Netflix smash since its Dec. 23 release – in the lyrics to “Glass Onion,” which plays over the end credits of the film.
Maybe listeners wanted to revisit “Glass Onion” after hearing it during the movie’s finale to parse its lyrics and try to further unlock the puzzle box of a plot, or maybe they were simply they were reminded by the movie how much “Glass Onion” rules. Regardless, the 1968 song experienced a huge uptick in streams during the film’s first week of wide availability — as have some other ’60s and ’70s tracks used in director Rian Johnson’s crowd-pleasing mystery.
“Glass Onion” experienced a 167% increase in weekly U.S. on-demand streams during the week of Dec. 23-29, according to Luminate, jumping to over 160,000 streams after earning a little over 60,000 the previous week. Meanwhile, David Bowie’s “Star” — which is used to soundtrack a memorable dance sequence featuring Kate Hudson’s character (no spoilers here, we promise) — was up 60% during the same week, reaching 32,000 U.S. on-demand streams. And The Bee Gees’ “To Love Somebody,” featured in its original version in the film, scored a 37% bump, up to nearly 259,000 streams in the week ending Dec. 29.
A third Knives Out film has already been confirmed, although its title has yet to be announced. After the original Knives Out in 2019 was named after a Radiohead song, and Glass Onion was titled as a Beatles reference, we’ll see if the next installment also features a shared song title — but if it does, rest assured that that song will get a streaming boost of its own during its Netflix premiere week. – JASON LIPSHUTZ
The ‘Yellowstone’ Bump Continues Growing – Even for Its Own Cast
We’ve written before in Trending Up about how effective the Paramount+ smash Western melodrama Yellowstone has been in lending streaming and sales bumps to its more prominently featured synchs. Americana star Zach Bryan has been one of its biggest beneficiaries, with his songs included across multiple seasons – in December, Bryan’s “The Good I’ll Do” (from his Belting Bronco/Warner-released breakout album American Heartbreak) debuted in the top five of Billboard’s Digital Song Sales chart after inclusion in a Season Five episode.
That trend continues this week, with Bryan’s “Tishomingo” ballad showcased in the show’s mid-season finale on Jan. 1 – resulting in a 90.4% rise in daily official on-demand U.S. streams to 115,000 for Jan. 2, according to Luminate. (The song also sold over 1,000 digital songs from Jan. 1 to Jan. 2, after selling a negligible number the two days before.)
More interesting, though, is another artist seeing gains whose name will undoubtedly be familiar already to all Yellowstone fans: Luke Grimes, the actor who stars as Kayce Dutton on the show. Grimes recently launched a country music career with debut single “No Horse to Ride” (Range Media/Mercury Nashville) and the love song was similarly featured on the drama’s midseason finale – receiving a 67.7% bump to 109,000 daily official on-demand streams for Jan. 2, and also combining to sell over 1,000 digital songs for Jan. 1-2. (Perhaps for Stranger Things’ fifth and final season, its musically inclined cast should take from Grimes’ example and push for similar synch placement – anachronisms be damned.) – ANDREW UNTERBERGER
You Can Bet That: Miguel’s “Sure Thing” Gets Biggest Viral Boost Yet
A little over a decade ago, Miguel broke through as a crossover star thanks to his swoon-worthy R&B single “Adorn,” which peaked at No. 17 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2012 and was nominated for song of the year at the 2013 Grammys. Yet one year earlier, the singer-songwriter’s neo-soul single “Sure Thing” became his first Hot 100 top 40 hit (off ByStorm/Jive debut release All I Want Is You), and his first chart-topper on the R&B/Hip-Hop Songs tally. Now, “Sure Thing” is surging back into the public consciousness, and introducing the R&B star, who hasn’t released an album in over five years, to the TikTok generation.
“Sure Thing” has bubbled up a few times over the past three years thanks to versions both slowed-down and sped-up. However, the song has experienced its biggest revival to date over the past month or so, thanks to a new wave of sped-up takes on the song that started in November, and is now climbing the daily charts on various streaming platforms — today, No. 22 on Spotify’s Daily Top Songs USA listing, and No. 55 on the Apple Music U.S. daily Top 100 tally.
During the week ending Dec. 1, “Sure Thing” earned 4.58 million U.S. on-demand streams, according to Luminate; that total grew to 6.80 million for the week ending Dec. 29, a 48% bump from that earlier number. Meanwhile, other songs from 2010’s All I Want Is You are taking off to a smaller degree, with the title track and “Girl With the Tattoo Enter.lewd” both climbing in streams over the past month.
How high can “Sure Thing” climb? The coming weeks should demonstrate just how prolonged the song’s revival will be — but for Miguel, who hasn’t scored a Hot 100 hit as a lead artist since 2017’s “Sky Walker” featuring Travis Scott, the possibility of a chart re-entry for “Sure Thing” would make for a nice lead-in to a potential return to music in 2023. – JL
People Who Need “People”
Minneapolis singer-songwriter Libianca may be familiar to viewers of NBC’s The Voice as a Team Blake contestant from the show’s 21st season, but otherwise you might have heard her for the first time on TikTok the past month. That’s because her new Afrobeats-flavored song “People” is blowing up on the service, with thousands of users sharing videos of them relating to the song’s mentally wary lyrics (particularly its opening lines, “I’ve been drinking more alcohol for the past five days/ Did you check on me?”), and even R&B star Chris Brown posting that it “speaks volumes” to him.
“People” has since crossed over to other streaming platforms, rising 55.2% to 1.8 million on-demand U.S. streams for the chart tracking week ending Dec. 29, and hitting No. 5 on Billboard’s U.S. Afrobeats Songs chart dated Jan. 7 – indicating it may be a breakout hit to watch for over the first few months of 2023. – AU
Q&A: Taryn Lacroix, Spotify’s Associate Manager, Artist & Label Partnerships, on What’s Trending Up in Her World
What was your biggest takeaway from the 2022 Spotify Wrapped rollout compared to previous years?
Spotify Wrapped has existed in some form since 2015, and this was our biggest year yet from both the artist and fan perspectives. It’s become so highly anticipated that the chatter online starts to build well before its surprise launch. Artists also want to get in on the fun — we saw record-breaking artist involvement this year, and were able to activate with some artists for the first time in our campaign, like Beyoncé and Britney Spears. When you have Elton John sharing his Artist Wrapped or Drake organically sharing his personal listening stats on socials, you know you’ve tapped into the cultural zeitgeist, which is always the most significant challenge as a brand.
Which new feature of Wrapped did you think was most successful?
This year we scaled our short-form video initiative called ‘Your Artist Messages,’ which are self-recorded videos from artists thanking their top fans on Spotify. With an ambitious goal in mind, we galvanized the music industry across the globe to record and upload videos via Spotify for Artists to reward top fans for streaming on Spotify. Artists from Taylor Swift to Måneskin to Dolly Parton to Lil Baby participated, reaching hundreds of millions of listeners on Spotify. When eligible listeners selected “Your Artist Messages” in their 2022 Wrapped hub on Spotify, they would see a personalized feed of videos from some of their favorite artists this year. This was a massive win, not only for the users’ experience, but for product development at large.
