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: Bonus cuts from Taylor Swift’s new Midnights reissues look to shake up the charts, a new Disney musical remake leads to big gains for its classic songs and another conservative anthem puts up big sales numbers.
Chart Supremacy’s a Relaxing Thought: Taylor Swift Eyes Major Moves With Til Dawn
How big will Midnights – The Til Dawn Edition be? Next week’s Billboard charts will reflect the full commercial response to Taylor Swift’s new edition of last year’s Midnights album, which was released last Friday (May 26) and included an Ice Spice-assisted remix of “Karma,” a “More Lana Del Rey” version of “Snow on the Beach” and the streaming debut of “Hits Different,” among other goodies for fans. Based on early streaming and sales figures, those tracks are predictably getting played by a huge audience, and could impact the Hot 100 chart in a major way if those numbers hold.
On the streaming side, “Karma” was the big winner on the Til Dawn release date, with the original version and the Ice Spice remix combining for 5.65 million U.S. official on-demand streams on Friday — a 395% uptick from the previous day, according to Luminate. “Karma” — which is up to No. 27 on the Hot 100 this week, in the chart frame prior to the release of the remix and its accompanying music video — dipped a bit over the holiday weekend, but was still raking in 2.34 million streams on Monday, which was more than double its daily average in the days leading up to the remix release. Combined with a big boost in downloads (7,400 in sales on Friday alone), “Karma” could be flexing like a gosh darn acrobat in the upper reaches of next week’s Hot 100.
Meanwhile, “Hits Different,” which was originally released on the Target-exclusive physical edition of Midnights in October, scored an even higher sales day on Friday than “Karma,” with 11,200 downloads to Swifties anxious to add the track to their digital collection. “Hits Different” also earned 3.27 million streams on Friday, with that daily number hovering a bit above 1 million streams each day over the holiday weekend. And “Snow on the Beach” kicked off the weekend with 3.76 million streams on Friday — a whopping 849% increase from the previous day — and 8,000 in sales, with its daily streams winding down to the same levels as “Hits Different” by Monday.
Although the numbers for “Hits Different” and “Snow on the Beach” are worth monitoring, all eyes are on “Karma,” which Swift performed with special guest Ice Spice at each of her MetLife Stadium shows in East Rutherford, N.J. this past weekend. In the coming weeks, “Karma” could become Swift’s second Hot 100 chart-topper from Midnights, following “Anti-Hero,” which became the superstar’s longest-running No. 1 single by logging eight weeks atop the chart. Meanwhile, Midnights could return to the top of the Billboard 200 chart, snapping the 12-week run at No. 1 of Morgan Wallen’s One Thing at a Time. – JASON LIPSHUTZ
Little Mermaid Songs Swim to Big Gains
The new live-action Disney remake of the studio’s 1989 animated classic The Little Mermaid is off to a dynamite start at the U.S. box office, with nearly $120 million reportedly raked in over its first four days of release (May 26-29). Unsurprisingly, the movie’s early ubiquity has inspired people to return to some of the timeless songs remade in the new version on streaming services, both in their newer and original incarnations.
“Part of Your World,” the Little Mermaid ballad originally sung by voice actress Jodi Benson (which Billboard‘s staff recently named the best song in Disney history) and covered by star Halle Bailey in the 2023 version, rose 71% in daily on-demand official U.S. streams from 294,000 on May 25 (the day before its release) to 503,000 on May 27 (the day after), while the Benson original was up 18% to 210,000 over that same span, according to Luminate. Meanwhile, the Daveed Diggs-led “Under the Sea” from the new version was up 125% to 208,000, and Samuel E. Wright’s 1989 rendition gained 11% to 202,000.
Are any of the 2023 version’s new Lin-Manuel Miranda-penned songs on their way to a classic status of their own? Hard to tell so far, but “The Scuttlebutt” — led by the Awkwafina-voiced Scuttle, and also featuring Diggs — seems to be off to the strongest start, with the song climbing to over 200,000 daily on-demand U.S. audio streams this week, a number that may only continue to rise as more and more kids nationwide are re-infected with Mermaid-mania. – ANDREW UNTERBERGER
Neo-Con Rappers Put a “Target” on Store’s Pride Month Display With Homophobic and Transphobic New Best-Selling Single
The No. 1 song on iTunes’ real-time chart isn’t from Taylor Swift or The Little Mermaid — but rather conservative rappers Forgiato Blow and Jimmy Levy’s new single “Boycott Target,” also featuring Nick Nittoli and Stoney Dudebro. The reactionary song takes aim at the titular megastore for its recently debuted PRIDE Collection and takes open shots at the LQBTQ community with lyrics like “You know the LGBTQ done went too far/ You know they cuttin’ these kids, they leavin’ tr—ies with scars/ Why they push an agenda, promoting with sexual genders/ I’m only rockin’ with Bruce, don’t rock with no Caitlyn Jenner.” Meanwhile, the video features the artists parading around a Target’s PRIDE section, with several of them donning a cartoonish amount of pro-USA (and/or pro-Trump) clothing and paraphernalia, and singer Jimmy Levy positing, “Inside this store, Satan resides.”
As several other conservative anthems have done in recent years, from Aaron Lewis’ “Am I the Only One?” to multiple different songs named “Let’s Go Brandon,” the song has attracted thousands in sales due to word-of-mouth and exposure via FOX News. The song grew from just over 200 in daily sales on May 25 to nearly 2,900 on May 30, despite Blow’s claims to FOX that the song had been “shadow-banned” from searches on Apple Music, and daily streams have also started to pick up, though they still remain in the modest five digits. Regardless of whether or not the consumption will be enough for “Boycott Target” to match the top 40 debuts of those previously mentioned right-wing rallying cries, its success thus far strikes a sour note for the start of Pride month. — A.U.
