Wednesday
Teen psychics, werewolves, vampires and gorgons make up the student body at Nevermore Academy in Netflix’s Wednesday — so who better to make a cameo than the queen of little monsters herself? While hitting the Golden Globes red carpet Tuesday night (Jan. 10), leading lady Jenna Ortega discussed what a character played by Lady Gaga on the mysterious and spooky hit series would entail.
“I’m sure Netflix would love that,” Ortega said at the awards show, where she was nominated for best actress – television series musical or comedy, which ultimately went to Abbott Elementary‘s Quinta Brunson. “If Lady Gaga were to be a part, [she and Wednesday] would have to be two monsters that understand each other,” she added.
Gaga has been linked to Wednesday ever since a mega-viral trend spontaneously emerged on TikTok following the show’s November release, wherein creators would recreate Ortega’s equally viral season one, episode four dance scene using the 13-time Grammy winner’s Bad Romance album deep cut “Bloody Mary.” Despite never actually being featured in the first season, the song became so synonymous with Wednesday that Netflix went on to use it in a recent teaser video for the show’s second season.
The “Bad Romance” singer herself has even commented on the Wednesday hype in the past, which just recently catapulted “Bloody Mary” into the Billboard Hot 100 for the first time ever (it’s currently No. 68 on the chart dated Jan. 14). In December, she tweeted, “Slay Wednesday! You’re welcome at Haus of Gaga anytime (and bring Thing with you, we love paws around here)” in response to the TikTok trend and later created her own Wednesday-inspired TikTok.
See Jenna Ortega brainstorm Wednesday character ideas for Lady Gaga below.
The Cramps‘ 1981 recording of “Goo Goo Muck” became an out-of-left field success story in November after its use in a dance scene in the hit Netflix series Wednesday helped a new generation discover the song, first released in 1962 by Ronnie Cook and the Gaylads.
Music trends, created by viral hits on TikTok and YouTube, are unpredictable, though. As soon as “Goo Goo Muck” was enjoying its newfound fame, along came “Bloody Mary,” a deep cut from Lady Gaga‘s 2011 album Born This Way. Fans inspired by the Wednesday scene uploaded videos of themselves performing the dance to TikTok and other platforms, but many swapped out the audio of “Goo Goo Muck” with a sped-up version of “Bloody Mary” — including Gaga herself after the singer caught onto the trend.
Lady Gaga may have stolen some of The Cramps’ thunder. As weekly growth of on-demand streams of “Goo Goo Muck” slowed — from 177% to 7% in the last two weeks — on-demand streams of “Bloody Mary” increased 88% to 43.1 million in the week of Dec. 9. About 89% of the streams came from video platforms, namely YouTube, where the sped-up version of the recording is used in videos of people recreating the Wednesday dance scene.
Still, “Goo Goo Muck” is having a fairy tale of a fourth quarter. Between Nov. 18 to Dec. 16, its weekly U.S. on-demand streams increased about 200 times, from 31,000 to 6.1 million. Download sales were strong enough to put “Goo Goo Muck” at No. 25 on Billboard’s Digital Song Sales chart for the week of Dec. 10. “It’s a really amazing, fun little bonanza,” Jim Shaw, owner of the song’s publishing rights, previously told Billboard.
Both tracks also got a boost from being featured on some major playlists. On Nov. 30, Spotify added “Goo Goo Muck” to its Big on the Internet playlist, which has nearly 3 million followers, and on Dec. 6 it added the track to its Teen Beats playlist, which boasts over 1.8 million followers, according to Chartmetric. “Bloody Mary” is also featured on both playlists and is currently the leadoff track on Teen Beats.
Wednesday is officially a smash. The Netflix show, which premiered Nov. 23, has climbed the ranks since its release and has become the third most watched show on the streaming platform after Stranger Things and Squid Game, but for the show’s composer Danny Elfman, the success came as a major surprise.
Speaking alongside Phoebe Bridgers for an interview with NME published Friday (Dec. 16), the composer — well known and loved for his work on The Nightmare Before Christmas, Edward Scissorhands, Alice in Wonderland and more — spoke about what it was like working on Wednesday and how he feels about the show resonating with the masses.
“Wednesday was just fun. I grew up on The Addams Family, but I really also dug the Charles Addams cartoons even more so, so for me, it was like a well known kind of character, so to do a variation [of Wednesday] it was just fun,” Elfman said.