Looking at the top songs/artists/albums of 2022, which trend was the most personally interesting to you?
The longevity of Glass Animals’ “Heat Waves” domination is unparalleled. A viral indie pop song from 2020 was the No. 2 song globally in 2022, surpassing some of the biggest household names. It’s a feat to not only achieve a viral hit, but also to transcend it and maintain sustained relevancy. It’s a testament to the power of social media, combined with the fact that the appetite for catalog is only growing, which is a trend evidenced across the board with many of the most popular titles being released prior to 2022.
Fill in the blank: when it comes to exploring their Spotify Wrapped, not enough listeners are talking about their _______.
Audio Day descriptors. I need to know who else is channeling “upbeat gothic angst!” – JL
Season’s Gainings: What Are You Streaming New Year’s Eve?
Though the Christmas music season comes to an end shortly after the last present is unwrapped on Dec. 25, there’s still plenty of New Year’s holiday listening to be done as we turn the calendar over. Such themed songs saw a big streaming bump on Dec. 31 and Jan. 1, including Death Cab for Cutie’s “The New Year” (up 345% from Dec. 30 to Jan. 1, to nearly 40,000 official on-demand U.S. streams, according to Luminate), U2’s “New Year’s Day” (up 215% to nearly 75,000) and Taylor Swift’s “New Year’s Day” (up 333% to to 361,000). Hope you got your share of seasonal listening in while you could these holidays, since President’s Day and Groundhog Day don’t yet offer the same variety of soundtrack options. – AU
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: Viewer fascination with HBO’s White Lotus spills over onto streaming, one TikTok user’s cosign changes a band’s commercial fortunes and Mac DeMarco fans get emotional over his (extremely unconfirmed) retirement.
Listeners Not Ready to Leave White Lotus Theme
One of the year’s most buzzed-about television seasons wrapped on Sunday (Dec. 11), as the much-anticipated finale of season two of HBO’s intriguing destination drama The White Lotus aired. Though none of the show’s many syncs — largely consisting of older Italian pop songs appropriate to its Sicily location — found viral success over the course of the season, the show has shown steady gains for its fan-favorite theme song, an elegant, lush and unexpectedly pulsing work from Chilean-born Canadian film and television composer Cristobal Tapia De Veer.
In the four weeks leading up to the chart week ending Dec. 8, weekly official on-demand U.S. streams of the striking theme (officially titled “Renaissance (Main Title Theme)”) rose from 82,000 to 283,000, according to Luminate — a 244% hike. After Dec. 11, viewers rushed to play the song like Lucia played Albie in the finale, with the song seeing a daily jump of 83% (from 53,000 to 97,000) on Monday. And though the White Lotus season is now over, interest in the theme may not be; it just received a new house remix from producer Enamour.
“Musta Been” a TikTok Endorsement Causing Próxima Prada to Go Viral
For all the random reasons a song can explode on TikTok, it seems pretty rare that it happens as a virtue of one user telling their followers, “Hey, listen to this song.” But that’s basically what happened with San Luis Obispo, Calif. band Próxima Prada and their unexpectedly viral song “Musta Been a Ghost,” which user Matt Firestone featured a short clip of in a video titled “Songs You Never Would Have Found Because Life Gets Really Busy Sometimes Part 2.” The video, posted on Dec. 9, ended up being over nine million times — leading to “Ghost” spiking from under 3,000 daily on-demand official U.S. streams to over 178,000 on Dec. 12, according to Luminate, a whopping 5,884% gain.
“I love how @fuego.stine (a guy we had never met or spoken to) made this short, simple video about our song and it went viral,” the band wrote on their Instagram page of the feel-good surge. “Real people sharing our music with other real people is how we’ve been able to slowly but surely grow. SO THANK YOU!”
Fans Have a “Heart to Heart” Over Mac DeMarco Retiring (Or Not)
Mac DeMarco has always performed well on streaming, but recently the indie singer-songwriter-guitarist’s 2019 track “Heart to Heart” (from Here Comes the Cowboy) has proved particularly explosive — doubling its weekly official on-demand U.S. streams over the last two weeks to 939,000, according to Luminate, and even making its way onto Spotify’s Daily Top Songs USA chart for Dec. 12 and 13. Look for the song on TikTok, and you’ll find thousands of videos of emotional conversations being set to the song, many with captions (or users in the comments) bemoaning rumors of DeMarco’s retirement from music, whispers of which have swept through social media the past few weeks.
Is there any truth to them? Probably not — at least not officially, as DeMarco hasn’t announced anything besides some postponed tour dates while he works on his upcoming album, and there’s little sourcing on the internet for news of his supposed music-industry departure beyond anonymous quotes. But the whisper-down-the-lane effect of social media appears to have helped him score another viral hit, which should make for a nice early retirement gift if and when he does decide to hang up his six-string.
Welcome to Billboard Pro’s Trending Up newsletter, 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: A Lady Gaga deep cut goes viral thanks to Netflix’s Wednesday — despite not being featured in the show — while a star trio’s ’00s R&B cover gets a big bump for the original, and Snoop Dogg does it for the kids.
Lady Gaga’s “Bloody Mary” Soars Over 400% in Streams Thanks to ‘Wednesday’
The streaming gains of The Cramps’ “Goo Goo Muck,” as covered in Trending Up last week, make perfect sense: the spooky-punk classic was used in a school dance sequence in Netflix’s smash new Addams Family revival Wednesday. With millions binging the show following its Nov. 23 premiere, “Goo Goo Muck” naturally received a healthy streaming bump by viewers eager to listen to the song that soundtracked Jenna Ortega’s limb-throwing dance moves.
Yet that school dance sequence is also helping Lady Gaga’s “Bloody Mary” make major moves… and Gaga’s Born This Way track (released on Interscope in 2011) isn’t even featured in Wednesday. Instead, TikTok users have figured out that speeding up “Bloody Mary” makes the electro-pop track synch perfectly with Wednesday’s off-kilter choreography, and are producing and liking hundreds of “Bloody Mary”/Wednesday clips as a result.
