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: Taylor Swift’s announcement of her upcoming 12th album leads to streaming gains across her catalog, Cardi B helps a Jay-Z fan favorite find new life, a 20-year-old metal cut goes viral for bizarre reasons and more.
The Streams of a Showgirl: Taylor Swift’s Catalog Booms Following Album Announcement
Not only did Taylor Swift announce her 12th studio album, The Life of a Showgirl, last week, but she did so in a way that became a multi-day news cycle — first teasing a new era and appearance on her boyfriend Travis Kelce’s New Heights podcast on Monday (Aug. 10), then revealing later that day that the podcast interview would include plenty of information about her new album, and then unveiling all of the Showgirl details in a wide-ranging discussion on Wednesday (Aug. 12), with those meme-able moments and potential Easter eggs powering Swifties through the end of last week. Although fans will have to wait until Oct. 3 for Swift’s new album, they didn’t have to wait to stream her back catalog, which enjoyed a sizable streaming boost in the midst of the excitement.
From Aug. 12-14, Swift’s catalog earned nearly 110 million official U.S. on-demand streams, according to Luminate; that total marked a 57% bump from the three-day period right before the New Heights podcast tease (70 million streams from Aug. 8-10). Meanwhile, one Swift song has been resurgent for a non-Showgirl reason: “False God,” from 2019’s Lover, was featured in the Aug. 13 episode of the hit Amazon Prime series The Summer I Turned Pretty. The song earned 1.2 million streams from Aug. 13-15, up a whopping 383% from the previous weekend (250,000 streams). – JASON LIPSHUTZ
Cardi B’s New ‘Imaginary Playerz’ Single Spurs Notable Gains for Jay-Z Gem It References
Cardi B is keeping her Am I the Drama? album campaign rolling, and for her latest single she looked to fellow New York hip-hop icon, Jay-Z. For “Imaginary Playerz,” Cardi sampled Jay’s “Imaginary Players,” a Prestige-produced fan-favorite from 1997’s In My Lifetime, Vol. 1. Though Cardi’s track, which dropped on Aug. 15, envisions Jay’s original from a female perspective, her new single still spurred streaming gains for Hov’s classic.
According to Luminate, Cardi’s track pulled over 3.8 million official on-demand U.S. streams in its first four days of release (Aug. 15-18). During that same period, Jay’s “Imaginary Players” earned over 427,000 official streams, marking a whopping 313% increase from the 103,000 official streams it collected the weekend prior (Aug. 8-11).
Jay’s original was never an official single, but the “Imaginary Players” legacy lives on through Cardi’s latest tease of her long-awaited sophomore studio album. — KYLE DENIS
‘Freaky Friday’ Sequel Bumps Songs From Original & New Movies
It was a sequel fans had waited over 20 years for: Freakier Friday debuted in theaters on Aug. 8, as the follow-up to 2003’s Freaky Friday, starring Jamie Lee Curits and Lindsay Lohan (itself a remake of the 1978 original with Jodie Foster and Barbara Harris). The movie is off to a respectable box office start, and has also resulted in major streaming gains for the songs featured in the movie — in which Pink Slip, Anna (Lohan)’s band from the original movie reunites — as well as for Pink Slip classics from the ‘03 original.
The Freakier Friday soundtrack drew 879,000 official U.S. on-demand streams in total for the week ending Aug. 14 following the film’s release, according to Luminate — a gain of 153% over the prior week. That’s led by nearly 586,000 streams for Pink Slip’s re-recorded “Take Me Away,” nearly triple its tally the previous week. And there was enough enthusiasm left for peak Pink Slip from the new movie that the group’s “Ultimate” from Freaky also saw a spike, rising 74% to 229,000 streams for the week. (You can find the full story of all these songs in our Pink Slip reunion oral history here.) – ANDREW UNTERBERGER
Viral ‘Milkaholic’ TikTok Trend Revives 20-Year-Old Metal Song
Between Sleep Token and Ghost topping the Billboard 200 earlier this year and a Pierce the Veil deep cut going viral, hard rock and metal are having notable moments in 2025. U.K. hardcore band Her Words Kill is the latest act to benefit from this wave, thanks to its fast-rising hit, “Sir, This Is a Cutthroat Fashion.” Originally released on 2005’s Load My Revolver, Baby LP, “Cutthroat Fashion” has found new life as the primary song for a new “milkaholic” TikTok trend, inspired by Tom & Jerry.
In essence, TikTok users take shots of milk, intending to evoke the feeling of hitting rock bottom and nursing one’s alcoholism after a particularly rough day. User @noahnestell kicked off the trend with a Jul. 31 post set to “Cutthroat Fashion” and focusing on the lyrics, “Better pack your tears into a suitcase/ And run away with my heart.” As the trend evolved, users swapped out milk for other non-alcoholic beverages such as Yakult and matcha. The sound attached to user @noahnestell’s original video has garnered over 253,600 posts, while the official “Cutthroat Fashion” sound boasts just under 250 posts.
According to Luminate, “Cutthroat Fashion” earned just over 7,000 official on-demand U.S. streams during the week of July 18-24. That figure leapt 869% to nearly 70,000 official streams the following week (July 25-31), which included the day user @noahnestell shared his video. By the week of Aug. 1-7, “Cutthroat Fashion” grew a further 586% to over 476,000 official streams, and one week later (Aug. 8-14), the streaming activity jumped another 65% to over 790,000 official on-demand U.S. streams. — KD
