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 Halloween rush begins with a number of heavy hitters and one new favorite, while a Megan Thee Stallion freestyle begins to pop and Gleeks rejoice over news of a revival.
Michael Jackson, Tame Impala, Rockwell Lead Halloween Streaming Race a Week Before the Holiday
There should be more eyeballs than ever on this year’s Halloween-week chart race, as two seasonal songs — one old, and one new(-ish) — could be in the hunt for the Billboard Hot 100’s No. 1 spot for the first time ever. And unsurprisingly, they’re also the two songs that are leading the early race among all scary songs on streaming: Michael Jackson‘s “Thriller” and Tame Impala‘s “Dracula.”
Traditionally, the Saturday before Halloween serves as something of a warm-up for the actual day, as spooky-season enthusiasts engage in trial runs for their costumes and/or theme parties, and the usual appropriate soundtrack songs have their best streaming days of the year so far. Such was the case with “Thriller,” which led all related songs on Saturday (Oct. 24) with nearly 1.7 million official on-demand U.S. streams, its highest daily total since amassing 2.7 streams Nov. 1 (the Saturday after last year’s Halloween).
“Dracula” pulled in the second-highest total among Halloween songs, with over 1.1 million streams on Saturday. That didn’t mark its best streaming day of the year — given that the late-2025-released song has been one of the biggest streaming hits of 2026, particularly after being boosted by a JENNIE-featuring remix in February — but it was its best day in over two months (since Aug. 21), as well as both a 12% gain on its performance the previous Saturday (Oct. 18), and an 8% gain on its total the Saturday before last Halloween (Oct. 24, 2025).
“Dracula” narrowly leads a number of other, longer-established Halloween favorites, including Rockwell’s “Somebody’s Watching Me” (also featuring backing vocals by Michael Jackson) and Ray Parker Jr.’s “Ghostbusters,” both of which were just under 1.1 million streams for that Saturday. Just behind those landed Citizens of Halloween’s “This Is Halloween,” Bobby “Boris” Pickett & The Crypt-Kickers’ “Monster Mash” and Andrew Gold’s “Spooky Scary Skeletons,” all of which were hovering around 1 million streams on the day.
Will Michael Jackson be able to maintain his sizable streaming lead through Halloween proper? Will Tame Impala be able to make up the difference — in radio if not in streaming? Will an unlikely favorite emerge from out of nowhere to challenge both of them? Stay tuned to Billboard all Spooky Season to find out.
‘Glee’k Out: Fans Celebrate Announcement Series Return on DSPs
It’s official: Glee is coming back. Last Wednesday (Oct. 21), the news broke that the musical TV series — which became a major pop culture phenomenon upon its 2009 debut, running for six seasons before ending in 2015 — would be revived on Hulu and Disney+ for 2027, with creator Ryan Murphy and stars Lea Michele and Heather Morris all confirmed to be returning in some capacity.
While additional details on what form Glee 2.0 will be taking upon its return remain scant, it was still more than enough news to get fans scrambling back to the original TV series — and its accompanying soundtrack recordings. (As much of a TV powerhouse as Glee was when airing on FOX during its original run, it was arguably an even bigger force on the Billboard charts, with the official Glee Cast being credited on a then-record-setting 207 Hot 100 hits between 2009 and 2013.)
Consequently, Glee Cast racked up a combined 3.8 million official on-demand streams for the five-day period following the Wednesday announcement (Oct. 22-26), according to early data provided by Luminate — up 56% from the 2.4 million streams it amassed in the five-day period before the news broke (Oct. 16-20). And if that’s just the bump for news of the show’s return, imagine what kind of impact it could have when the show legitimately makes its comeback — possibly with brand-new songs, even. Could it end up further padding that Hot 100 hit total?
Just One of Those Hits: Megan Thee Stallion’s New Limp Bizkit-Sampling Freestyle Breaks Out
Few things are more powerful in contemporary pop music than when Megan Thee Stallion is really talking her s–t — as best evidenced by her 2024 diss track “Hiss,” a surprise early-year Hot 100 No. 1 hit. And of course, it never hurts to get an extra boost from one of the most incendiary rock hits of the 21st century: Limp Bizkit’s “Break Stuff,” which Megan samples for the intro to her similarly flammable “Thin Ice,” the latest entry in her weekly “Tina Tuesday Freestyles” series.
The song was only available on her YouTube for the first couple days of its release, before going wide to streaming services on Saturday (Oct. 24). The song racked up 98,000 streams on Saturday, but as the song’s fiery energy and sizzling video spread to all corners of the internet — earning acclaim from fans and critics, as well as (of course) thousands of TikTok videos — that number climbed to 174,000 on Sunday, and 247,000 on Monday, a 152% gain in all. (The song has also reached the top 20 on Apple Music’s real-time chart, and the top 10 on Shazam’s US Top 200.)
The song still has a long way to go before threatening to match the No. 1 peak of “Hiss” — or even to hit the Hot 100 at all — but it’s quickly becoming a real moment for Megan, in a year where such moments have been in relatively short supply for even our biggest rap hitmakers.
Can’t Stop ‘The Feeling’: Steve Lacy Has Third Rising Hot 100 Hit of 2026
Appropriate for such a genre-mashing, mold-busting artist, Steve Lacy never seems to do hit singles the simple way. He’s got three songs in the top 70 of the Hot 100 this week, all from July’s Oh Yeah? album, but none of them had particularly splashy debuts or traditional chart paths — they’ve all grown gradually (or not-so-gradually) post-release from a combination of slow-building virality, pop culture prominence and general fan word-of-mouth.
The third rising hit of the bunch is actually the first one we got from the album: “The Feeling” initially dropped in June, debuting at No. 76 on the Hot 100 and drawing acclaim for its liquid guitar groove and exquisitely lovelorn lyrics. It fell off the chart immediately after, but rebounded back onto the listing in July following the album’s release. It fell off again the next week — but then boomeranged back onto the chart again the week after, thanks to extra attention on Steve Lacy following the Oh Yeah? title track’s usage over the main credits of the blockbuster film Spider-Man: Brand New Day.
Since then, “The Feeling” actually stuck on the chart — and in recent weeks, has begun to rise, climbing 65-61 for a new peak this week, and even lapping his second breakout hit (“Nothing”) on the listing in the process. The song has been helped along the way by TikTok users adopting its yearning lyrics (particularly the lines “Staring at ya pictures/ Wishing I was witcha”) for their own pining purposes. For the tracking week ending Oct. 22, “The Feeling” earned nearly 5.7 million official on-demand U.S. streams, according to Luminate — its best week on streaming yet.