“Bloody Mary,” which was never released as a single from Born This Way, is up 415% in weekly U.S. on-demand streams for the week ending Dec. 1, cracking 2 million plays in that time frame, according to Luminate. “Slay Wednesday!” Mother Monster wrote on Twitter last Thursday (Dec. 1) to acknowledge the trend. “You’re welcome at Haus of Gaga anytime (and bring Thing with you, we love paws around here).” At the end of a year where TV and movie soundtrack hits were louder than ever on TikTok, it’s only fitting that we get a soundtrack hit fully born on the platform. – JASON LIPSHUTZ
The Weeknd & Metro Boomin Fans Can’t Keep Their “I Don’t Wanna Know” Listening on the Low
It might’ve been re-titled “Creepin’,” but any fan of ‘00s pop or R&B knew what the deal was by the end of The Weeknd’s first line. The song, taken from star producer Metro Boomin’s new Boominati Worldwide/Republic set Heroes & Villains, is a cover in all but name of Mario Winans’ cheated-on classic “I Don’t Wanna Know” (from his 2004 album Hurt No More on Bad Boy/Universal) with rap’s late-year-MVP 21 Savage handling the guest verse duties that belonged to Diddy on the original. Featured as the lead track on Spotify’s most recent New Music Friday playlist, “Creepin’” was one of the best-performing tracks on streaming over the weekend, and is currently leading the daily charts for both Spotify and Apple Music.
We’ll see next week what kind of early chances “Creepin’” has of matching or exceeding the chart heights of “I Don’t Wanna Know,” which peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2004. But in the meantime, some of its streaming success has also spilled over to the song’s predecessor: Its daily official on-demand U.S. stream count rose from just under 50,000 on Dec. 1 (the day before “Creepin’”) to over 157,000 on Dec. 3 – a gain of 215%, according to Luminate. – ANDREW UNTERBERGER
Raye Resets, Scores a Fast-Moving Viral Hit
“A little context, if you care to listen/ I find myself in a s–t position,” Raye sings early in her new single “Escapism,” featuring 070 Shake; the British pop artist is singing about an unexpected breakup and the drowning-of-sorrows that will follow, but Raye also found herself in a sticky situation last year when she publicly claimed that her label, Polydor Records, was refusing to release her long-completed debut album.
Now, Raye has a new deal with Human Re Sources/The Orchard, and a viral hit with “Escapism,” which has gotten the sped-up TikTok treatment and taken off as the soundtrack to various lip-syncs and rap-alongs following its Nov. 11 release. “Escapism” earned nearly 2 million U.S. on-demand streams in the week ending Dec. 1, according to Luminate – a 300% gain from the previous week. Raye has been featured on dance hits by David Guetta, Jax Jones and Major Lazer, but she may be entering 2023 with a fresh start and a hit as a lead artist – the opposite of a s–t situation, really. – JL
“Affirmation”s With Snoop Becomes a Surprise TikTok Trend
If you’ve ever felt like you needed some motivational pep talk from Tha Doggfather, it’s been quite the last couple weeks for you on TikTok, where the Snoop Dogg-fronted kids’ music project Doggyland has been taking off lately. “Affirmation Song” has been the biggest breakout track from its independently released Kids Hits, Vol. 1 project, with thousands of vid eos – most from adults, clearly still in need of a little positive reinforcement – being soundtracked by Snoop leading a chorus of kids in a series of the titular chants (“There is no one better to be but myself! Today is gonna be an amazing day!”) The song’s streaming performance has gotten an accompanying self-esteem boost, spiking 272% in official on-demand U.S. streams to 269,000 for the week ending Dec. 1, according to Luminate, and undoubtedly raising some label eyebrows about what other artists might be able to get into the viral kids’ music game. – AU
Q&A: Stephen Brower, Global Co-Lead of Artist Relations at Amazon Music, on What’s Trending Up in His World
What was the process for programming this year’s lineup of Amazon Original and cover holiday songs?
We always look to work with artists we know our Amazon Music customers love. Lizzo and Kane Brown have had massive success on Amazon Music, both throughout their careers and certainly with their 2022 album releases. Lauren Spencer-Smith is likewise an emerging artist that Amazon Music customers have been loving all year long. Working with each of them to find a holiday song that we thought holiday listeners on Amazon Music would discover and love was a fun process, and one we think will delight their fans on Amazon Music.
We also look to work with artists across different genres and styles of holiday music. If you’re an R&B fan, there’s an amazing Giveon Amazon Original for you to discover. If you love classical holiday music, Alexis Ffrench has delivered a beautiful song for you.
What have you noticed in terms of how Amazon Music users are interacting with holiday music in 2022 as opposed to previous years?
Our customers have found these new holiday Amazon Originals early this year, and certainly seem to be responding to these songs. We’re already seeing Originals on the Holiday 100, with Lauren Spencer-Smith at No. 51, Lizzo at No. 54 and Kane Brown at No. 58 on the chart. Both Lizzo and Lauren Spencer-Smith debuted on the Hot 100 this week, and Lizzo’s track is currently at No. 52 on the Official Charts (UK) Top 100 this week. That these songs are only available on Amazon Music — and are doing so well so early in December — shows how excited our customers are about holiday music and about these new Amazon Originals.
Every year, several artists try to launch new holiday songs as well as covers of classics, with only a few cutting through the clutter. What do you think is the biggest key to a successful new holiday song?
The beauty of holiday music, but also one of its challenges, is that having a holiday hit is really a long-term proposition. These songs only have a brief window of time to catch the public’s ear, but they have that window every year. Our 2018 Amazon Original from Katy Perry, “Cozy Little Christmas,” was certified platinum earlier this year, and now feels like one of those songs listeners are going to look for every year. I think something similar is happening with Carrie Underwood’s Amazon Original song “Favorite Time of Year” from 2020. Those songs have that magic quality of being both nostalgic and contemporary at the same time, which I think will be key to their timelessness.
With artists with whom we work to create new cover versions of classic tracks, I think a key is having something distinctive so that their new version can sit alongside an original or iconic version and not compete with it. Last year, Camila Cabello’s Amazon Original version of “I’ll Be Home For Christmas” featured mariachi flourishes that felt totally authentic to her, and also gave her version something listeners would seek out alongside other versions of that song. This year, Lauren Spencer-Smith’s take on “Last Christmas” is as an emotional ballad, which gives a totally different feel than Wham!’s iconic version.
Fill in the blank: the biggest new trend in holiday music over the next few years will be _______.
Holiday versions of songs that aren’t otherwise tied to the season. In the U.K., Stormzy has released an Amazon Original holiday version of his current single “Firebabe” that customers are loving. We did something similar last year with the Amazon Original holiday version of Coi Leray’s viral smash “Twinnem.” I love both of those and think they really offer something unique to fans alongside songs that are more explicitly “holiday,” thematically. – JL
Seasons Gainings: Happy “Heather” Day
In between cleaning up from Thanksgiving and starting to hang your holiday decorations, did you make time to celebrate “Heather” Day? Maybe not, but plenty of Conan Gray fans surely did, with “Heather Day” trending all across social media on Dec. 3 – thanks to the date being mentioned in the 2020 hit ballad’s opening lyrics, “I still remember, the third of December, me in your sweater…” Plenty of commemorating took place across streaming services as well, with “Heather” (from Gray’s Republic-released Kid Krow album) rising 92% in daily official on-demand U.S. streams to over 914,000 on Dec. 3, according to Luminate – enough for the song to re-enter the Spotify Daily Top Songs USA chart at No. 62. – AU
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: Netflix’s latest hit series Wednesday helps an early cult-punk classic get out of the “Muck,” The 1975’s live lip-locking revives one of their early singles and everyone is left craving more “Yamz” this Thanksgiving.