When the interviewer asked if the show’s success came as a surprise to him, the composer replied, “Yeah, completely. But you gotta realize, I’m surprised by anything I do having any success. When Batman came out, I was composing to a cut that was so dark on the video I could barely even tell what was happening at the time. I thought this was going to be a little cult film at best, and so the fact that it was a big hit — that shocked me and surprised me. I thought Wednesday would be like Batman: I thought it was going to be a little cult thing.”
Wednesday has been quite the opposite of “a little cult thing” — the show’s synch of The Cramps’ “Goo Goo Muck” drove up on-demand streams of the track to more than 2 million in the U.S. in the week of Nov. 25 to Dec. 1, a more than 8,650% increase from the average 47 weeks before this year. And though Lady Gaga’s “Bloody Mary” was not featured in the show, it also gained 2 million streams thanks to the show’s corresponding TikTok dance trend.
Watch Elfman talk about Wednesday in the video above.
There has been so much to love about Netflix’s latest hit show Wednesday, from the coming-of-age storyline and deadpan demeanor of the titular Addams Family character (played by Jenna Ortega) to the goth style choices and supernatural mysteries surrounding the show’s Nevermore Academy setting. But what has captivated audiences just as much is the thrilling soundtrack. Within the show’s first season, there’s a tapestry of classic Latin ballads, string concertos and multiple generations of rock. The combination of the song choices themselves and the scenes they’re set to has stirred up conversation all over the internet.
While Netflix is no stranger to such virality (see how the streaming service revived Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill”), it was thrilling to see Wednesday give a similar bump to The Cramps’ 1981 post-punk classic “Goo Goo Muck,” thanks to a dazzling dance scene in episode four where Ortega shows off some of her kookiest moves. Of course, it wasn’t long until TikTok users put their own spin on the quirky scene by dressing up as Ortega’s character and dancing to Lady Gaga’s 2011 track “Bloody Mary.” The trend has caught on so much so that Gaga’s song has re-entered the Billboard Global 200’s top 40, while even the pop star herself dressed up like Wednesday and danced to her Born This Way number.
Following the success of the series, Billboard spoke to music supervisors Jen Malone and Nicole Weisberg about setting the tone for the series, the Gaga TikTok craze and what Cramps song they almost used instead of “Goo Goo Muck.”
How did doing music supervision for shows like Yellowjackets and Euphoria help inform the process of putting together the soundtrack for Wednesday?
Jen: Each show is very different in terms of the overall vision, sound and tone. It’s really just a collaboration with the showrunners, as it is with each other show and each other team that we work with. On any show, music can be used in different ways. So it’s really just following their lead, and a lot of listening to how they see the character and how they see music as a character in the show. We’re really lucky in that in a lot of shows that we work on, music is a character, and I think that’s definitely the same for Wednesday.
How did you concept the sound for Wednesday?
Nicole: It was a very collaborative process, and the intention the whole time is to pay homage to Wednesday’s story. [Looking at it through] her lens to make all of these choices was such a fun way to approach an Addams Family project. So it was sort of a combination of just looking for that perfect vintage song that sounds [like] classic Addams Family, but is serious vintage cool that has a wink to it and feels like we’re still having fun.
What did you envision Wednesday listening to as a teen?
Nicole: We really leaned into a lot more vintage. Wednesday doesn’t have a phone, she doesn’t have social media. So we really leaned into a lot of the Latinx vintage and female vocals, but then also combined [that] with some of the later placements, like The Cramps [and] this goth, post-punk sound. Obviously, the chorus with the cello was a huge, huge part of our show.
What did the moodboard for the show’s soundtrack look like?
Jen: We really drew from the Addams Family in general, knowing that this is Wednesday’s story. We started with a big playlist of songs from anywhere and everywhere, that we thought could somehow somewhere fit into this series. It really ranged from several different genres and several different time periods. We also were also true to telling Wednesday’s story, and the Addams Family franchise is our cornerstone for the music story.
Wednesday’s solo dance scene to “Goo Goo Muck” by The Cramps has become a viral moment from the show. Was that song always meant to be used for that scene?
