Trending Up
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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: Big hits and deep cuts across Taylor Swift’s catalog gain in the wake of her Eras Tour kickoff, while Coco Jones scores a breakout ballad and Fifty Fifty hits a “Cupid” bullseye.
Taylor Swift’s Tour Kickoff Yields Streaming Bumps Across “Eras”
Last week, Taylor Swift kicked off her Eras stadium tour with a career-spanning, three-hour-plus extravaganza at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Ariz., setting social media ablaze with setlist reactions and outfit exclamations on Friday and Saturday (Mar. 17 & 18). The dozens of thousands in attendance in Arizona were lucky enough to see all 44 songs live — but plenty of other Swifties across the U.S. celebrated the superstar’s first proper headlining concert in over four years by pressing play on some of the hits that were at long last being taken on the road.
Beginning last Friday, when the Eras tour officially kicked off, daily streams for some of Swift’s most notable hits scored noticeable upticks. “Blank Space,” her Billboard Hot 100-topping smash from 1989, was up 18% in daily official on-demand U.S. streams on Friday compared to the previous day, according to Luminate, while the Lover title track posted a daily gain of 20%.
“Cruel Summer,” the first full song to be performed within the Eras setlist, did even better: Its daily streams more than doubled between the day before the tour launch (352,000 streams) and Monday (750,000), as more social clips of Swift finally performing the 2019 hit were feverishly shared. The current singles from Swift’s most recent album, Midnights, also enjoyed notable bumps: “Anti-Hero” rose 14% in daily streams from Thursday to Friday, while “Lavender Haze” earned a 31% increase on the same day.
Also contributing to Swift’s overall streaming totals coinciding with the Eras tour kickoff: the four “From The Vault” songs that she shared on Friday, which include three “Taylor’s Version” re-recordings of previously released songs (“Safe and Sound,” “Eyes Open” and “If This Was a Movie”) as well as an unreleased track, “All the Girls You Loved Before,” from the Lover sessions. The latter has gotten off to a hot start at streaming, scoring over 4 million streams on its release day, to go with 11,000 U.S. digital sales on Friday. As “Girls” continues to reside within the upper reaches of daily streaming charts on Spotify and Apple Music, Swift could notch another nice Hot 100 debut next week, after she takes the Eras tour to its second stop in Las Vegas this weekend. — JASON LIPSHUTZ
Coco Jones Slows Things Down on TikTok With “ICU”
While Coco Jones may currently be best known to audiences as the actress behind Hilary Banks on the Peacock reboot Bel Air, she may be following in the multi-platform footsteps of Tatyana Ali — who played cousin Ashley on the ’90s Fresh Prince, and reached the Hot 100’s top 10 in 1998 with “Daydreamin’” — with a hit single of her own. Following its Nov. 2022 release, Jones’ “ICU” has been gradually going viral on TikTok over the past few weeks — and bucking trends on the app in the process.
While an increasing majority of TikTok hits in the past year or so have taken off via sped-up versions — or sounded sped-up to begin with — “ICU” is a pointedly slow-and-low love song, near-stunning in its patience. And rather than crank the BPM back up, users have responded to it in its original tempo by responding to Jones’ vocal challenge and recording their own duet verses for the track. Consequently, the song has climbed 59% from just under 2 million official on-demand streams the chart tracking week ending Feb. 23 to over 3.1 million on the week ending March 16, according to Luminate. And it’s still climbing, meaning “ICU” may be moving to the waiting room for numerous Billboard charts soon. — ANDREW UNTERBERGER
Fifty Fifty Scores an Odds-On Hit With “Cupid”
Korean pop artists haven’t necessarily been able to score the kind of breakout crossover streaming hits on the Billboard charts that many of their English- and Spanish-language counterparts have found via TikTok and other virality-boosting platforms — but recent singles by girl groups NewJeans (who scored a pair of Hot 100 hits earlier this year) and now Fifty Fifty indicate that their luck may be starting to change.
Fifty Fifty’s bilingual disco-pop jam “Cupid,” released in February, has taken off through a series of dance challenges and other uses on TikTok, and was given additional life by a new “Twin Version” recorded entirely in English. The song has exploded from an already-impressive 2 million official on-demand streams in its first full tracking week (ending March 2) to nearly 4.7 million for the week ending March 16 — a rise of 131%, according to Luminate. “Cupid” debuts at No. 106 on the Global 200 dated March 25 this week, and if it keeps growing, it might aim its bow and arrow at the Hot 100 before long. — A.U.
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: Fictional band Daisy Jones and the Six scores a breakout hit while also boosting the real-life Rock and Roll Hall of Famers that inspire them, Brent Faiyaz and Kali Uchis get different types of TikTok lifts, Halsey scores a valuable TV sync and much more.
Is Daisy Jones & The Six a Fake Band With a Real Hit on Its Hands?
Part of the fun of watching Daisy Jones & The Six, the Amazon Prime Video series based on Taylor Jenkins Reid’s best-selling novel, is hearing the fictional hits from the story’s fictional ‘70s rock band become very real as fully produced songs. “Look at Us Now (Honeycomb)” is used as a linchpin moment in the story of up-and-coming singer Daisy Jones and the Fleetwood Mac-inspired band that she’s about to join — a huge hit, but one that causes tension as its personal message gets warped for mass appeal. And with the soundtrack to the TV adaptation launching on Atlantic Records last month, fans of the book have finally been able to hear the song in full.