‘Wednesday’ Sends The Cramps’ Streams Running Up That Hill
Wednesday, the Addams Family revival focused on a teenage Wednesday Addams (played by Jenna Ortega) and her adventures at a boarding school, has been a smash success for Netflix since premiering last Wednesday (Nov. 23), setting the record for the most hours viewed in a week for an English-language series on the streaming service. Its 341.2 million hours viewed in its debut week surpasses the record set a few months back by the fourth season of Stranger Things — which, you may recall, resurrected Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” with dramatic flair and turned the 1985 single into a top five Billboard Hot 100 smash in 2022.
Six months later, Wednesday is helping “Goo Goo Muck,” the spooky-fun 1981 version of the 1962 Ronnie Cook and the Gaylads single released on I.R.S. by influential rockabilly punks The Cramps, receive a similarly inspired comeback. “Goo Goo Muck” soundtracks a school dance in which Ortega demonstrates some quirky, spirited choreography, and Wednesday fans are seeking out The Cramps version after the fact. On the day before the Wednesday series premiered, “Goo Goo Muck” earned 2,500 daily U.S. on-demand streams, according to Luminate; by Monday (Nov. 28), that number was up to 134,000 daily streams. The Cramps have been defunct since the 2009 death of lead singer Lux Interior, but if Wednesday viewers keep streaming “Goo Goo Muck,” the band could belatedly earn its first career Hot 100 hit. – JASON LIPSHUTZ
The 1975 Make Out Like Bandits
U.K. alt-pop veterans The 1975 hit the Billboard 200’s top 10 for the fourth straight album this October with their latest set, Being Funny in a Foreign Language, and have a slow-burning streaming hit with that LP’s “About You,” which has grown 41% over the three weeks to over two million weekly U.S. on-demand streams for the period ending Nov. 24, according to Luminate. But the band’s most buzzed-about song the past week hasn’t come from that album, or any of the three before it – for that one, you’ve got to go back to from their 2013 self-titled debut set (on Dirty Hit/Polydor) and longtime fan favorite “Robbers,” which the group has turned into a lip-locking spectacle on their current stateside tour.
At consecutive stops over the past weekend in Las Vegas and San Diego, frontman Matty Healy pulled fans from the audience – one female, one male – onstage during their performance of “Robbers,” embracing them and then giving them a healthy smooch just before the song’s climax. The consecutive kisses both went viral on social media, getting fans dangerously in their feelings and causing them to swarm back to the enduring “Robbers.” Since Nov. 25 (the night of the Vegas concert), the song has spiked 116% in daily official on-demand U.S. streams, according to Luminate, growing from 65,000 that Thursday to 141,000 on Sunday, and no doubt inspiring a whole lot of breathless refreshing of social feeds for each remaining tour date. – ANDREW UNTERBERGER
A Second Helping of “Yamz” This Thanksgiving
It was 2015 all over again last week, as the hottest song of Thanksgiving belonged to Fetty Wap. The “Trap Queen” hitmaker scored a breakout success with the rap-crooned synth-funk of “Sweet Yamz” – a song not necessarily about the delicious side dish, but which nonetheless felt seasonally appropriate to countless listeners. The 300 Entertainment/RGF Productions single, released to streaming services on Nov. 18, earned plaudits from authorities as respected as Snoop Dogg and Charlie Wilson and exploded on streaming last week, earning over half a million official on-demand U.S. streams daily from Wednesday (Nov. 23) through Saturday (Nov. 26), according to Luminate.
However, as many R&B heads online were quick to point out, the song wasn’t totally an original: The hit was based off a 2021 collab between Masego and Devin Morrison on EQT Recordings/Capitol, with a near-identical chorus and groove, but different verses. Though some cried foul at the lift, there was more than enough consumption to go around this Thanksgiving season: The original “Yamz” also experienced a huge bump, rising from 172,000 streams total from Nov. 21-23 to 367,000 from Nov. 24-26, a 113% gain. – AU
Welcome to Billboard Pro’s Trending Up newsletter, 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: Lil Wayne’s “Lollipop” goes viral anew, d4vd follows up his streaming breakthrough with another slow-growing hit, and an independent Texas band enjoys major gains after an appearance on one of the most-watched TV premieres of the decade.
TikTok Takes Another Lick at “Lollipop”
Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter III smash “Lollipop” may have topped the Billboard Hot 100 back in 2008, but TikTok is taking to the song like it came out yesterday. The line “Okay, lil mama had a swag like mine / Even where her hair down her back like mine” is now the soundtrack to all sorts of random ephemera on the platform: One woman used it to soundtrack herself preparing for labor, a 92-year-old grandma used it to share that she had paid off her future funeral costs, and a pair of siblings used the song to poke fun at their dad.
There seems to be no rhyme or reason as to why users are loving Tunechi’s old Cash Money track so much, but the strange TikTok buzz has surely paid off: “Lollipop” is up 47% in weekly on-demand U.S. streams to nearly 3.3 million for the week ending Nov. 21. – KRISTIN ROBINSON
‘Yellowstone’ Fever Boosts Shane Smith & The Saints Songs
If you were one of the nearly 16 million people who watched the season five premiere of the Paramount Network smash family drama Yellowstone, you heard three songs – two as performed by the band within the episode – by independent Texas outfit Shane Smith and the Saints, a previously established favorite of characters on the show. Not surprising, then, that the songs would experience a streaming bump as a result, particularly the ones the band played themselves: “Dance the Night Away,” from 2013’s Coast album, rose 164.7% in weekly official on-demand U.S. streams to 107,000 for the week ending Nov. 17, according to Luminate, while the recently released “Fire in the Ocean” saw a 81% gain to 177,000. – ANDREW UNTERBERGER
Sped-Up? Slowed-Down? Either Way, Listeners Love ‘Limbo’
“Limbo,” the bruising rap showcase from Ontario MC Freddie Dredd, has started to snowball into a hit after being featured on his Freddie’s Inferno project in August — and the song is doing so in a variety of different formats. A slowed-down version of the track is taking off on TikTok, and so is a sped-up version; “Limbo” is being synched up to dramatic sequences in Call of Duty, as well as God of War: Ragnarok. But even in its original version, Dredd’s hard-nosed rhyming is connecting with listeners: weekly U.S. on-demand streams for “Limbo” increased over 90 percent during the week ending Nov. 17, up to 3.54 million, according to Luminate.