Jen: It was not scripted in. When we got to shooting that episode, we really collaborated with [creators] Al [Gough], Miles [Millar] and Tim [Burton] and got them a bunch of options that they would obviously also discuss with Jenna, who was going to be doing the choreography for the dance. We actually were talking about “Human Fly” from The Cramps, and those guys ended up coming back and they’re like, “Let’s do ‘Goo Goo Muck.’”
Nicole: These things unfold where we have the script, and then we’re figuring it out before it’s going to shoot, and we haven’t even worked on all the other episodes. It was a big moment to really ground the show. The Cramps were on our playlist from the beginning, and it just happened organically where we would go back and forth with the producers and Tim. Like Jen said, Jenna was a big part of taking the temperature on most of these big moments, because she just embodied Wednesday so much. It was like, if she feels like this would be natural for her to do, then we kind of got the green light. She was the pinnacle of every moment.
Jen: Even the cello pieces, Jenna was involved in those discussions. She actually had made her own cello playlist, which was really really cool.
It’s been a big year for Netflix’s viral music moments, especially following the resurgence of Kate Bush love after Stranger Things used “Running Up That Hill.” How do you balance those kinds of standout moments so that they feel organic?
Jen: Our job as music supervisors is to serve the director and the showrunner’s vision and serve the story. That’s the only thing that we focus on: collaborating and providing ideas to Al, Miles and Tim. Having moments go viral, that’s just the icing on the cake. That’s super exciting, but not something that we set out to do.
Wednesday‘s dance scene popularized Lady Gaga’s “Bloody Mary” again, thanks to TikTok. How has that impacted the hype around the show?
Jen: It’s just so exciting to see how fans are reacting to the show and creating their own videos. I just like seeing the dances and the costumes they put together. It’s super fun to watch these kids create their own moments. It’s funny, you’re not seeing people watch TV. Now, you’re getting to watch your fans react in real-time to something. It’s definitely a surreal experience because we worked on the stuff a year ago, and you don’t think about this happening this way.
Lady Gaga has shown her support for Wednesday on social media and even made her own “Bloody Mary” dance video inspired by the show. Have you considered featuring a Gaga song next season?
Jen: We don’t know the long-term plan for the show, but I hope we will be able to create more notable music moments.
Obviously, Wednesday and her roommate Enid have such distinct personalities. How did that affect their music taste on-screen?
Nicole: That was always going to be polar opposites, just because of the nature of their characters. Enid is bright and fun-loving, so it was natural to fill her playlist with pop music and feel-good, uptempo [songs] — and then Wednesday is like, ‘I’m serious and I want vintage quality,’ and doesn’t care about Enid’s music taste very much. It was fun to play a contrast in those moments when they’re hanging out in their bedroom, and you can’t have both girls’ music playing at once.
What made you guys decide to use “Don’t Stop” by Fleetwood Mac during the Crackstone Memorial sequence?
Jen: I think that one actually came from Al, Miles and Tim.
Nicole: When the statue was on fire, [it was] building up to that moment. We loved the Metallica cover with the cello and everything was building up to that moment. Fleetwood Mac was intended to play contrast to all the darkness that’s about to come right after it. What I thought was carved out really nicely was when we had the Beach House song, right into Fleetwood, right into Vivaldi, right into Metallica. It just felt like a perfect storm of just setting up the rest of the season for the chaos that’s about to ensue.
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
In the latest example of a stellar synch bringing in a surprise windfall, The Cramps‘ 1981 psychobilly classic “Goo Goo Muck” has become a breakout hit over the past couple of weeks.
Since Netflix’s new Addams Family spinoff Wednesday debuted on Nov. 23, including the series’ titular heroine performing dance sequence set to “Goo Goo Muck”, the track has taken off on streaming services.
In the week following the show’s release, from Nov. 25 to Dec. 1, The Cramps’ “Goo Goo Muck” was streamed on-demand over 2 million times in the U.S. — a more than 8,650% increase from the average 47 weeks before this year. That adds up to $11,089.85 in a single week for the Capitol Records master recording and $2,492.33 in publishing, according to Billboard estimates.
Those numbers dwarf the rest of the song’s 2022 activity — until the Wednesday dance sequence came out, “Goo Goo Muck” this year had generated a total of $130.21 per week for the master and $32.28 for the publisher. Thanks to the Wednesday synch, The Cramps’ “Goo Goo Muck” earned in total almost 78% more money in a single week than it had for the entire year.