While episodes of Daisy Jones & The Six are still rolling out weekly, “Look At Us Now” has struck a chord with book readers, series watchers and music fans who simply stumbled upon the rollicking pop-rock track on a streaming playlist. Upon its mid-February release, the song earned over 84,000 U.S. on-demand streams for the week ending Feb. 16, according to Luminate. But once the show premiered and “Look at Us Now” was given a dramatic performance, those weekly streams grew 10 times in size — the song clocked 871,000 streams for the week ending Mar. 9.
“Look at Us Now (Honeycomb)” has the pedigree of a successful rock track: Marcus Mumford co-wrote the song, with artists like Blake Mills and Madison Cunningham contributed to the track, which features lead vocals by series stars Riley Keough and Sam Claflin. While a full series soundtrack — presented as a Daisy Jones & The Six album, Aurora — was released on Mar. 2, some of the songs have yet to appear in the show, and could receive streaming bumps in the coming weeks.
One wrinkle to the Daisy Jones & The Six story to keep an eye on: Reid has talked about finding inspiration for the series in Fleetwood Mac’s iconic 1997 performance of their song “Silver Springs,” as captured in their Billboard 200-topping live album The Dance. TikTok users have picked up on the connection between the show and the song, and streams of “Silver Springs” have also started to tick way up.
So, as a band invented as an homage to Fleetwood Mac eyes its first real hit, Fleetwood Mac — who returned to the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 in 2020 thanks to the TikTok revival of “Dreams” — may score another comeback as well. – JASON LIPSHUTZ
Booyah: “Jackie Brown” Viral Dance Is the Cherry on Top for Brent Faiyaz’ Breakout Album
Fitting that as news of Quentin Tarantino’s last (and reportedly final) upcoming movie begins to make the rounds, we also have a new hit named after one of his best movies: “Jackie Brown,” a highlight from R&B singer-songwriter Brent Faiyaz’s hit 2022 Lost Kids/Venice/Stem set Wasteland. That album charted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 and spawned nine hits on the Hot 100 – none of which were “Brown,” which is now spiking on streaming thanks to a TikTok dance challenge.
The challenge sees users reacting to the newly hissing and snapping beat of a sped-up remix of the song (courtesy of TikToker Sturdyyoungin), doing different types of back-and-forth shimmies in between the song’s spaced-out opening lyrics (“Only been a few hours, but it feel like days…”) The increased visibility for the song has helped it explode from under 1.3 million official on-demand U.S. streams the tracking week ending Feb. 16 to over 3.4 million the week ending March 9 – a rise of 174%, according to Luminate – which has helped Wasteland rebound on the Billboard 200 dated March 25, as it climbs back to No. 54. – ANDREW UNTERBERGER
‘You’ Love to See It: Halsey’s ‘Bells in Santa Fe’ Gets Penn Badgley Bump
Halsey’s 2021 album If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power was a bold, often brilliant departure for the pop star, and while the Capitol alt-rock project (produced by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross) earned critical acclaim, it also failed to produce any hit singles for the top 40 mainstay, with only “I Am Not a Woman, I’m a God” reaching the Hot 100 (peaking at No. 64). Fortunately, one of the album’s most harrowing tracks, “Bells in Santa Fe,” is getting a streaming bump a year and a half after the album’s release, thanks to Netflix’s smash psychological thriller You.
The nervy electro-pop song soundtracks a pivotal sequence in the new season of the Penn Badgley-starring hit, during a plot twist involving Marienne (Tati Gabrielle) in the eighth episode. Since the second half of You’s fourth season premiered on Mar. 9, daily U.S. on-demand streams of “Bells in Santa Fe” are way up — from around 9,000 streams per day prior to the new season being unveiled, to over 47,000 streams on Mar. 13, according to Luminate. Those streams will continue to accumulate as more fans of You reach the eighth episode and bust out their Shazam apps when they hear Halsey’s voice; meanwhile, Halsey will soon be onscreen herself, making their big-screen debut in the Sydney Sweeney-starring film Americana, which premieres at SXSW on Friday (Mar. 17). – JL
“Moonlight” Shines on Kali Uchís’ New LP
Rising R&B star Kali Uchis dropped the gorgeous slo-funk ballad “Moonlight” a week in advance of her March 3 Interscope album Red Moon in Venus, but the song is really taking off post-album release – with help, of course, from TikTok, where her breakthrough hit “Telepatía” first took off in 2021. Uchis has been promoting the song heavily on her account, even with an occasional wink: Her most popular video with “Moonlight,” with over 1.3 million likes, features her manually plastering posters advertising her new album onto an empty outdoor wall, with the caption, “‘You never promote your music’ im doing the best i can u guys.”
In any event, her efforts are paying off: Since sagging in popularity after its first couple days of Red Moon’s release, “Moonlight” has been steadily rising in official on-demand U.S. streams from March 5 (562,000) to March 13 (867,000). It’s got a ways to go to match the breakout success of “Telepatia,” but it’s got the vibe, and it’s got the momentum – and a little promotional elbow grease goes a long way. – AU
Q&A: Michelle Rutkowski, operations manager of Milwaukee Radio Alliance, on What’s Trending Up in Her World
What’s been a trend in alternative that’s intrigued you thus far this year?