Dredd, who is signed to RCA Records, is no stranger to TikTok virality: his 2019 single “Cha Cha,” which sampled Lisa Ono’s “Sway It, Hula Girl,” became a breakthrough for the rapper in the early days of the app’s industry influence. Yet “Limbo” is quickly becoming his signature hit, and Dredd is well-aware of its success. “Out of all the music i have made ive never had a single song do so well in a single day,” he posted on Twitter last week after a particularly strong day for “Limbo” on Spotify. “thank yall so much for streaming my s–t, thank yall for making my dreams come true.” – JASON LIPSHUTZ
d4vd Goes Two for Two With Viral Hits
Teen singer-songwriter d4vd is certainly a newcomer to the music biz, but he’s already racked up a second major TikTok hit this year. First, his single “Romantic Homicide” went so viral it hit the Billboard Hot 100’s top 40 and led to a seven-figure deal with Interscope/Darkroom. Now follow-up “Here With Me” is also picking up steam, with hundreds of thousands of creations already on the app.
Focusing on the lyrics “I don’t care how long it takes / as long as I am with you / I’ve got a smile on my face,” users are posting videos of heartwarming videos they found on the Internet, sometimes with them on greenscreen reacting to it. One video shows a woman feeding a stray dog, another shows a “tired teacher” putting on a “happy face” before walking into his classroom to greet students. Users’ emotional attachment to the song has transferred to real streaming wins for d4vd, as the song has climbed steadily in plays over the past month – rising 69% in official U.S. on-demand streams from 2.6 million the week ending Oct. 20 to nearly 4.5 million the week ending Nov. 17, according to Luminate. – KR
Q&A: Randy Hutson, CEO of Production Resource Group (PRG)’s Music and Live TV Divisions, on What’s Trending Up in His World
Looking back at 2022, what are some of the biggest wins for PRG, which provides resources and pushes technical innovation in the live sector?
PRG continued our work elevating production for some of the world’s biggest tours this year. Coldplay’s Music of the Spheres tour has been a big moment for us, especially in terms of sustainability. Coldplay made a pledge to reduce their carbon footprint while touring, so our mission was to stay more sustainably-minded while not losing any of the magic fans have come to expect at their shows. To minimize CO2 emissions, the engineers at PRG made one of the show’s standout features – four huge 3D spheres – inflatable so they would collapse and take up ¾ of one truck. With traditional construction techniques the four spheres would have needed six for transport. This complex engineering had never been done before.
This year we’ve also provided production solutions for legendary artists like Metallica, Post Malone, Jack Harlow, and Elton John’s Farewell Tour, among many others. Some of the Las Vegas residencies we’ve worked on this year include Shania Twain, Carrie Underwood, and Aerosmith. It was also incredibly meaningful to do lighting and video for the Taylor Hawkins Tribute Show at Wembley Stadium.
What do you expect innovation (visual or otherwise) in the touring sector to look like in the next year and beyond?
Tours are being pressured to fill every stadium or arena seat, so one of the areas that we’re focused on is fan engagement. For example, we’ll be building on the success we had with the Indochine tour in Europe, where we positioned the audio speakers BEHIND a new transparent LED video screen, providing fans with an unobstructed view of the screens.
Efficiency in gear is increasingly important. Now, both lighting fixtures and projectors are being designed with LED and laser sources to produce a multitude of green benefits, allowing us to do more with less carbon footprint. And lastly, for years we’ve done large tours requiring many buses and trucks for gear – whatever we needed to execute the show design. But going forward, production and tour managers are looking at reverse engineering tours, i.e., how many buses and trucks do we want to have? Artists and their productions are looking for ways to improve touring by using companies with global footprints to cut down on equipment and people movement around the world. Fewer trucks, buses and planes moving will increase profitability (and lead to sustainability) allowing us to continue to do the work we love every day.
PRG has provided technical and logistical support for the Super Bowl halftime show for years. How has the halftime show evolved, and how will it continue to evolve with new tech?
The Super Bowl halftime show is unquestionably one of the most epic moments in an artist’s career, so we listen closely to what they are envisioning for each performance. That means some years the stage is more simplistic while others feature higher levels of spectacle. Overall, our team’s job is to ensure the visual experience is equally incredible for people in the stands and the millions watching at home. As technology and creatives have become more sophisticated, new tech has been implemented to make the show more cinematic, despite limited camera positions on the field.
You can really see this with The Weeknd in 2021 and the Dr. Dre & Co. performance in 2022 which used our proprietary 35LIVE!® technology. 35LIVE! elevates televised events by giving them a big-screen look and feel, replacing the traditional multi-camera approach. A team of technical specialists work together to produce astounding imagery, 100% live.
Fill in the blank: more people in touring/events should be thinking about ______.
Sustainability. It’s never been more important to take care of the environment. In 2017 PRG developed PRG SpaceFrame®, a touring frame design with ultra-light carbon fiber construction and collapsibility that reduces truck space by approximately 35 percent. This means less trucks and a lower carbon footprint. We’re going to see more governments requiring tours, fabrication companies, and production services companies to measure and report carbon emissions and supply safety reports.
We can also anticipate seeing more regulation around power consumption. Resources like fuel are going to be more costly. Research into replacing steel with bamboo in some fabrication applications could be a game-changer. We are also using recyclable materials in place of the hard scenic elements that the industry was built on. It’s time for our entire industry to focus on doing what’s good for the planet. – JL
Season’s Gainings: It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Thanksgiving
We all know about the annual Christmas bump that certain holiday perennials begin to enjoy on streaming as early as Nov. 1 – but do folks begin to anticipate Thanksgiving in the same way in the days leading up to the fourth Thursday in November? Well, the numbers aren’t as stratospheric, but slowly but surely, they’re creeping up there for some of the bigger titles. Matthew West’s “Gobble Gobble” is up 93% in daily on-demand U.S. streams from Nov. 15 to Nov 21 to 73,000, according to Luminate, while Ben Rector’s “The Thanksgiving Song” is up 64% over that same span to 45,000, and the Vince Guaraldi Trio’s “Thanksgiving Theme” is up 38% to 75,000.
As for Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant Massacre,” the near-20-minute, Thanksgiving-set ‘60s story song traditionally played by classic rock and Triple A stations in full on Turkey Day, the numbers are still relatively small, just passing 15,000 daily streams on Nov. 21. But it’s also rising by 1,000-2,000 streams a day, and may be poised to explode (like so many post-dinner waist shirt buttons) this Nov. 24. – AU
Welcome to Billboard Pro’s Trending Up newsletter, 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: Drake and 21 Savage’s Her Loss album spurs gains for its sample sources, pop radio embraces TikTok hits with ever-accelerating velocity, and Christmas season is officially underway on streaming.
‘Her Loss’ is Daft Punk’s Gain
collaborative album Her Loss has already proven a streaming juggernaut, even by the standards of the two hip-hop superstars. The 16 songs on Her Loss — a return to form for Drake, following his dance detour Honestly, Nevermind earlier this year — still make up the entire top 16 of the current iTunes songs chart this Wednesday (Nov. 9), and every song is in the top 25 of the daily Spotify tally. The set (released via OVO/Republic/Slaughter Gang/Epic) is doing so well, in fact, that its success is even rolling over to its samples.
