RuPaul’s Drag Race fans love a good lip sync for your life moment, filled with stunts, reveals, kicks and all of the high-stakes reality show drama we’ve come to expect over 14 seasons. But there’s another group that should really love these moments — the artists whose songs get featured.
Over the course of season 14 of Drag Race, every song that has been featured as a lip sync at the end of each episode has seen streaming gains in the week following the episode’s airing, according to MRC Data.
The biggest winner amongst the 9 songs featured thus far on season 14 is Kylie Minogue‘s “I Love It.” Released as the third single off of Minogue’s album DISCO on October 23, 2020, “I Love It” was featured as the lip sync song in the show’s third episode (aired on Jan. 23, 2022), when queens Maddy Morphosis and June Jambalaya faced off following their struggle in the annual ball challenge.
In the tracking week ending Jan. 20, prior to the episode’s airing, “I Love It” earned a total of 16,000 on-demand U.S. streams according to MRC Data. However, in the week dated Jan. 27 following the episode airing, the song earned a total of 123,000 U.S. streams, up 671% from the prior week.
While no other song from season 14 had quite as big a bump as Minogue’s, some tracks saw modest jumps following their appearances on the series. For example, Jennifer Lopez‘s “Play” vaulted 186% in U.S. streams following its appearance on the season’s fourth episode on Jan. 28, earning 143,000 streams in the week ending Feb. 3 (compared to 50,000 the week before). Meanwhile, Beyoncé‘s “Suga Mama” leaped 111% following its use in episode 6 on Feb. 11, clocking in at 77,000 U.S. streams (compared to 33,000 the week prior).
The gains in streaming numbers also did not necessarily correlate with fans’ favorite lip sync performances from the season. For example, while the lip sync between Jorgeous and Orion Story to Ava Max’s “My Head & My Heart” has unequivocally received the most attention from fans (the clip of the lip sync has been viewed over 680,000 times on YouTube), the song only gained 11% in streams, jumping from 1.3 million streams the tracking week prior, to 1.4 million streams the tracking week following.
This is not the first time Drag Race has led to massive bumps for songs featured on the show. In 2021, the lip sync between queens Denali and Kahmora Hall to Crystal Waters’s dance classic “100% Pure Love” led to the song selling 1,000 new downloads. Goosing its sales by 705%, “100% Pure Love” rocketed to No. 9 on Billboard’s Dance/Electronic Digital Song Sales chart, a career-first for Waters.
RuPaul’s Drag Race airs Fridays at 8 p.m. ET on VH1.