I don’t know if “intrigued” is the right word for it, but so far in 2023, the alternative chart looks like a time capsule. Some of the biggest records at the format so far this year have been from Linkin Park, Depeche Mode, Fall Out Boy, Weezer and All Time Low. While it’s great to have so much new music from heritage artists, the alternative format needs to provide balance by continuing to seek out, embrace and expose the next generation of superstars, in order to remain relevant to our audience.
As the music industry has evolved over the years, how have you seen your listenership and their interests change?
Now more than ever, our audience is looking for a way to connect to the music. The pandemic starved us of our ability to see live music, or to meet our favorite band. There is so much passion for alternative music, and providing our audience with meaningful experiences that bring them closer to the music is what it’s all about.
What do you think is the most common misconception about alternative music today?
That it is defined by a singular sound! Great alternative stations find a way to weave in all of the textures and sounds that the genre encompasses. Folk, punk, rock, electronic — they all belong here, and they all can blend and flow together well with the right understanding of their nuances and the right musical connective tissue.
Fill in the blank: the alternative trend that will define the rest of the year is ___________.
Lovejoy. seriously. That’s it. That’s the trend. At least I hope it is!! – JL
Season’s Gainings: We’ll Always Love Big Poppa
March 9 is a date burned into the mind of every hip-hop fan old enough to remember 1997, when Christopher Wallace, a.k.a. The Notorious B.I.G., was tragically shot to death in Las Vegas at age 24. The annual wave of nostalgia and remembrances for Biggie on the date of his passing is usually enough to produce a small-but-noticeable bump in his consumption, with official on-demand U.S. streams of his catalog up from just over 3 million to nearly 3.7 million that Thursday – a gain of 21%, according to Luminate – with his massive Ready to Die hit “Big Poppa” rising enough to even make an appearance on that day’s Spotify Daily Top Songs USA chart. – 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: While celebrating one cut from his 2016 album improbably topping the Hot 100 in 2023, The Weeknd sees gains from another Starboy favorite — plus a dancehall classic revived by a rap superstar’s new single, and the early standout from the 36 songs on the new Morgan Wallen album.
Another Starboy “Reminder”?
Thanks largely to its much-hyped (and well-delivered) Ariana Grande-assisted remix, The Weeknd‘s “Die for You” tops the Billboard Hot 100 this week, over six years after it first debuted on the chart in 2016. Back then, it was one of many debuts from the artist born Abel Tesfaye’s Starboy album (via XO/Republic), a Billboard 200-topping success — but one that few would’ve predicted would still be spinning off hits in 2023. At the height of the TikTok age, though, seemingly no song is off-limits from a potential revival, with “Die for You” being one of the biggest recent beneficiaries.
And wouldn’t you know it: The Weeknd may even have a follow-up hit off the same set. “Reminder” also graced the Hot 100 back in late 2016, debuting and peaking at No. 31, with a star-studded video that was even nominated for video of the year at the 2017 Video Music Awards. In the past few month or two, the song has seen new life, with a popular TikTok trend of listeners posting selfie videos to the song’s (somewhat questionable) “Got a sweet Asian chick, she go low man (lo mein)” lyric.
The song has steadily risen in official on-demand U.S. streams over the last four weeks as a result — from 1.8 million for the tracking week ending Feb. 9 to over 2.7 million the week ending March 2, a 52% gain, according to Luminate. That’s still just a fraction of the streams posted by “Die for You” in its chart-topping week, but the song does debut at No. 140 on the Global 200 this week (dated March 11) — and with the success of “Die” serving as proof of concept, it might not take much more of a foot in the door for radio and streaming audiences to get on board with embracing another new-old Weeknd hit.
“Oooh” Yeah: Lumidee Classic Gains Thanks to Nicki Minaj Sample
For her first single of 2023, rap superstar Nicki Minaj reached back two decades for assistance. Lumidee’s 2003 top five Hot 100 hit “Never Leave You (Uh Oooh)” is one of the fondest-remembered smashes from the Sean Paul-heralded dancehall explosion in the pop mainstream of the mid-’00s, and Minaj sampled both the hypnotic Diwali Riddim and the singer’s own entrancing “Uh ooooh” chorus cries for the beat to her fiery new “Red Ruby da Sleeze,” released last Friday (March 3).
Unsurprisingly, the original “Never Leave You” (released on Universal) saw a bump in listenership as a result. The song rose from just under 42,000 official on-demand U.S. streams on the Thursday before the song’s release to nearly 72,000 that day, a gain of 71%, according to Luminate. “Red Ruby” is also off to a strong start, with millions in streams and thousands in sales in its debut week — though with heavy traffic expected from the 36 tracks found on Morgan Wallen’s blockbuster new album One Thing at a Time, it might have to wait to challenge the No. 3 peak of the Lumidee classic it borrows from.