Tracks like The Isley Brothers’ “Ballad For the Fallen Soldier,” The Diplomats’ “Real N—as” and Ginuwine’s “Lonely Daze” are all sampled on Her Loss, but the standout lift is of Daft Punk’s eternal dance floor classic “One More Time,” which gets slowed down and paired with percolating percussion on “Circo Loco.” The sample has caused some listeners to seek out Daft Punk’s 2000 original – and as a result, daily U.S. on-demand streams of “One More Time” increased 55% (from 117,000 to 182,000, according to Luminate) upon the Her Loss release, and stayed relatively high throughout the following weekend. Daft Punk may have officially broken up early last year, but it’ll be cause for celebration to have Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo’s names appear as songwriters again on the Hot 100 soon enough. — JASON LIPSHUTZ
Is Pop Radio Adopting TikTok Hits More Quickly?
The Sam Smith–Kim Petras collaboration “Unholy” reaching the top five of Billboard’s Pop Airplay chart shouldn’t be a surprise: the Capitol/EMI team-up has been a smash since its September release and last month becoming both artists’ first career Hot 100 chart-topper. Smith has been a top 40 fixture for years, and “Unholy” is built around a tenaciously catchy hook that’s ripe for the format. Yet “Unholy” — which climbs four spots to No. 5 on the Pop Airplay chart in the week ending Nov. 6 after a 17% gain in plays at U.S. monitored top 40 stations, according to Luminate — started off squarely in the TikTok-hit range, with Smith and Petras teasing the track weeks ahead of its official release; the fact that it’s already a top five Pop Airplay hit, in only its sixth week on the chart, suggests that the format is starting to react to and adopt these sort of viral singles more rapidly than ever before.
Smith may have been a proven commodity at pop radio — albeit mostly with songs significantly more stately than the cacophonous and sexed-up “Unholy” — but Steve Lacy certainly wasn’t, and his “Bad Habit” has become a top 40 smash for RCA after growing on TikTok and streaming, up one spot to No. 2 on Pop Airplay. Meanwhile, The Weeknd’s “Die for You,” a song from his 2016 Republic release Starboy that has recently been revived online, reaches a new high of No. 10 on Pop Airplay this week, taking 11 weeks for programmers to switch attention away from more recent Weeknd fare and toward the resurrected fan favorite. Other songs with TikTok origins, from Stephen Sanchez’s “Until I Found You” to Jax’s “Victoria’s Secret” to Rosa Linn’s “Snap,” are also making waves on pop radio, sitting comfortably on the chart alongside new A-list radio singles from artists like Taylor Swift and Rihanna.
TikTok’s influence on popular music has been common knowledge for years, but the current Pop Airplay chart nods to the fact that viral hits no longer require multiple months to cross over to radio listeners. Expect that pipeline to keep speeding up, and more songs like “Unholy” to make that leap in a matter of weeks. – J.L.
Eminem’s “Mockingbird” Flies Again
Just when you thought TikTok’s predilection for sped-up versions of distinctly low-energy older songs couldn’t get any stranger, here comes Eminem’s “Mockingbird.” The dolorous 2005 single (from the rapper’s fourth Aftermath/Interscope LP Encore), written as an ode to daughter Hailie, has picked up steam on the service thanks to multiple faster versions of the track making the rounds – inspiring everything from sing-along challenges to clips of teens taking care of their younger siblings. Whatever the logic behind the trend, the song has subsequently soared on streaming, going from 1.5 million official on-demand U.S. streams the week ending Oct. 6 to over 3.1 million streams four weeks later – a gain of 104%, according to Luminate. – ANDREW UNTERBERGER
20-Something Singer-Songwriter’s “QUARTER LIFE CRISIS” Strikes a Viral Chord
As All Time Low, Wheatus and countless other acts have discovered over the past couple years, there are few more proven recipes for TikTok success than a song that allows users to flash back to past photos – often providing contrasting juxtaposition with their more adult current look and life. Taylor Bickett is the latest artist to benefit from this. The unsigned Nashville singer-songwriter’s post-adolescent lament “QUARTER LIFE CRISIS” has inspired countless such clips with its “I swear sixteen was yesterday/ But now I’m closer to twenty-eight” lyrics. The 23-year-old’s clever track has already spiked 158% to nearly a million official on-demand U.S. streams for the week ending Nov. 6, according to Luminate — presumably making Bickett’s mid-20s look a lot brighter than they might have seemed when she wrote the song. – A.U.
Season’s Gainings: The Christmas Season Kicks Off Right on Time
If you had any doubt that the end of Halloween is now officially the start of pop music’s holiday season, the numbers this year make the trend pretty unmistakable. As we waved goodbye to Michael Jackson, Ray Parker Jr. and Bobby “Boris” Pickett this Nov. 1, holiday perennials from Brenda Lee, Bobby Helms and (of course) Mariah Carey all exploded with triple-digit percentage gains in official on-demand U.S. streams: “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” was up 176% to 615,000, “Jingle Bell Rock” up 185% to 602,000, and “All I Want for Christmas Is You” up a whopping 236% to nearly 1.3 million streams. In other words, if you’re getting dirty looks from your neighbor for already putting up your Christmas decorations this week, point them to the Spotify or Apple Music charts and let them know that you’re not starting early – they’re just already late. – A.U.
Rihanna’s Catalog Gets ‘Lift’ed With Comeback
Just one week after Taylor Swift’s Midnights was released to historic impact, we got an even longer-anticipated return from a global pop icon: Rihanna, who released her first new single in six years with the Def Jam-released Black Panther: Wakanda Forever ballad “Lift Me Up.” The song debuted with nearly eight million official on-demand U.S. streams and 16,000 in sales on Oct. 28, and racked up another 6.9 million streams and 11,000 sales over the next two days, all according to Luminate. Those numbers should portend a major Billboard Hot 100 debut for the single, though how deep it can strike into the Swift stronghold atop the chart currently remains to be seen. (A strong radio showing should also help: “Lift Me Up” registered 26.3 million in radio audience on pop, adult, rhythmic and R&B/hip-hop stations combined in its first three days (Oct. 28-30), 10 million better than even Swift’s Hot 100-topping “Anti-Hero” over the same period the prior week.)
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In the meantime, “Lift” has also raised the rest of Rihanna’s catalog, with her non-”Lift” streams bubbling up from 5.8 million last Monday (Oct. 24) to 6.8 million that Thursday as anticipation for the new song grew – then spiking another 24% to 8.4 million on Friday, after the song’s release. Gains for those songs – along with a Halloween-themed hike for her spooky smash “Disturbia” – should result in an increased presence for the Bad Gal on next week’s Billboard 200 albums chart, including a likely gain for 2016’s ANTI (No. 122 this week) and a possible re-entry from 2007’s Good Girl Gone Bad. – ANDREW UNTERBERGER
Meghan Trainor’s New ‘Look’ Is Beguiling Listeners
With all the big pop names making splashes the last couple weeks, you might have missed that Meghan Trainor has enjoyed solid returns as well. As her new album on Epic Takin’ It Back debuts at No. 16 on the Billboard 200, giving the pop singer-songwriter her best showing since 2016’s Thank You started at No. 3, recent single “Made You Look” also becomes her first solo Hot 100 entry in four years as it starts at No. 95. Trainor is no stranger to the Hot 100 — her debut single “All About That Bass” topped the chart in 2014 — but “Made You Look” could become her biggest hit in a half-decade, thanks in part to a body-positive trend that is gaining traction on TikTok.
