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 VMAs lead to notable gains for some of its performers, an AI trend boosts an early-decade hit from 2/3 of Migos, a song from nearly 30 years ago becomes a new Hot 100 hit and more.
VMAs Performances Lead to Gains for GENER8ION and Yung Lean, Madonna & Sienna Spiro
There were far fewer performances of contemporary hits at Sunday’s MTV Video Music Awards than in past years — a combination of this year’s condensed run time (just over two hours with commercials) and greater emphasis on tributes to iconic artists like George Michael, Nirvana and Dolly Party. But some of the artists who did take the stage to play their current singles on Sunday did see some surges in streaming interest following the VMAs, perhaps standing out even more due to the relative paucity of performers.
The biggest beneficiaries were likely French house producer GENER8ION and Swedish singer-rapper Yung Lean, whose “Storm” teamup was nominated for four awards at the VMAs, including video of the year. The duo performed the “Storm II” portion of the two-part song at the ceremonies, while recreating the viral part of the accompanying video, which featured an unjacketed, cigarette-smoking Lean in a sea of blue-uniformed schoolboys. The attention-grabbing visual evidently translated to VMAs audiences, as the song racked up 350,000 official on-demand U.S. streams on Sept. 28, the day after the awards, according to early data provided by Luminate — a massive 443% spike from the 64,000 streams it racked up the prior Monday.
Rising singer-songwriter Sienna Spiro was also a big winner from the event. The U.K. powerhouse took home the best new artist Moon Person, while also performing her latest hit showstopper, “Great Expectation” — which experienced a new single-day best on streaming the following day, with 919,000 streams, up 31% from the prior Monday. And of course, the most-honored performer on the night also saw gains, as longtime VMAs Queen Madonna saw gains for both of the songs she performed to kick off the awards, “Bring Your Love” (with Sabrina Carpenter, up 65% over the same timepsan to 102,000 streams) and “Danceteria” (up 377% to 214,000 streams, helped by the Friday-released “Afterhours” remix with Charli xcx). — ANDREW UNTERBERGER
AI Meme Trend Revives Quavo & Takeoff’s ‘Hotel Lobby’
Enough of AI-generated music… what about AI-generated memes lifting older songs made by humans? Ahead of Qrömelife, which drops Friday (Oct. 2), Quavo’s 2022 “Hotel Lobby” collaboration with the late Takeoff is surging on streaming, thanks to a trending meme that uses AI to replace the duo with virtually any person or character in the style of their COLORS live performance video.
On Sept. 15, TikTok user @/glorify_studio shared an edit of the COLORS video that replaced Quavo and Takeoff with two characters from Suits, to the tune of 209,000 likes and 1.7 million views. By Sept. 18, the trend spread to X, with user @/ogfeitoza inserting cats into their COLORS spoof, garnering 7.7 million views. The next day, user @/cuba4si added Napoleon and Mbappé to the clip, with TikTok user @/afaraj23 dropping in Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce on Sept. 25. On Sept. 27, X user @/mockucentury rebooted the COLORS clips with Nathan Fielder and Elizabeth Holmes, the stars of the upcoming documentary film You Can See Everything.
“Hotel Lobby” collected 2.95 million official on-demand U.S. during the seven-day period of Sept. 18-24, a whopping 101% increase from the 1.46 million streams it collected the week prior (Sept. 11-17), according to Luminate. During the Friday-Monday period of Sept. 25-28, “Hotel” picked up 2.5 million official streams, up 107% from the week prior (1.2 million streams across Sept. 18-21).
Qrömelife will contain the first new collaboration between Quavo and Offset in five years, so maybe the “Hotel Lobby” love will set the duo’s comeback up nicely. — KYLE DENIS
Long-Spreading ‘Duvet’ Now Blanketing the Hot 100
It’s a breakout story nearly 30 years in the making. British alt-rock outfit bôa initially released “Duvet” as a single from their The Race of a Thousand Camels album all the way back in 1998, to little mainstream notice or chart attention. However, the lilting, woozy pop-rock gem received a major second wind early in the next decade, when the 2001 anime series Serial Experiments Lain used it as its title theme, turning the song into something of a global cult classic — and, eventually, a streaming perennial, growing from one million total official on-demand U.S. streams over the course of 2020 to nearly 139 million over the 2025 calendar year.
For most of 2026, “Duvet” was on pace to about equal that 2025 number racking up weekly streams around the 2.5 million area. But since about Labor Day Weekend, its numbers have start to tick up significantly, as the song has found itself used in a number of fall-themed TikTok videos — as well as in clips by bôa themselves, as the group has been playing the song on tour, and in a new viral cover by singer Iman, which has also racked up 360,000 streams of its own since its official Sept. 11 release to streaming.
Consequently, “Duvet” has exploded from 2.4 million streams for the week ending Aug. 27 to nearly 4.2 million four weeks later (week ending Sept. 24), according to Luminate — also helping push the song onto the Billboard Hot 100 for the first time at No. 93 on the chart dated Oct. 3, 2026, a short 28 years after its initial release. – AU
Paramore’s Undying “The Only Exception” Rises on Streaming as Song Lore Enraptures New Fans
It’s been 17 years since Paramore scored one of its biggest hits with the soaring ballad “The Only Exception,” taken from its Billboard 200 No. 2-peaking album Brand New Eyes. Now, the song’s goosebump-inducing bridge and juicy lore have captivated a new generation of fans, leading to steady streaming gains over the past three months.
According to Luminate, “Exception” logged 3.15 million official on-demand U.S. streams during the seven-day period of Sept. 18-24, marking a whopping an 88% streaming increase over the past 15 weeks. During the week of June 12-18, “Exception” pulled just 1.67 million official streams.
One of the band’s signature songs, “Exception” explores denying the existence of real love out of fear of rejection and eventually finding the one person who disrupts that approach. Fans largely believe that the song is autobiographical, with Williams and then-husband Chad Gilbert’s marriage serving as the primary inspiration. Williams has never directly confirmed that; in fact, she’s discussed feeling uncomfortable performing the song after divorcing the New Found Glory guitarist in 2017. She repaired her relationship with “Exception” during Paramore’s opening stint for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, giving way to a Billie Eilish cover on her Hit Me Hard and Soft Tour last year. (Sadly, Gilbert died at age 45 earlier this month, after being diagnosed with stage four adrenocortical carcinoma.)
The emotional heft of the song’s lyrics coupled with Williams’ own evolving relationship with the song as it established itself as a fan-favorite has resulted in truly staggering live performances, that have gone viral on TikTok. In particular, users are gravitating towards — and posting their own covers of — the bridge, which finds Williams belting insane high notes. The official “Exception” sound plays in over 13.6 million TikTok clips and 70,000 Instagram Reels.
Over the past few months, users have also been drawn to the following lyrics: “I’ve got a tight grip on reality, but I can’t/ Let go of what’s in front of me here.” Some have even paired “Exception” with the pop psychology phenomenon of “avoidant attachment” in relationships. Others have synced the “Exception” TikTok sound to edits of dynamic duos ranging from Heated Rivalry’s Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov to Practical Magic 2 stars Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock.
“The Only Exception” may have topped out at No. 24 on the Hot 100 nearly two decades ago, but maybe this new wave of TikTok-led support can help the song rewrite its own history. — KD