“Thinkin’ Bout” an Early Breakout From New Morgan Wallen LP
Speaking of: As we’ve already written about extensively this week on Billboard, Morgan Wallen is off to the year’s best start with his third album One Thing at a Time, a 36-track set that looks to be a streaming behemoth — even beyond the standards of his 10-week Billboard 200-topping sophomore Republic/Big Loud/Mercury set Dangeorus: The Double Album. Dozens of the tracks are expected to land on the Hot 100 next week, with the pack predictably led by previously released cuts like “Last Night” and the title track, as well as early-tracklist highlights like “Man Made a Bar” and “Ain’t That Some.”
However, one track is joining the front-runners, despite appearing deep into the set’s running order: the rueful post-breakup cut “Thinkin’ Bout Me.” Showing up 25th out of the album’s 36 tracks, the song has nonetheless outperformed most of the tracks before it, with nearly 13 million combined official on-demand U.S. streams across its first four days of release (March 3-6), according to Luminate. The song might’ve been helped by a TikTok video Wallen shared days before One Thing‘s release of an older woman dancing enthusiastically at what appears to be a silent disco — with the vid set to “Thinkin’,” though it’s unclear what music the woman’s actually grooving to — along with the caption “fav fan ever. y’all help my find this lady.”
How high will “Thinkin’ Bout Me” and the rest of the album’s heavy-hitters debut on the Hot 100 next week? Too early to say for sure — but it’s probably safe to say that in general, One Thing at a Time will not be as patient with its chart takeover as its title suggests.
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: The Weeknd aims to score a Hot 100-topper with an Ariana Grande remix for the second time in the last two years, Selena Gomez’s social media back-and-forth leads to a surge of streaming support, a golden-age rap hitmaker sells a whole lot of discounted downloads, and loads more.
The Weeknd’s “Die For You” Surges in Streams as It Eyes Hot 100’s Top Spot
Could the Ariana Grande-assisted remix of The Weeknd’s “Die For You” help the years-old song vaunt to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100? The slow-burning single, originally released on 2016’s Starboy album, has exploded over the past few months and reached a No. 6 peak on the Hot 100, thanks to a TikTok revival which then crossed over to streaming and pop radio. The last time Grande hopped on a remixed Weeknd track — two years ago, with “Save Your Tears” — the juiced-up version from the two Republic labelmates sped straight to the top of the Hot 100, and now they’re hoping lightning can strike twice with “Die for You.”
And so far, the remix has helped the song surge across different platforms: daily total streams for “Die for You” were up 269% from Feb. 23, the day before the Grande remix was released, to Feb. 24 — rising from 1.77 million U.S. on-demand streams to 6.55 million, according to Luminate. That daily streaming total dipped a bit in the days following the release, but by Monday, “Die for You” was still collecting over 4.25 million daily streams.
Digital sales for the track also rose considerably thanks to Grande’s addition, from a negligible amount pre-mix to 3,600 last Friday. “Die For You” faces stiff competition near the top of the Hot 100, with Miley Cyrus’ “Flowers” and SZA’s “Kill Bill” entrenched in the top two spots for multiple weeks — but early returns suggest that The Weeknd and Grande will at least be tightening the competition on next week’s chart. – JASON LIPSHUTZ
Team Selena: Internet Drama Helps Give Selena Gomez a Catalog Bump
While she hasn’t released a new album since Rare in early 2020, and her 2022 solo single “My Mind & Me” came and went without making a huge impact, Selena Gomez is off to a promising start in 2023. Her “Calm Down” remix collaboration with Afrobeats star Rema has been scaling the Hot 100, breaking into the top 20 this week. And now, fans are flocking to her back catalog to show her support in the midst of a long-simmering celebrity conflict.
The drama stems from Gomez’s relationship with Hailey Bieber, the model/influencer married to Justin Bieber, who was famously involved with Gomez in the early 2010s. Their recent online back-and-forth has involved a mix of subtweets, deleted TikToks, resurfaced old TV clips and other intrigue that you practically need a doctorate in 21st century pop social media to properly understand. But it’s gotten Gomez back in the headlines over the past week and has resulted in some of her best streaming numbers of the young year.
Gomez’s catalog – not counting songs in which she’s a featured or co-lead artist, like “Calm Down” – racked up over 2.5 million official on-demand U.S. streams on Monday (Feb. 27). That’s up 26% from her Sunday total of 2 million, and up 52% from her 1.6 million total the previous Monday (Feb. 20). Combined with her recent crossover collab and the recently teased upcoming third season of her hit Hulu series Only Murders in the Building, it’s looking like a good 2023 so far for the veteran multi-platform star. — ANDREW UNTERBERGER
Loc-ed After Discount: iTunes Pricing Spurs Massive Tone-Loc and Young MC Sales Gains
With digital song sales an ever-shrinking part of the music marketplace in the 2020s, you might think it quaint that something as simple as an iTunes price discount could generate huge sales boosts for a catalog hit. But we see evidence of it still being a factor every year – and this week, it’s the driving force between an explosion in numbers for a trio of songs from late-’80s hitmakers Tone-Loc and Young MC.
Loc’s singles “Funky Cold Medina” and “Wild Thing” and Young MC’s “Bust a Move” were prominently featured as part of an iTunes sale on classic hip-hop staples last week, with the songs discounted from their usual $1.29 price point to 69 cents. The three songs – all of which were co-penned by Young MC, a.k.a. Marvin Young – saw gigantic sales gains, jumping from negligible numbers for the track week ending Feb. 16 to multiple thousands on the week ending Feb. 23, according to Luminate.