Upon the album’s release on Oct. 21, Trainor launched a dance challenge for the call-and-response doo-wop hook that highlights natural beauty regardless of style. Yet some TikTok users have gone viral for cleverly deploying “Made You Look” to soundtrack a rejection of the male gaze and society’s sexualization of female bodies. No matter which trend they’re encountering, listeners are responding to “Made You Look,” with its daily U.S. on-demand streams crossing the 1 million mark for three straight days beginning last Friday (Oct. 28), according to Luminate. Keep an eye on how top 40 radio, which was key in breaking Trainor with “Bass” eight years ago, adopts her latest offering: “Made You Look” is currently bubbling under Pop Airplay and Adult Pop Airplay, with 266,000 in audience in its first three days. – JASON LIPSHUTZ
Get Down “Ton1ght” With Exøtix, j4m and Ludves
With the way TikTok trends have evolved toward addressing more serious issues, it almost feels like a refreshing throwback when a fun song unexpectedly gets popular on the back of a simple dance challenge. That’s basically what happened with rappers Exøtix and j4m’s haunting jam “Ton1ght,” with the song’s remix (featuring additional vocals from singer Luvdes) taking off on TikTok thanks to a series of videos of users doing a tricky and fast-paced footwork dance to it. The song, originally self-released via DistroKid on ExøtixWørld in October, racked up 615,000 on-demand U.S. streams on the week ending Oct. 27, a 664% gain, according to Luminate, topping Spotify’s Viral 50 – USA chart and making it feel like 2020 all over again – the more enjoyable parts, anyway. – AU
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: Taylor Swift’s blockbuster Midnights bow comes with sparkling cross-platform numbers for its lead single and big gains for her back catalog, while Billie Holiday spawns an unlikely new TikTok trend and Halloween perennials begin to perk back up.
‘Anti-Hero’ Already Saving the Day at Radio
A new Taylor Swift album yielding a huge song debut on the Billboard Hot 100 in the week after its release shouldn’t be a surprise by now. After all, three of her previous four full-lengths — Folklore, Evermore, and the Taylor’s Version re-recording of Red — arrived with concurrent No. 1 bows on the Hot 100: “Cardigan,” “Willow” and “All Too Well (10-Minute Version)” each reached the top of the chart in their respective debut weeks. “Anti-Hero,” the lead single from latest Republic LP Midnights, has a great shot to both join those songs as another chart-topper for Swift – and surpass them all as her biggest chart hit in years.
That’s in large part because the slick, sardonic pop standout is off to an enormous start at radio, even compared to Swift’s last three No. 1 singles. “Anti-Hero” debuts on three radio charts — Pop Airplay (No. 23), Adult Pop Airplay (No. 19) and Adult Contemporary (No. 14) — after just three days of activity, from its Oct. 21 release through Sunday, Oct. 23. In those three days, “Anti-Hero” earned 16.1 million audience impressions from over 275 reporters to Billboard’s all-format Radio Songs chart, according to Luminate. Compare that to the 5.8 million impressions for “Willow” or the 4.7 million for “Cardigan” over their respective first three days — or the 286,000 of “All Too Well (Taylor’s Version)” across its full first week — and it’s clear that radio is very on board with Swift’s return to a more traditional pop sound.
Of course, the quick radio start for “Anti-Hero” comes in addition to blockbuster streaming numbers — over 30 million U.S. on-demands in its first three days, according to Luminate. Add up all of the harbingers of its big commercial debut and “Anti-Hero” very comfortably can announce: It’s me, hi, it’s the smash single, it’s me. – JASON LIPSHUTZ
Taylor Swift’s Back Catalog Soars, Before and After ‘Midnights’
Speaking of Swift’s streaming gains, the Oct. 21 release of Midnights was both preceded and followed by the superstar’s catalog earning renewed interest from fans eager to prepare themselves for the new album, then compare her latest opus to her others. After earning 56.9 million U.S. on-demand streams in the three days from Friday, Oct. 14, through Sunday, Oct. 16, according to Luminate, Swift’s catalog earned 64.6 million streams over the following three days – a 14% gain as Swifties celebrated the Midnights release week.
On Thursday, Oct. 20, the catalog jumped to 27.2 million daily streams — a 21% gain for Midnights Eve. And while Swift’s new album was the streaming focus for fans on the following day, they still clocked in nearly 23 million streams for her non-Midnights music last Friday, a 10% jump from the previous Friday. Swift turned the release of Midnights into a global event for fans, and they responded in kind by returning to their favorite older tracks in the days surrounding its unveiling. – JL
Odd TikTok Trend Brings Billie Holiday’s “Solitude” to the Masses
“Solitude” has a long history of re-popularizing itself. First, it was a popular recording by Duke Ellington in the 1930s; next, it reached its zenith with Billie Holiday’s rendition of the tune in 1952. More recently the tune was sung by Andra Day for the film the United States vs. Billie Holiday, and now it’s… become a meme on TikTok? While some users are still going back to the original Holiday audio, using the song to soundtrack cozy nights at home and baking videos, more videos come from a joke that the song has somehow inspired: users will go up to their friend, zooming in on old fashion-looking shoes they are wearing, saying, “oh s–t, they got the god d–n ‘in my solituuuude” (the “in my solitude” part sung in a mocking rendition of Holiday).
Regardless of whether or not it’s disrespectful to the jazz standard or just plain un-funny to you, the meme has given the Verve-reissued Holiday version of the song a major boost on streaming. “Solitude” posted nearly 649,000 official on-demand U.S. streams for the week ending Oct. 20 – a gain of over 85% from the previous week, according to Luminate. – KRISTIN ROBINSON
“Another” Bump for Tom Odell
British singer-songwriter Tom Odell’s heartbreak ballad “Another Love” was a major hit throughout Europe upon its release on Columbia a decade ago, making it to the top 10 of the U.K.’s Official Charts in early 2013, even as it mostly missed the charts stateside. But the song has been steadily growing once again over the past year thanks largely to its popularity on TikTok, and now it’s nearly as big a hit once more as it ever was: The song hits No. 10 on Billboard’s Global Excl. US chart this week in its 81st week, breezing past Glass Animals’ “Heat Waves” for the longest-ever climb to the listing’s top 10.
