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: Some of the more buzzed-about Coachella performers see big streaming gains, a Netflix series helps revive some ’90s and ’00s alt-rock classics and a turn-of-the-century country-pop crossover classic gets another turn in the spotlight thanks to Love Is Blind.
Frank Ocean Streams Nearly Double After Coachella Performance
The most anticipated and discussed performance of last weekend’s Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival was almost certainly Frank Ocean‘s Sunday night (April 16) headlining set, the elusive R&B maestro’s first public performance in six years. Though the performance was stricken with last-minute production switch-ups (brought on by an ankle injury Ocean suffered during rehearsals) and drew a wide variety of responses from those in attendance, the nationwide interest in the long-awaited performance led to a huge surge in streaming for the beloved singer-songwriter.
From Saturday (April 15, the day before the performance) to Monday (April 17, the day after), Ocean’s daily official on-demand U.S. streams nearly doubled, rising from 5.2 million to 10.1 million — a gain of 94%, according to Luminate. That includes particularly big bumps for signature songs like “Pink + White” (1.0 million, up 54%), “Nights” (661,000, up 94%) and “Novacane” (695,000, up 50%), among many others.
Ocean’s not the only act to get a Coachella headliner bump: BLACKPINK, who closed the festival on Saturday night (April 15), saw their catalog rise 16% in daily official on-demand U.S. streams from Friday to Sunday — rising another 13% on Monday to 1.9 million. (Bad Bunny, Friday’s headliner, saw a more modest 7% bump to 9.2 million between Thursday and Saturday). And though he wasn’t a headliner himself, Labrinth saw big gains for his new single “Never Felt So Alone” — up 59% to 1.4 million streams from Saturday to Monday — thanks to a surprise appearance during his Sunday set from 2022 headliner Billie Eilish, who reprised her (uncredited) vocals on the track during his performance. — ANDREW UNTERBERGER
Viewers Sink Their Teeth Into Beef Soundtrack Cuts
The intense Netflix dramedy Beef, starring Ali Wong and Steven Yuen as strangers whose stories and fates begin inextricably intertwining after they face off in a random road rage incident, has become one of 2023 TV’s biggest breakout hits. Beef wisely uses a soundtrack loaded predominantly with ’90s and ’00s alternative rock — the kind that the pushing-middle-age protagonists would likely have grown up with — to help reflect the elevated emotional stakes throughout the series, and viewers have responded by flocking to the songs on streaming.
Incubus’ “Drive” and Hoobastank’s “The Reason,” a pair of alt-metal ballads featured in episode-closing montages, see two of the biggest bumps in totals. They raise in weekly official on-demand U.S. streams from 1.6 million to 1.9 million and 1.4 million to 1.6 million between the tracking week before Beef‘s airing (ending March 30) and the week after (ending April 13) — gains of 15% and 14%, respectively, according to Luminate — while also more than quadrupling in weekly digital sales, both to between 700 and 800.
Other songs seeing big percentage gains with smaller totals are Grant Lee Buffalo’s “Mockingbirds” (up 192% to 20,000), Smashing Pumpkins’ “Mayonaise” (up 29% to 374,000) and Tori Amos’ “Cornflake Girl” (up 31% to 163,000) — the latter also helped by a recent appearance in Showtime’s Yellowjackets, another show making this a golden age for ’90s alt synchs in buzzy TV dramas. — A.U.
I Hope You Stream: Lee Ann Womack Hit Gets Love Is Blind Bump
“I Hope You Dance,” Lee Ann Womack’s empowering country-pop single that became a top 20 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 upon its 2000 release, has newfound cultural cache thanks to the feverish devotion of one reality show contestant. On the latest season of the smash Netflix series Love is Blind, one of the couples who signed up to get engaged before ever meeting in person are brought together in part by “I Hope You Dance,” and now viewers are both discovering and revisiting the turn-of-the-century tearjerker.
Zack Goytowski, a criminal defense attorney who gets engaged to senior program manager Bliss Poureetezadi on the just-wrapped season 4, loves “I Hope You Dance” — his late mother had dedicated the song’s carpe diem sentiment to him when he was a teenager — and felt sure about his connection with Bliss pre-engagement due in part to her shared appreciation of the song. “I Hope You Dance” is brought up multiple times throughout season 4, and is prominently featured during Zack and Bliss’ will-they-or-won’t-they segment during the Apr. 14 season finale, as well as during the live reunion, which aired on Netflix two days later.
Read more about Love Is Blind‘s impact on “I Hope You Dance” here!