The biggest gainer was “Medina,” up 4,817% to 5,800, followed by “Move” (up 3,159% to 4,800) and “Wild” (up 3,712% to 3,900). The three songs all debut on Billboard’s Digital Song Sales chart this week, at No. 5, No. 8 and No. 12. Their totals might not be as robust as the best-selling songs of a decade ago, but it’s still an impact worth paying attention to – you don’t need to go too deep into the math to know that selling thousands of a song at 69 cents is worth a little more than selling hundreds at $1.29 — AU
Tune Into TV Girl’s Latest Viral Smash
If you’re not plugged into new-school social media or artist streaming totals, you might not know that indie-pop trio TV Girl are absolutely enormous online. The California group’s dreamy, harmony-heavy tunes didn’t make too much mainstream noise upon the release of 2014 debut French Exit and 2016 follow-up Who Really Cares, but some of the singles from those albums — like the lilting, strings-heavy “Lovers Rock”; the shuffling, percussive “Not Allowed”; and the whirring clap-along “Cigarettes out the Window” — have now earned hundreds of millions of streams each, adopted by TikTok users and used to turn the still-active group into unwitting stars.
Next month, they’ll play Coachella, most likely to a massive crowd; over the past month, however, they’ve added another viral hit to their growing collection. “Blue Hair,” a gentle, cymbal-riding lullaby from TV Girl’s 2018 third album Death of a Party Girl, has taken off on TikTok in a sped-up version, with users zeroing in on the melancholy lyric “And I guess I’ll just miss her / Even though she isn’t even really gone”; the line is soundtracking sing-alongs, bedroom tours and, in one poignant case, a photo collage from a trans TikTok user demonstrating their personal evolution.
However it’s being hoisted up, “Blue Hair” is now booming at streaming: its weekly U.S. official on-demand streams are now 20 times what they were a month ago, from 107,000 for the week ending Jan. 26 to 2.12 million for the week ending Feb. 23, according to Luminate. The band has never earned a Hot 100 hit over the course of their nearly decade-long run together — maybe they’ll have one by the time Coachella rolls around. — JL
Metro Boomin’s Star-Studded “Trance” Goes Viral After Missing Verse Revealed
There’ve been countless examples of a Drake feature helping a song take off on the charts over the past decade and a half, but Metro Boomin, Young Thug and Travis Scott’s “Trance” might be the first example of a song exploding partly for its lack of a Drake feature. After a verse Drake submitted for the Heroes and Villains track leaked in January, Metro went viral on TikTok for a clip of him explaining to an understandably incredulous DJ Drama why the biggest rapper in the game ended up on his cutting room floor (“It just really wasn’t no room”).
“Trance” had originally debuted at No. 42 on the Hot 100 during Heroes’ release week, spending three weeks on the chart before falling off around the new year. But listeners perhaps had to hear (or re-listen to) the song that was so perfectly complete that its creator had to give Drake a thanks-but-no-thanks response for his belated contribution. Official on-demand U.S. streams for the song started climbing back up in February, rising from 3.1 million on the week ending Feb. 9 to 5.8 million the week ending Feb. 23. The song even re-entered the Hot 100 at No. 76 this week, proving even Drake’s negative presence on a song guarantees a positive chart impact. — AU
Q&A: Kevin Meenan, Music Trends Manager at YouTube, on What’s Trending Up in His World
Which music trends from the first two months of 2023 have stood out to you the most?
Regional Mexican has really been top of mind in these first two months of the year, with the diverse sounds of the genre having really broken through. The impact of the genre on our charts can hardly be overstated – this week alone it is responsible for over 15 entries on our US Top Songs chart. The rise of Grupo Frontera has been particularly inspiring – just a year ago the group was getting their start by uploading covers directly to YouTube, and now they regularly are landing multiple songs in the upper echelons of our charts. Their Fuerza Regida collaboration “Bebe Dame” even spent two weeks at No. 1 for us in the U.S.
Sonically speaking, Jersey Club’s latest brush with the mainstream has also proven to be an interesting space to watch, with varying levels of its influence taking form across the pop landscape. Both Lil Uzi Vert’s “Just Wanna Rock” and Coi Leray’s “Players” (DJ Smallz 732 – Jersey Club Remix) have proven to be inescapable on YouTube Shorts and beyond, and now PinkPantheress and Ice Spice’s more loosely Jersey Club-inspired “Boy’s a liar Pt. 2” is just taking the platform by storm. And finally, the continued global takeover of BZRP Music Sessions has been a real early 2023 bright spot. The Argentinian producer has long been a charts mainstay for us, but his latest feat – BZRP Music Sessions #53 with Shakira – really lived up to the “broke the internet” cliché. The video earned 54.3M views for us in under 24 hours, and reached No. 1 in 20 markets.
Which trends do you think will define the rest of the year?
In recent years, we have increasingly seen that a hit on YouTube can really come from any time and any place, and I expect this to continue to be a real throughline for us in 2023. It has just been a super exciting phenomenon, with fans getting exposed to sometimes unfamiliar sounds – a throwback like City Pop, or a modern melting pot like Drift Phonk – and finding their new favorite artist or musical inspiration in the process.
