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Yahoo
11-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Taylor Swift's Lack of AMAs Announcement Still Results in ‘Reputation' Bump
Welcome to Billboard Pro's 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: Taylor Swift's most controversial album gets a bump in anticipation of an announcement that never materialized, Young Jeezy and Akon's classic teamup gets an unlikely meme boost and an odd cover of a Sly Stone classic drives listeners back to the original. Taylor Swift's 'Reputation' for Surprises Precedes Her on Streaming More from Billboard The Amity Affliction Cover Turnstile's 'Holiday' for 'Like a Version' Mariah Carey Celebrates 20 Years of 'The Emancipation of Mimi': Stream It Now Miley Cyrus' New Album 'Something Beautiful' This Way Comes: Stream It Now If you were watching the American Music Awards on Monday night (May 26), chances are pretty good you had your eyes peeled and ears open for a certain revelation from a certain pop superstar. Swifties had flooded the internet in recent weeks with predictions of a Taylor Swift Memorial Day Miracle – an appearance at the awards, most likely accompanied by an announcement of a new release, perhaps the long-awaited Reputation (Taylor's Version) re-recording. Unfortunately for the Swifties, the AMAs came and went without any appearances, announcements or drops from their fav. But hope clearly sprang eternal in the days leading up to the awards, at least on streaming: The 15 tracks on Reputation racked up a combined 11.3 million official on-demand U.S. streams across the first four days of this tracking week (May 23-26), ahead of the awards – a 14% gain from the equivalent period the prior, according to Luminate. And that bump was of course highest on Memorial Day, as the album racked up 2.4 million total streams on that day alone, a 29% gain from the prior Monday. 'Soul Survivor' was the breakout crossover hit 20 years ago for the rapper then known as Young Jeezy, as the Akon-assisted banger lifted to No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 and helped establish his Let's Get It: Thug Motivation 101 as one of the year's biggest rap albums. Two decades later, the street anthem is once again delighting music fans, though through a relatively unlikely conduit: a TikTok meme about dating gaffes. Tiktoker Hadley (@localyerbafein) stroke viral paydirt last week (May 21) when she shared a video that captured the story of a guy – presumably one she was seeing, or at least considering seeing – responding to her interest in law with a question about her watching the TV show Suits. The video ends with footage of Hadley serving as a courtroom attorney, with the caption 'holy fckin airball' – all, of course, set to 'Soul Survivor.' The clip quickly spread through the app, racking up 10 million views and 1.8 million likes, and inspiring a number of other users to share their own he-shoots, he-doesn't-score stories, with Akon and Jeezy again serving as the soundtrack. Consequently, the track exploded on streaming towards the end of last week. For the tracking week ending May 22, 'Soul Survivor' amassed over 3 million official on-demand U.S. streams, according to Luminate – fully doubling its stream count from the prior week – and it should be headed for an even bigger tally this week, as TikTok keeps putting up one 'holy fckin airball' after another. In 2017, two greats of popular music – pop icon Cher and rap legend Future – teamed up for an unlikely collab cover of Sly & The Family's soul-pop classic 'Everyday People.' Their rendition was featured in a Gap commercial that showcased the star pair meeting up on a staircase on an otherwise-blank set to discuss how Cher can't get the 1969 Hot 100-topper out of her head, leading to her crooning the song over a trappy beat. Meanwhile, Future attempts to fill in with harmonies and ad libs – in a mixture that, unsurprisingly, feels slightly less than organic. The awkward commercial has recently begun to recirculate around the internet, resulting in pairs of TikTokers recreating the visual in endearing clips gently poking at the stilted chemistry of the original. The Cher & Future 'Everyday People' is not currently available in full on DSPs, but of course the Family Stone original is there for the streaming – and folks have been evidently charmed enough by the improbable cover to revisit (or check out) the original. According to Luminate, over the first four days of this tracking week (May 23-26), 'Everyday People' is up to 309,000 official on-demand U.S. streams from 256,000 over the same period in the prior week, a gain of 21%. In this week's example of never knowing where a breakout hit might come from in 2025, we have Scottish dance producer Sam Gellaitry. His song 'Assumptions,' from the 2021 EP IV, has begun to percolate on streaming over the past month, thanks to the Russian dancer Руслан Айдаев, now known to the internet as Blue Shirt Guy – who has been a meme of some degree for years already for his full-bodied dance moves, shot from behind. Recent viral videos have paired the clip with Gellaitry's throbbing electro-pop instrumental, resulting in it going nuts on TikTok all over again – with many of the app's finest donning their best blue shirts and filming themselves shaking it from behind. Consequently, the four-year-old 'Assumpstions' has risen to the top of Gellaitry's Spotify page, and is now racking up over 2.2 million official on-demand U.S. streams a week, up 142% from three weeks earlier, according to Luminate. Best of Billboard Chart Rewind: In 1989, New Kids on the Block Were 'Hangin' Tough' at No. 1 Four Decades of 'Madonna': A Look Back at the Queen of Pop's Debut Album on the Charts Chart Rewind: In 1990, Madonna Was in 'Vogue' Atop the Hot 100
Yahoo
26-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Viral ‘Hostile Government Takeover' TikTok Gets Turned Into Best-Selling Dance Banger
