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: Each of Taylor Swift’s Reputation tracks are up following her announcement of having acquired the masters to her Big Machine-era albums — but which are up the most? Plus, a Kellyoke outing helps a Texas singer-songwriter get a break, and TikTok pettiness helps mint another fun new country hit.
Taylor Swift’s Surging ‘Reputation’: Which Songs Are Getting Streamed the Most?
Following Taylor Swift’s announcement on Friday (May 30) that she had bought back the master recordings of her first six albums, the superstar’s entire catalog posted sales and streaming gains, as Swifties rushed to celebrate the hard-fought victory. In addition to her five most recent studio albums and four Taylor’s Version re-records receiving boosts, her first six full-lengths naturally saw spikes in listenership — particularly Reputation, her 2017 opus which had not yet been given a Taylor’s Version treatment (and possibly never will).
Reputation has experienced the biggest gain in consumption since Friday’s announcement, averaging 8,000 equivalent album units between Friday and Saturday, according to Luminate, and challenging for a return to the upper reaches of the Billboard 200 next week. Digging into the individual songs, every single track on the album earned a increase in daily U.S. on-demand audio streams of at least 70 percent in the four days after the announcement (May 30-June 2) compared to the same tracking period during the previous week (May 23-26), with “So It Goes…” getting the biggest percentage bounce by rising to 983,000 streams in those four days, up a whopping 262% from the previous week.
The biggest hits on Reputation earned big boosts as well: lead single and Hot 100 chart-topper “Look What You Made Me Do” rose 70% to 2 million streams between May 30-June 2, while “Delicate” was up 85% to 2.02 million streams over those four days. The most-streamed song on Reputation, however, was the opener, “…Ready For It?,” which earned 2.21 million streams over that four-day period (up 80%). When Swifties wanted to finally return to Reputation, they clearly wanted to start at the top and savor the whole thing. – JASON LIPSHUTZ
Elizabeth Nichols Has ‘Got a New’ Hit Following ‘Kellyoke’ Cover
While pop star-turned-TV host Kelly Clarkson has made the ‘Kellyoke’ covers segment on her eponymous talk show a pop institution largely taking on a combination of established classics and contemporary hits, occasionally she likes to look to the future a little. That’s what she did last week, when she took on Texas country singer-songwriter Elizabeth Nichols’ late-2024 single “I Got a New One,” a clever sung-spoken ditty that sees her responding to childish romantic ultimatums by calling “next” on her partners. “I love [that song] so much, it’s so funny,” raved Fort Worth native Clarkson after her performance. “I always love shining a light on a fellow Texan.”
And indeed, the spotlight has been on Nichols and her winning debut single in the days since. In the four days following Clarkson’s performance, “I Got a New One” racked up 549,000 official on-demand U.S. streams in total, according to Luminate – a 462% gain on the four-day period prior to the cover. Even more impressively, the song shot to the top tier of the iTunes chart on the back of nearly 3,200 in sales over that same period, up over 63,000% from a negligible amount the prior period.
Given the way the country world deemed Ella Langley a star following her breakout success with her similarly sung-spoken Riley Green duet “You Look Like You Love Me” just last year, it might not be long before Nashville decides it’s got a new one in Elizabeth Nichols. – ANDREW UNTERBERGER
Vengefulness Propels Blackly Comedic Kaitlin Butts Single to Viral Success
“F*cking finally!” proclaimed the country newsletter Don’t Rock the Inbox about the long-overdue viral success of Oklahoma singer-songwriter Kaitlin Butts and her song “You Ain’t Gotta Die (To Be Dead to Me).” Indeed, the darkly funny highlight from Butts’ acclaimed 2024 album Roadrunner has belatedly hit TikTok paydirt, thanks to a couple sounds from it – including the chorus chant, and the spoken-word pre-chorus breakdown (“You know, I think I have heard of that man… I think I heard he got run over by a train, mauled by a bear, maybe? Hopefully”) – catching on with users sharing the reasons they’ve prematurely called a TOD on an ex.
Butts herself has helped accelerate the moment on her own TikTok, sharing some of the more unseemly examples and dueting along with high-profile cosigners like Internet celebrity Brianna Chickenfry and – once again – country star Ella Langley. Consequently, the song has begun to cross over to DSPs, racking up 473,000 official on-demand U.S. streams for the tracking week ending May 29, according to Luminate – a 3,342% gain from two weeks earlier, when the song netted just under 14,000 streams. As the song continues to rise, it just proves that the combination of a good, funny country song and the power of online vindictiveness is never to be underestimated. – AU