And increasingly, we are seeing artists really learn how to lean into these moments, embracing the user-generated content that might have sparked a viral moment while engaging fans with their own new touchpoints – Shorts, visualizers, music videos and everything in between – that just add further fuel to the fire. I see this as a real defining theme of 2023, with entry points like Shorts continuing to break both new releases and unexpected material, and artists finding ways to really own that moment and narrative via their own content.
Which of your 2023 initiatives have most effectively amplified these trends?
To me, it is ultimately all about the platform itself and its continued evolution. With YouTube, artists are really in control of creating multiple touch points to tease out a new release, spark a trend or lean into a viral moment. There are just so many ways to share new music and connect with the fans, be it via Premieres, After Party, Community posts, Shorts, chat in a live stream or the traditional video drop. Shorts in particular is the area that excites me the most – looking forward to a growing feature set there that will help fans and artists connect in exciting ways.
Fill in the blank: in terms of maximizing audience, more popular artists should be thinking about…
Getting creative across video formats. We just continuously see artists find new fans and chart success when they enhance their releases in that way. Take NewJeans as an example, who fans have speculated are behind a mysterious channel that compliments the lore they created with a pair of creative music videos (side a and side b) for their track “Ditto” – which itself had multiple performance videos, behind-the-scenes clips and related Shorts. Each of these creates a new touchpoint for the rising K-pop stars to engage with their fans and keep them coming back for me.
There is no one size-fits-all approach, so I would just encourage artists to experiment – engage with Shorts, host a Premiere, have fun with creative teasers and visualizers and continue to make a moment with the time-tested music video drop. – JL
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: A sanctioned-after-the-fact remix of a popular Lil Uzi Vert leak appears on the verge of becoming their next major hit, while Rainbow finds the pot of gold at the end of a Guardians of the Galaxy trailer bump and Mae Stephens looks to turn TikTok virality into a streaming breakout.
“Watch This”: Lil Uzi Vert Leak Charts With Remix Before Ever Officially Being Released
For much of the past year, fans of Lil Uzi Vert have been frantically trying to get their hands on an official version of “Watch This” – an unreleased track, supposedly from the late 2010s, that leaked in full in April 2022. In the meantime, the track’s unofficial edit has been picked up by a variety of DJs and remixers looking to capitalize on the excitement over the track, including producer Arizonatears, whose “Pluggnb Remix” of “Watch” is on the verge of becoming the rapper’s next major hit.
Despite crediting the popular Sped Up Nightcore account in its Spotify artist listing, the remix is not actually a faster version of the leaked “Watch” – it’s actually slowed and pitched down a bit, with layers of wavy synths giving it a more psychedelic feel. The new edit, which has been out since late last year, has (according to Arizonatears on the song’s YouTube) now been officially sanctioned by Uzi’s Atlantic Records label, and is taking off on streaming – with nearly 4.4 million official on-demand U.S. streams for the week ending Feb. 16, up 265.1% from the week before, according to Luminate.
The song even debuts on a number of Billboard charts this week, including a No. 19 bow on the Hot Rap Songs dated Feb. 25, and seems likely to impact the Billboard Hot 100 before long as its streams keep rising. It’s an extremely anomalous path for a song whose original version still doesn’t exist in any official capacity, but one that feels incredibly appropriate for 2023. — ANDREW UNTERBERGER
Rainbow Streams Up “Since” New Guardians Trailer
Deep Purple guitar great Ritchie Blackmore’s ‘70s and ‘80s side project Rainbow might not be the first artist most younger folks think of when they hear the title “Since You Been Gone.” But it’s not Kelly Clarkson’s ‘00s pop-rock classic that just got the spotlight treatment in a trailer for one of the year’s most anticipated movie sequels: Guardians of the Galaxy 3, the latest installment of the blockbuster MCU film series famous for its resurrection of classic rock staples.
“Since You Been Gone” is a little deeper of a dig by Guardians standards – the song originally peaked at No. 57 on the Hot 100 in late 1979, and has never quite gotten the classic rock radio play of Deep Purple’s most celebrated hits. But fans are certainly discovering it now: The song rises from under 116,000 official on-demand U.S. streams the week ending Feb. 9 to over 226,000 the following week, with the trailer dropping mid-week on Feb. 12 – a gain of nearly 96%, according to Luminate. We’ll see what other FM rock mixtape gems get unearthed by the Guardians franchise this time around when Vol. 3 hits theaters on May 5. – AU
Mae Stephens’ Single “Broke” on TikTok in December. Can It Cross Over Now?
“If We Ever Broke Up,” the cheeky synth-pop kiss-off from Mae Stephens, was a hit on TikTok more than a month before it was officially released. The English singer-songwriter teased the track’s shrugging, lightly funky hook (“If we ever broke up, I’d never be sad/ Thinking about everything that we had/ If we ever broke up,” Stephens sings) in a couple of late December clips — the biggest of which, posted on Dec. 29, blew up, with 11.5 million views to date.
Stephens spent January watching other TikTok users lip sync and create choreography to the track, while promising the full thing was arriving soon — and dealing with commenters claiming that the release was taking too long. “I promise you guys I’m trying!” she wrote on Jan. 13. “All I need is a little patience and understanding!”