“It’s a really amazing, fun little bonanza,” Jim Shaw, a member of the late country legend Buck Owens‘ Buckaroos, who happens to own the publishing, told Billboard last week.
Early streaming activity suggests “Goo Goo Muck,” a cover of a 1962 single by Ronnie Cook and the Gaylads, could potentially follow Kate Bush‘s renaissance when her minor 1985 hit “Running Up That Hill” landed in Stranger Things and turned into a smash. “Goo Goo Muck” had 2,500 daily on-demand streams as of Nov. 22; by Dec. 1, the track jumped to more than 209,000 daily streams, according to Luminate.
The streaming boost for “Goo Goo Muck” is a bonus on top of the upfront synch fee — the amount of which is unknown — that would have been paid on both the master recording and the publishing for the song.
Capitol reps did not respond to an interview request, but Shaw, who runs the Buck Owens Foundation, said he scored the publishing rights after the original publisher, Dave Bell, felt guilty about owing his friend Shaw “a couple thousand dollars” and offered the song instead. (Bell, who died in 2013, owned a recording studio, label and publishing company in his hometown of Bakersfield, Calif., and put out Cook’s original version of “Goo Goo Muck.”)
“It hasn’t really done much until recently,” Shaw says. “That’s what every songwriter, and publisher, hopes will happen. Anything they put on YouTube, they hope something goes viral.” If “Goo Goo Muck” goes full Kate Bush? “Well,” Shaw says. “[It] wouldn’t break my heart.”
Over the years, Jim Shaw had loaned his friend Dave Bell, a longtime producer, publisher and label owner in Bakersfield, California, a couple of thousand dollars for various ventures — bits and pieces at a time. “He was one of the guys who kept rolling the dice,” Shaw recalls. “He’d make a million, then lose a million. Very interesting guy.”
By 2002, Bell was starting to feel guilty about how much money he owed to Shaw, a veteran member of Buck Owens‘ Buckaroos who now runs the late country legend’s foundation. Bell proposed a unique deal: In lieu of cash, he gave Shaw publishing rights to the rockabilly song “The Goo Goo Muck,” co-written and recorded by local country singer Ronnie Cook and his band, the Gaylads, in 1962. “At the time, it was like magic beans,” Shaw says. “[Bell] had a lot of gospel songs. He’d become very religious, and that song didn’t fit into what he wanted to do.”
Shaw knew, of course, that The Cramps had released a classic new-wave psychobilly-punk version of “Goo Goo Muck” in 1981, but since then the band’s popularity had faded and he never expected it to amount to much of anything. In fall 2021, though, the producers for Netflix’s Wednesday series called to license the Cramps’ version for a synch. When the Addams Family revival came out Nov. 23, the series saw record-breaking viewership and the track took off, much like Kate Bush‘s “Running Up That Hill” last spring in Stranger Things, shooting from 2,500 streams the day before the premiere to 134,000 five days later. “It’s a really amazing, fun little bonanza,” says Shaw, 76. “I wasn’t familiar with the show, but I was happy to make the deal, and caught by surprise on all this.”
Bell, who died in 2013, was a U.S. Navy veteran who evolved from directing a church choir to recording artists, including local symphonies and a pre-stardom Merle Haggard, for his Bakersfield-area studio and his Audan Records label. He also owned a couple of publishing companies, including Damosi, named after his wife and daughters. Not much is known about Cook, who wrote “Goo Goo Muck” with Ed James. “I really thought it was a fun little song — the Duane Eddy guitar and that sound,” Shaw says. “I don’t know what this leads to. I was thinking of Pulp Fiction. Remember some of the really cool songs that got dusted off?”
Shaw, who is on the board of directors for the Buck Owens Foundation and has written songs of his own for Garth Brooks and Tom Jones, among others, recalls the late Bell as a character who was both religious and “had a potty-mouth.” Says Shaw, with a laugh: “He said, ‘The problem in this world is that people don’t pay attention to the fucking Ten Commandments.’”
Although Bell had done “very well in his life” as a label and studio owner and song publisher, Shaw says, he hit a rough period in the early 2000s and his friend started loaning him $100 or $200 at a time. “It kind of accumulated, and he was telling me how badly he felt about it. He says, ‘I want you to have this song.’ I said, ‘OK, sure,’” Shaw recalls. “It’s really cool. That’s what every songwriter and publisher hopes will happen. It’s what everybody dreams.”
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
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