The song is making waves over here this time, too: After climbing steadily in consumption for most of the past month, this week the song gets a more pronounced spike, gaining 19% to nearly 4 million in official on-demand U.S. streams for the week ending Oct. 20. The streaming activity sends the song to a new No. 19 peak on Billboard’s Hot Rock & Alternative Songs tally this week (chart dated Oct. 29), and even to No. 15 on the Bubbling Under Hot 100 chart. – ANDREW UNTERBERGER
Q&A: Alex Tear, VP Pop Programming SiriusXM + Pandora, on What’s Trending Up in His World
With 2022 nearly in the books, what do you think we’ll consider as the biggest story in pop music this year by the time it ends?
One of the biggest stories for us this year is Harry’s House. From “As It Was” to “Late Night Talking” and “Music For A Sushi Restaurant,” our HITS 1 listeners continue to rank Harry at the top. Lizzo & Doja Cat’s pop presence also needs to be respected, from Lizzo’s No. 1 “About Damn Time” and “2 Be Loved” to Doja’s collab with Post Malone, “I Like You (A Happier Song),” and recent hit with “Vegas.”
Which songs could you foresee dominating the final few months of the year and pushing into the new year?
We’re so excited for Sam Smith and Kim Petras: “Unholy” has shook year-end according to our HITS 1 listeners. Rihanna’s “Lift Me Up” will close 2022 with a bang! Queen Bey’s “Cuff It” will also continue to do well and sounds great on SiriusXM.
Who’s one artist who made noise in 2022 that you think could have an even bigger 2023?
Sam Smith and Beyoncé, while giving honorable mention to Lil Nas X for 2023. Rihanna will also roll into the new year with a commanding presence!
Fill in the blank: in 2023, more programmers should be paying attention to __________.
Keeping the art and science present. The available resources to predict and measure music are abundant, it’s more important than ever to continue early human discovery to help shape, elevate, own and differentiate our brands with the next emerging artists. – J.L.
Season’s Gainings: Halloween Listening Starts Early
We hear a lot about how the Christmas season starts earlier every year – but before Mariah & Co. officially begin their takeover, we’re also seeing Spooky Season expanded well beyond the final week of October. Perennial Halloween favorites have been seeing huge gains since the end of September: Bobby “Boris” Pickett’s “Monster Mash” has gained from 654,000 official on-demand U.S. streams and 700 digital sales for the week ending Sept. 22 to over 2.4 million streams and 2,000 sales four weeks later (gains of 270% and 197%, respectively), according to Luminate, while Ray Parker Jr.’s “Ghostbusters” raised from just over one million streams and 300 sales to just over three million streams and 1,200 sales (up 188% and 247%, respectively).
And then of course, there’s the daddy of them all: Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” which has re-entered the Hot 100 in eight of the past nine Halloween seasons – making it all the way back to No. 19 last year. We’ll see if it has enough juice to beat that position this year (or even threaten its original No. 4 peak, set back in 1984), but it’s already up to 3.6 million in streams and 1,700 in sales, gains of 129% and 181% from four weeks earlier. – AU
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: Blink-182’s reunion announcement sparks a blockbuster streaming boom for the pop-punk trio, Calum Scott’s cover of a Robyn dance-pop classic catches Phillies Fever, and a weighty Billie Eilish track belatedly finds its audience on TikTok.
Stream Together for the Kids: Blink-182 Returns With an Uptick
Last week was a momentous one for Blink-182 fans, as the reunited pop-punk trio — Mark Hoppus, Travis Barker and Tom DeLonge, the latter returning after more than seven years away from the group — announced a 2023 world tour and a forthcoming album, led by the new single “Edging,” last Tuesday (Oct. 11). The band’s international tour doesn’t kick off until March 2023, but the announcement compelled fans to dive back into Blink’s discography and refresh themselves on the sugary hooks, sophomoric skits and the smash singles that will be ringing out across arenas next year.
Blink-182’s catalog earned huge spikes on streaming services last week, with a 124% jump between Monday, Oct. 10 (1.73 million total U.S. on-demand streams, according to Luminate) and the following day, when the reunion was announced (3.87 million streams). That total peaked on Friday, when “Edging” was released, with the new single contributing to the band’s 6.22 million streams that day. The daily streaming totals for Blink’s catalog dipped back down in the days following the announcement and single release, but last week’s increases demonstrate the very real enthusiasm around this reunion — which could end up with a nine-figure gross next year. – JASON LIPSHUTZ
Phillies Keep ‘Dancing,’ Calum Scott’s Cover Keeps Rising
It’s become the unlikely anthem of this MLB postseason, courtesy of the hottest team in baseball: The Philadelphia Phillies, who plowed through the St. Louis Cardinals and Atlanta Braves and last night took a 1-0 lead over the San Diego Padres in the National League Championship Series. With each champagne-soaked locker room celebration, the Phils have been singing one song over and over: Calum Scott’s “Dancing on My Own,” a 2016 cover of Robyn’s 2010 dance-pop classic, via a pulse-racing remix by legendary Dutch producer Tiësto.
It seems many around the country are joining in on the celebration with the Phillies, as Scott’s “Dancing on My Own” (Capitol) notched nearly 254,000 official on-demand U.S. streams on Saturday (Oct. 15) – the day the Phillies eliminated the Braves in the National League Division Series. That’s a gain of 45% from the previous Saturday, before “Dancing on My Own” was really entrenched as the Phils’ victory song. Meanwhile, the song has exploded in sales, from a negligible daily amount to nearly 1,100 combined copies across Saturday and Sunday – enough for the song to appear on iTunes’ real time sales Top 100.
The song isn’t threatening the Billboard Hot 100 yet – Scott’s version peaked at No. 93 in 2017, while Robyn’s original somehow never made the chart – but if the Phillies make it to the World Series, there’s no telling how many fans might end up dancing along with them. – ANDREW UNTERBERGER
Don’t Turn Off Billie Eilish’s “TV” Just Yet
When alt-pop superstar Billie Eilish’s “TV” had a modest Hot 100 debut (No. 52) in early August and fell off the chart the week after, it wasn’t terribly surprising. The song was not a proper new lead single, but part of a slow, acoustic “Guitar Songs” two-pack (released on Darkroom/Interscope), with lyrics touching on Roe v. Wade being overturned and Eilish’s own despair at her friends’ absence as she entered a new relationship, concluding, “Maybe I’m the problem.”
Even for an artist as challenging as Eilish, it didn’t particularly sound like the stuff of hit singles. But months later, the song has started to climb again on streaming – gaining in official on-demand U.S. streams each of the last four full tracking weeks, with a 20.8% jump in the most recent week (ending Oct. 13) to over 3.5 million streams.
The song is helped by a TikTok trend that uses the song’s heaviness, mourning recent tragedies or personal losses to a sped-up version of the song’s “I’ll be in denial for at least a little while” lyric – with Eilish herself sharing a more lighthearted video recently of her dropping her cell phone to the sped-up song. As the song climbs back into the top 20 (27-19) of Billboard’s Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart, it’s a good reminder that few artists are as prolific as Eilish at molding hits in their own image. – AU