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: Kehlani sees bumps both for her own song and a song named after her, while Central Cee and Lil Baby have a trans-continental hit on her hands and a devastating ’80s synth-pop classic goes viral for surprisingly blithe reasons.
Kehlani’s Name Spurs Streaming Wins for Herself & Belfast Singer-Songwriter Jordan Adetunji
In just a few weeks (June 27), Kehlani will unleash Crash, her third studio album. “After Hours,” the set’s lead single, is already pulling ample streaming traction, but so is a breakout hit named after her from Belfast singer-songwriter Jordan Adetunji.
Released on May 19, Adetunji’s “Kehlani” collected over 115,000 official on-demand U.S. streams in its first three days of release (May 19-21), according to Luminate. Four days before the track hit DSPs, Adetunji posted a snippet of the song to his official TikTok account, writing, “Bro wrote a whole song about Kehlani, but why it kinda go hard,” alongside a bevy of popular hashtags, including “#cashcobain,” “#melodicdrill,” “#slizzymusic” and, of course, “#kehlani.” On May 18, Kehlani herself left a singular flame emoji under his post.
Over the same period the following week (May 26-28), “Kehlani” jumped 434% in streaming activity to 615,000 streams. In addition to the song naturally gaining traction on socials — “Kehlani” plays in the three pinned TikToks on Adetunji’s page, all of which have garnered at least 870,000 views each – a more explicit co-sign from Kehlani helped get the ball rolling.
On May 23, Kehlani posted a pair of TikToks featuring her vibing and lip-syncing to the track. The more recent video of the two has since earned over five million views and over one million likes on the platform, directing plenty of new listeners to Adetunji’s track. The official “Kehlani” TikTok sound currently boasts over 12,5000 posts.
Of course, Kehlani’s magic doesn’t stop there. With the release of a “Cater 2 U Mix” for “After Hours” and increased visibility due to her passionate social media pleas in support of the Free Palestine movement, the Crash lead single has enjoyed a significant streaming bump. During the period of May 17-21, “After Hours” pulled in 2.1 million official on-demand U.S. streams. By the period of May 24-28, that number jumped 55% to 3.3 million streams. – KYLE DENIS
Central Cee & Lil Baby Rack Up a New Hit With ‘BAND4BAND’
After dominating the UK. alongside Dave with “Sprinter” last summer and earning his first Billboard Hot 100 with his Drake-assisted “On the Radar Freestyle” (No. 80), Central Cee is gearing up for another hit on both sides of the pond – and this time Lil Baby is along for the ride.
This U.K.-Atlanta drill-based link-up earned 1.93 million official on-demand U.S. streams on its first day of release (May 24). Streams for “BAND4BAND” remained stable throughout the week, eventually hitting 2.04 million streams on May 27. By the following day (May 28), that number rose 29% to 2.64 million streams, marking the strongest streaming day out of the track’s first five days of release. With a total of 10.2 million streams in its first five days of the week, “BAND4BAND” is already off to a very promising start.
The new track has also already exploded on TikTok, with the official “BAND4BAND” sound garnering over 97,000 posts in just one week. Most users are using Cench and Baby’s back-and-forth hook to show-off their hilarious “U.S.” and “U.K.” sides. Over on YouTube, the official “BAND4BAND” music video has pulled in over 14 million views in under a week.
Should “BAND4BAND” hold steady, Cench and Baby could be looking at the next global rap smash. – KD
Heartbreaking Bronski Beat Classic Revived for Light-Hearted TikTok Trend
Bronski Beat’s 1985 hit “Small Town Boy” was never a huge chart smash in the U.S. — it peaked at just No. 48 on the Billboard Hot 100, though it reached No. 3 on the U.K.’s Official Charts. But the song remains well-remembered for its passionately delivered lyrics and evocative music video, a tearjerking tale of a young gay man’s rejection and alienation from mainstream society. However, the song is making the rounds again in 2024 for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with its content, and everything to do with its propulsive synth hook and danceable post-disco beat.
TikTok has really gotten swept up in the #80sDanceChallenge, in which users take videos of their parents dancing to a lightly sped-up version of the pulsing intro to “Small Town Boy” — supposedly with the moves they would’ve used if boogieing to the song back in the ’80s. No less an early-MTV-era authority than Cyndi Lauper has gotten in on the fun, posting a CapCut edit of some old performance footage of her full-bodied dancing set to “Boy,” with the caption, “Oh #80s #dancechallenge you say?”
The clips, several of which have already racked up millions of likes, have helped the song find new life on streaming: “Boy” racked up over 1.5 million official on-demand U.S. streams for the tracking week ending May 23, according to Luminate — a 114% gain from the 705,000 streams the song notched four weeks earlier, before the trend really took off. Bronski Beat singer Jimmy Somerville also shared a TikTok celebrating the song’s recent 40th anniversary, singing along to the song’s now-viral intro and sharing his joy at how the song has been revived.
“Everything is just kind of going so crazy in the world,” he said. “But here, on TikTok, there’s all these people just finding a moment to just have a bit of fun … It’s just been brilliant.” – ANDREW UNTERBERGER