Welcome to Billboard Pro's 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 viral TikTok is remixed into a best-selling protest song, an indie rock institution is introduced to younger fans (again) through a big movie synch and Philadelphia gets to celebrate yet another February win via a breakout rap hit. More from Billboard Drake's 'Nokia' Becomes His Midweek '$exy $ongs' Breakout Hit, 'Gimme a Hug' Leads to Aaron Hall Gains Kendrick Lamar's Catalog Up 154% in Streams Following Super Bowl Performance Huge Grammy Gains for Doechii, Beyoncé, Chappell Roan and Other Winners & Performers A few weeks after Donald Trump returned to the White House and started dismantling norms left and right, the TikTok user AGiftFromTodd recorded a 30-second video of himself getting ready to leave his house while crooning an original song that began with the line, 'We're in the middle of a hostile government takeover/ I wanna talk about it, but I'll be late for work.' Todd's soulful alarmism went viral, with thousands of likes and shares on TikTok upon its Feb. 4 upload, and while he posted a few new versions of the song in the following weeks, the one that's crossed off to streaming services in a major way is an EDM remix that pairs hopelessness with a club thump, courtesy of producer Vinny Marchi. 'Hostile Government Takeover' by AGiftFromTodd & Vinny Marchi spent a good chunk of last weekend at No. 1 on iTunes, selling 4,800 downloads from Feb. 21-24, according to initial data provided by Luminate. Meanwhile, its streams keep climbing — the dance remix earned 597,000 official U.S. on-demand streams over that four-day span, up from 153,000 streams from the previous Friday-to-Monday tracking period. As the song debuts at No. 13 on Hot Dance/Electronic Songs this week — plus No. 2 on Dance/Electronic Digital Song Sales and No. 12 on Digital Song Sales — and continues to spread, the good news for Todd Givens Jr. is that the next four years will offer plenty of new material to riff on for follow-ups. – JASON LIPSHUTZ If there's one rock act from 20 years ago that doesn't especially need any more bumps from newfound Gen Z virality, it's probably New York's the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. The trio, which reunited in 2022 for its first album together in nearly a decade, spent a stunning eight weeks atop the Billboard TikTok Top 50 chart last year for signature 2003 power ballad 'Maps,' racking up millions of streams a week for the revitalized (and re-viralized) hit. Now, the group is surging again with a catalog hit – though this time, it's not with another decades-old song, but rather a song from that reunion album. 'Spitting Off the Edge of the World,' which was the lead single of 2022's Cool It Down and featured an assist from acclaimed alt-pop singer-songwriter Perfume Genius, has gotten a big look in Apple TV's original movie The Gorge, released on Valentine's Day. The song plays during a pivotal love scene between the film's co-leads – played by film stars Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy – and it shot to near the top of the Shazam charts almost immediately after the film's release, still sticking around there a week later, as folks scrambled to find out what the doomy song playing in the action romance was. A whole lot of those Shazamers undoubtedly ended up streaming 'Spitting' as well – as the song racked up 629,000 official on-demand U.S. streams for the tracking week ending Feb. 20, a 375% gain for the song from the previous week, according to Luminate. And many ended up purchasing the song, too: 'Spitting' sold nearly 3,000 copies in that week, a massive gain from the just-over-100 it moved the week before, and good enough for a No. 15 debut on the Digital Song Sales chart – the group's first-ever appearance on that listing. – ANDREW UNTERBERGER Last fall (Sept. 9, 2024), a nameless TikTok account uploaded a snippet of a then-unreleased Skrilla song titled 'Doot Doot.' The snippet quickly rent viral due to his rambling opening verse, 1ellis' gritty production and his memorable delivery of the phrase 'six, seven.' Since September, the snippet has been used in over 126,000 TikTok posts, eventually giving way to an official DSP release on Feb. 7, 2024. As the 'Doot Doot' snippet continued to make the rounds on TikTok going into 2025, the song earned an unforeseen supporter in Taylor 'TK' Kinney, a basketball star for RWE of the Overtime Elite league. Hailing from Newport, Kentucky, the baller has found a way to say 'six, seven' in Skrilla's cadence in nearly every interview from the past few months. The phrase is now synonymous with both TK and Skrilla on socials, and the two young men got to link up in person at an RWE game two weeks ago. For weeks, TikTok users have been responding positively to TK's 'clip farming' — a practice that basically entails purposely doing something in hopes that it will be clipped and reuploaded across social media – by making edits of his game highlights that are soundtracked by his 'six, seven' quip merged with the 'Doot Doot' snippet. According to Luminate, 'Doot Doot' earned 1.7 million official on-demand U.S. streams during its first week of released (Feb. 7-13). That figure shot up 105% the following week to over 3.5 million streams. The track has already racked up 3.2 million streams over the first four days of this tracking week (Feb. 21-24), according to initial data provided by Luminate, which marks an 88% jump from the same period the prior week. With its official music video garnering over 1.26 million YouTube views in just over a week and no signs of slowing down on TikTok, there's tons of room for Skrilla's latest hit to continue growing. – KYLE DENIS Best of Billboard Chart Rewind: In 1989, New Kids on the Block Were 'Hangin' Tough' at No. 1 Four Decades of 'Madonna': A Look Back at the Queen of Pop's Debut Album on the Charts Chart Rewind: In 1990, Madonna Was in 'Vogue' Atop the Hot 100