Finally, “If We Ever Broke Up” was unveiled in full on Mercury/Republic on Feb. 10 – and early returns for the full track have been promising, with 2.83 million U.S. on-demand streams for the week ending Feb. 16, according to Luminate, and a No. 45 debut on the U.K. Official Charts. Time will tell if “Broke” continues to rise on streaming charts and gets some pop radio play, but Stephens can take comfort in the fact that another song that TikTok users claimed was teased for too long before finally being released — Sam Smith and Kim Petras’ “Unholy” — ended up a Grammy-winning, Hot 100-topping smash. – JASON LIPSHUTZ
Has Roman finally gotten revenge? “Roman Holiday,” the lead track from Nicki Minaj’s 2012 sophomore album Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded, has gone viral and climbed back onto streaming charts, nearly doubling its weekly streaming total thanks to recent fan outcries following the Grammy Awards earlier this month.
For their performance of their No. 1 smash “Unholy” at this year’s Grammys, Sam Smith and Kim Petras leaned into devilish imagery, complete with horns and red leather. Barbz were quick to hop online and point out that Minaj had earned criticism for her 2012 Grammys performance of “Roman Holiday,” which had a similarly winking demonic slant but was latter panned by conservative watch groups and longtime Grammys producer Ken Ehrlich, who called it “a disappointment both in terms of what we did and to an extent what she did.”
For Minaj diehards, the rapper seemingly being punished for her performance over a decade ago — Minaj has yet to return to the Grammys stage since the “Roman Holiday” spectacle, and has yet to win a Grammy, despite 10 career nominations — while Smith and Petras were lauded for their “Unholy” showcase, and soon awarded the best pop duo/vocal performance during the telecast, represented hypocrisy from the Recording Academy. (In the days following their own Grammys performance, Smith and Petras were also criticized, although the Recording Academy has not publicly dinged them.)
As a result, her fans began streaming “Roman Holiday,” and the non-single from Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded crashed the iTunes Chart 11 years after its release.
Weekly U.S. on-demand streams for “Roman Holiday” were up 99% during the week following this year’s Grammys, earning 125,000 streams during the week ending Feb. 9, according to Luminate. It also saw a tremendous jump in sales, going from a negligible weekly number to nearly 6,000 for the week. This isn’t the first time that “Roman Holiday” has gone viral — TikTok is full of sped-up versions of the track, dating back mostly to 2021 — but this time the resurgence is producing a sizable bump in listenership.
“Roman Holiday” never reached the Hot 100 upon its release, although Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded did spin off hits like “Starships,” “Pound the Alarm” and “Va Va Boom.” Last year, Minaj reached the top of the Hot 100 for the first time as a solo artist, thanks to “Super Freaky Girl.”
Linkin Park‘s anniversary plans for their 2003 album Meteora this spring are already off to a soaring start. A reissue of the soon-to-be-20-year-old album was recently announced for this April, along with exciting news of a previously unreleased song from the era (featuring original vocals from the band’s late frontman Chester Bennington) being discovered for the set: the appropriately haunting “Lost.”
Released on Friday (Feb. 10), “Lost” has enjoyed the kind of explosive first week the band used to regularly post with new singles during their commercial prime. The song started with nearly 2 million official on-demand U.S. streams its debut day, and earned 7.1 million total plays through Tuesday (Feb. 14), according to Luminate — while also putting up robust sales numbers, moving nearly 11,000 copies over that timespan. It even has started to make radio impact, with 7.1 million in all-format radio audience from Feb. 10-13.
The extra attention around “Lost” and the Meteora reissue (scheduled for Apr. 7 via Warner) has also led to a bump in the songs from that original RIAA seven-times-platinum-certified 2003 blockbuster. The album, which features such Linkin Park staples as “Numb,” “Faint,” “Somewhere I Belong” and “Breaking the Habit,” jumped from just over 1.7 million combined official on-demand U.S. streams the day before “Lost” to nearly 2.3 million on the day of its release, a gain of 32%.
“Lost” should make a significant impact on the Billboard charts next week (dated Feb. 25), including a likely debut on the Billboard Hot 100 — which would be the band’s first since they reached No. 45 with the Kiiara-featuring “Heavy” in Aug. 2017, following Bennington’s tragic death at the age of 41 that July. (If it made the chart’s top 40, that would be their first visit to the region since “Burn It Down” reached No. 30 in May 2012.)
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.
Though it’s only January, the third episode of HBO’s post-apocalyptic survival series The Last of Us is already certain to end 2023 as one of the most acclaimed TV episodes of the year. The tearjerking episode, which focused on a decades-spanning love story between two new characters, has been rapturously received in nearly all corners of the media and the internet — and has also led to another streaming success story, this time for Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Linda Ronstadt.
Ronstadt’s devastating ballad “Long, Long Time,” which served as her breakout solo hit on the Billboard Hot 100 when it reached No. 25 in Oct. 1970, is showcased multiple times in the episode. It appears first in renditions by actors Murray Bartlett and Nick Offerman, when they find the sheet music with an old piano owned by Offerman’s character, then as Ronstadt’s original version at the end of the episode, when the show’s main characters (played by Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey) find a cassette with the song in a car formerly belonging to Offerman’s character.
