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 Halloween post-mortem, starring “Thriller,” Lady Gaga, and a handful of songs we would not have anticipated having to talk about this time of year.
Songs You Won’t Take Home to Mother? Unexpected Spooky-Season Jams Emerge From Rick James, Camila Cabello and More
As we find out every year, Halloween is truly in the playlist of the beholder, as songs that seem equally at home the other 364 days of the year to many still get tabbed by some as Oct. 31 standards.
One of the biggest examples this year undoubtedly comes via Rick James’ 1981 funk classic “Super Freak,” whose sense of freakiness is much more traditionally sexy than spooky. However, with the “Freak” in its title and an arguable tinge of haunted-house energy to its new-wave-y synths, it’s become an unlikely Halloween perennial — streaming in the seven-digits (1.2 million official on-demand U.S. streams, to be exact) this Oct. 31 for the second year in a row, a 328% gain over the 273,000 streams the song racked up the prior Saturday (Oct. 24).
Nearly as surprising is the addition to the Halloween canon of Camila Cabello’s DaBaby-featuring 2020 hit “My Oh My,” another song about a lyrical subject more threatening to parental approval than to personal safety, but with a slight melodic eeriness and an appropriate-enough lyric or two (“He comes alive at midnight”) to slip into Halloween playlists relatively inconspicuously. (In the case of “My Oh My,” there’s also a violent-skewing music video to give it slight slasher-soundtrack cred; music video associations have also helped Backstreet Boys’ “Everybody (Backstreet’s Back)”) — up 203% to 890,000 — become an Oct. 31 perennial.) Whatever the contributing factors, “My Oh My” also saw a huge Halloween bump, racking up 405,000 streams on Oct. 31, a 192% gain from the prior Saturday.
Other emerging Oct. 31 favorites make more sense as Halloween songs, but not necessarily so much as Halloween hits. “My Girlfriend Is a Witch” would not be anyone’s normal idea of 2026 streaming-core, as a little-heard late-’60s nugget from L.A. psych-rockers October Country, who had no major chart history during its career. But whether through long-gestating virality or the whims of the Haunted Algorithm, “Witch” has become a spooky-season streaming staple, generating 493,000 Oct. 31 after posting just 82,000 the prior Saturday, a 505% gain.
What other tangentially connected and/or deeply obscure songs will become fright night staples in short order? Queen’s “Death on Two Legs”? Ariana Grande’s “Ghostin”? Adina Howard’s “Freak Like Me”? We’ll be on the lookout for new twists and turns in this spooky saga in the years to come. – ANDREW UNTERBERGER
Is Lady Gaga Officially Halloween’s New Music Scream Queen?
Who needs screams when you’re racking up streams? Lady Gaga dominated this year’s Halloween streaming gains with a trio of songs that make a strong case for her earning the Scream Queen Crown.
On Halloween (Oct. 31), Mother Monster’s catalog received 10.57 million official on-demand U.S. streams, according to Luminate, marking an impressive 65% gain from the 6.39 million streams it collected the week prior (Oct. 24). “The Dead Dance,” her Emmy-nominated synth-pop soundtrack single for Wednesday season two, posted the biggest gain from her spooky-themed tracks. “Dance” earned 1.14 million official on-demand U.S. streams, up a jaw-dropping 414% from the 222,000 streams it pulled the week before (Oct. 24).
“The Dead Dance” appears on the reissue of Gaga’s 2025 Grammy-winning Mayhem album, which also houses the dance-pop smash “Abracadabra.” On Halloween, “Abracadabra” jumped 232% to over 1.04 million official streams, an impressive gain from the 313,000 streams it garnered on Oct. 24.
Gaga’s relationship with the Wednesday series actually began with the show’s first season, which revived her 2011 Born This Way deep cut “Bloody Mary,” thanks to fans using a sped-up version of the song in edits and fancams celebrating the titular character’s eye-catching dance. “Bloody” soared to 1.37 million official on-demand U.S. streams this Halloween, marking a 91% jump from the 717,000 streams it earned the week prior.
As a pop auteur who’s always had an eye for the macabre, it’s not too much of a surprise to see so many new-age Halloween anthems emerge from Gaga’s catalog. Let’s see if she snags another one from the upcoming third season of Wednesday. — KYLE DENIS
Did “Thriller” Bring More Screams Than Usual This Year?
The best-performing song basically every Halloween season is of course Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” which was already back in the top 20 of the Billboard Hot 100 for the chart dated Oct. 31 (released last week). Given how much all things Michael Jackson were back in the mainstream this year, and how catalog titles have been proving more culturally impactful than ever across the chart, we spent a lot of last week wondering if “Thriller” might be due for its best Halloween ever this year — and, for the first time, possibly even the No. 1 spot on the Hot 100?
The results: conclusive, but perhaps not so decisive. “Thriller” racked up about 10.1 million official on-demand U.S. streams this Halloween, according to Luminate, with another 4 million on Friday (Oct. 30) and 2.3 million on Sunday for a full-weekend total of about 16.4 million. That’s up about 36% from the 12.1 million streams it amassed last Halloween weekend (when Oct. 31 fell on a Friday), and when the rest of the tracking week is added in, it should allow the song to pass its previous best full streaming week (17 million, Oct. 24-31, 2024).
But will it be enough to propel the song to No. 1? Probably not — with “Thriller” predictably running out of steam post-Halloween weekend and “Choosin’ Texas” pacing somewhere between two and three million daily streams each day so far this week, the streaming edge “Thriller” has over “Texas” might not be more than a few million streams, which probably won’t be enough to make up for the considerable edge the still airwave-dominating “Texas” has in radio play. “Thriller” will have a better chance of beating out its prior Hot 100 peak (set back in 1984) of No. 4 — though even there, it will face competition from Tate McRae’s “Housewife” and Tame Impala and JENNIE’s similarly Halloween-boosted “Dracula.”
Nevertheless, every year, “Thriller” continues to creep closer and closer to claiming the Hot 100’s Halloween top spot — and you have to imagine that one of these years, MJ will posthumously earn the last evil cackle on the chart. – AU
