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.
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This week: The hits keep coming for Olivia Dean after she makes her SNL debut, while Summer Walker’s latest offers a few streams to some R&B gems and a soul cult favorite gets a surprise viral hit.
Olivia Dean’s Ascension Continues, Thanks to Recent ‘SNL’ Debut
Olivia Dean sits in the top five of both the Billboard Hot 100 and Billboard 200 this week (charts dated Nov. 22). And, if her recent streaming numbers are any indication, she’s poised to continue soaring.
According to early data provided by Luminate, Dean’s catalog earned 21 million official on-demand U.S. streams in the two-day period following her SNL debut (Nov. 16-17), marking a 23% increase from the streams her catalog pulled the week prior (Nov. 9-10). Following her Saturday Night Live performances of “Man I Need” and “Let Alone the One You Love,” Dean’s catalog was also up nearly 120% in U.S. digital sales, with over 2,600 digital downloads sold during Nov. 16-17.
“Man I Need,” which reaches a new peak of No. 4 on this week’s Hot 100, is also up 4% in streams post-SNL, earning 7.5 million official streams during Nov. 16-17. In that same time frame, “Man” sold over 1,000 U.S. digital downloads, marking an 89% jump from the 550 copies it sold during Nov. 9-10. “Let Alone” earned a much larger boost, soaring 44% to over 1.2 million official streams during Nov. 16-18, and leaping a whopping 1,465% to over 300 digital downloads sold during the same period.
Between her SNL debut, a recently announced four-night run at Madison Square Garden and the afterglow of her first Grammy nomination, the world simply can’t get enough of Olivia Dean and The Art of Loving. — KYLE DENIS
Streaming Audiences Say ‘Yes’ to Lift-Heavy Summer Walker Album
Singer/songwriter Summer Walker released one of the year’s most anticipated R&B albums on Friday (Nov. 14) with Finally Over It, third album in her acclaimed Over It trilogy. The 18-track, two-disc set was littered with guests — including big names like Chris Brown, Teddy Swims, 21 Savage and Doja Cat — but nearly as strewn with samples and interpolations from past R&B staples, with many of those originals seeing streaming bumps in the days following its release.
The biggest of the bunch was for “Yes,” the fan-favorite deep cut from Beyoncé’s 2003 solo debut LP Dangerously in Love. The song’s “First time I said ‘no,’ it’s like I never said ‘yes’” hook is borrowed for the intro to Walker’s obversely titled “No,” one of the set’s early streaming breakouts. According to early data provided by Luminate, “Yes” racked up 94,000 official on-demand streams over the first four days of Finally Over It‘s release (Nov. 14-17), nearly double the 48,000 it amassed in the equivalent four-day period the prior week.
Other bumps from the set were enjoyed by a decades-older R&B throwback (Roberta Flack’s 1978 Donny Hathaway duet “The Closer I Get to You,” interpolated in Walker’s “Baller,” up 12% to 89,000 streams over that period) and a 50 Cent soundtrack single (2005’s “I’ll Whip Ya Head,” lifted in “Robbed You,” up 11% to 125,000). – ANDREW UNTERBERGER
Labi Siffre’s Tender 1971 Classic Finds New Life on Streaming After Bumble Ad Sync
A couple months ago (Sept. 8), Bumble launched a new “For the Love of Love” ad campaign, soundtracked by Labi Siffre’s “Bless the Telephone,” a tender 1971 ditty that’s found a new life on streaming in recent weeks.
During the week of Sept. 26-Oct. 2, “Telephone” earned over 216,000 official on-demand U.S. streams. Eight weeks later (Nov. 7-13), the song now boasts over 1.77 million official weekly streams, clocking a 721% increase in activity, according to Luminate.
In addition to the Bumble campaign, Siffre has also become something of a TikTok star. His management-run account frequently shares clips of the now-80-year-old artist reflecting on his life and career, and many users became even more enamored with him after learning about his queerness and anti-apartheid stance — as well as the artist formerly known as Kanye West sampling him for 2007’s “I Wonder.” On TikTok, the official “Telephone” sound plays in over 36,500 posts, while a clip of a young Siffre performing the song earned nearly 15 million views. — K.D.