Unsurprisingly, the success of the show (and of the episode in particular, also titled “Long, Long Time”) has led to the song taking off in both streaming and sales. From Jan. 28 (the day before the episode) to Jan. 30 (the day after), the song jumped from under 8,000 daily official on-demand U.S. streams to nearly 149,000, and from a negligible number of daily sales to over 1,500 — spikes of 1,776% and 13,782%, respectively, according to Luminate. It’s still a ways from re-charting on the Hot 100, but with its sales and streams still looking to be rising days after the episode’s premiere, it should be in contention for debuts on a couple of Billboard charts next week.
It’s not the first time The Last of Us has resulted in big gains for an older track: After Depeche Mode’s “Never Let Me Down Again” was featured as an ominous radio transmission at the end of the show’s first episode, the song rose 220.5% in daily streams. With “Long, Long Time” now experiencing even greater gains, it seems that The Last of Us is gonna be the show to watch for 2023 when it comes to generating high-profile synch moments with lucrative payoffs for the artists (or writers) involved.
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: Miley Cyrus’ runaway 2023 hit leads to gains not only for her whole discography but for a fellow ’10s superstar’s own 2013 smash, Sabrina Carpenter takes the next step towards crossover pop success, and Baby Tate has a TikTok breakout with an old song that interpolates a much older song.
“Flowers” Success Pollenates Miley Cyrus‘ Whole Back Catalog (And One Bruno Mars Hit)
Miley Cyrus‘ “Flowers” is in bloom on the Billboard Hot 100 this week, becoming just the second single in her storied pop career to top the chart, and her first to debut on top. It does so with some of the most spectacular first-full-week numbers of the decade so far: 52.6 million streams, 70,000 digital song sales and 33.5 million radio airplay audience impressions, according to Luminate.
But it’s not just the Columbia-released “Flowers” that’s blossoming this week — Cyrus’ entire back catalog is growing in the sunlight of her new release. Even without accounting for “Flowers,” Cyrus’ discography is up from 20.7 weekly million official on-demand U.S. streams in the tracking week ending Jan. 12 to 34.2 million the following week (ending Jan. 19), a 65% gain.
Read more in our full article on Miley’s streaming boom (and its Bruno Mars spillover) here.
Sabrina Carpenter Nails Down a Breakout Hot 100 Hit
Six months after releasing her Island Records debut Emails I Can’t Send, Sabrina Carpenter has her biggest hit from the pop project. “Nonsense” debuts at No. 75 on this week’s Hot 100 after making a pronounced impact on streaming charts since the beginning of 2023, and its weekly streaming totals are quickly rising.
“Nonsense,” on which Carpenter sings about feeling so flustered around a significant other that she gets tongue-tied, started going viral on TikTok over the past month. Credit goes to a combination of a sped-up version of the rhythmic pop-rock track and a cheeky dance routine set to its second verse (“I’m talkin’ all around the clock / I’m talkin’ hope nobody knocks / I’m talkin’ opposite of soft / I’m talkin’ wild, wild thoughts,” Carpenter sings). The song’s momentum was also helped by a well-choreographed live performance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! that was widely shared by pop fans around social media.
TikTok Cheers Along Baby Tate’s “Mickey” Reinvention
Choreographer-turned-accidental pop star Toni Basil topped the Hot 100 back in 1983 with “Mickey,” a gender-flipped cover of ’70s U.K. glam-rockers Racer’s “Kitty” turned into a cheerleading stomp-along (with help from an unforgettable music video, an early MTV staple). Atlanta rapper-singer Baby Tate introduced another step in the song’s evolution in 2016 with “Hey Mickey,” a bouncy trap banger keyed around a sultrier rendition of the classic “Mickey” hook.
“Hey Mickey” had limited commercial impact upon its release, but is making waves in 2023 thanks to — what else? — the song going viral on TikTok, with hundreds of thousands of videos of users miming along to its refrain, or posting it over various clip montages, with some videos receiving likes in the millions. It’s led to the song also detonating on streaming, with its weekly official on-demand U.S. streams growing from barely over 2,000 in mid-December to over 2.3 million for the week ending Jan. 19. And it’s still climbing — meaning Tate might be coming for Basil’s head “Mickey” cheerleader status soon enough. — ANDREW UNTERBERGER
PartyNextDoor Finds a PartyNineYearsAgo With Viral ‘Her Way’
Earlier this month, PartyNextDoor returned with “Her Old Friends,” a new single that followed the R&B star’s 2022 singles “No Fuss” and “Sex in the Porsche.” Yet none of those recent tracks are burning up streaming services quite like “Her Way,” the slinky cut from his 2014 project PartyNextDoor Two, which has gotten the sped-up TikTok treatment and soared back into the public consciousness.
Over the past month, “Her Way” has increased its weekly U.S. on-demand streaming total by nearly tenfold — 498,000 streams during the week ending Dec. 22, up to 4.93 million streams during the week ending Jan. 19, according to Luminate. PND himself is playing into the revival: days after releasing “Her Old Friends,” the singer-songwriter released an official “Her Way [Sped Up]” version of the track. With more music expected from PartyNextDoor this year, “Her Way” could serve as an unexpected lead-in to a potential new project. – JASON LIPSHUTZ