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: A new Grand Theft Auto game gets fans excited for some radio classics and a couple newer jams for the dancefloor, while Oh Wonder benefits from Tumblr-generation nostalgia and Noah Kahan etches one of his latest hits on the calendar.
GTA VI Extended Trailer Leads to Enormous Bumps for Elderbrook & Bob Moses, Omega & Chimbala and More
When it comes to trailer teases, few blockbuster film franchises can compete with the level of excitement produced by a video previewing a new Grand Theft Auto game. The Rockstar Games series, which now dates back nearly 30 years, took over the internet last week, with the Aug. 27 debut of its new “Extended Look” video giving fans a nearly-half-hour-long sneak peek into the series’ sixth installment, to be released on November 19. And of course, it being GTA, music featured prominently — an action-packed soundtrack featuring explosive classics from the ‘70s and ‘80s, and even some choice cuts from the past decade.
Unsurprisingly — given the 19 million views and counting on YouTube — practically all of the songs featured in the Extended Look received streaming bumps as a result of their usage. Those include older hits like The Bellamy Brothers’ “Let Your Love Flow” (up 43% to 422,000 total official on-demand U.S. streams over Aug. 28-31 from the equivalent period the prior week, according to Luminate), Depeche Mode’s “People Are People” (up 89% to 221,000 streams) and Cliff Richard’s “Devil Woman” (up 386% to 321,000), but also a pair of songs from a half-decade ago.
Those two 2021 songs garnering the most dramatic gains are Chimbala x Omega’s dembow banger “Se Me Nota (Agárrame)” and Elderbrook and Bob Moses’ moody thumper “Inner Light.” The former explodes by 3,047% over the aforementioned period to 464,000 streams, while the latter shoots 462% to 694,000 streams — as both also storm the top 10 on Shazam’s United States Top 200 chart, with “Inner Light” even topping the listing. And this is all just for the Extended Look trailer — we’ll almost certainly have cause to write about GTA VI again when the actual game drops in two and a half months. – ANDREW UNTERBERGER
Final ‘Outer Banks’ Season & Back-to-School Fever Lift Oh Wonder’s 2015 Deep Cut ‘Without You’
Oh Wonder’s 2015 self-titled debut album is a defining record of the OG mid-2010s Tumblr era, so it’s only fitting that the song has found a resurgence as a touchpoint for younger Gen Zers aching for the nostalgic glow of 2016.
“Without You,” which sits right in the middle of the now-married duo’s album, has become the main song younger listeners have gravitated towards. The song earned 439,000 official on-demand U.S. streams during the week of Aug. 7-13, jumping 114% to 943,000 official streams the following week (Aug. 14-20). By the week of Aug. 21-27, “Without You” streams leapt a further 41% to over 1.33 million official streams.
The song has been a TikTok mainstay since summer 2025, but a recent boom of Outer Banks (the final season debuted Aug. 20) and back-to-school edits have given the song a fresh boost. The part of the song that’s trending is the beginning of the pre-chorus, which finds the duo harmonizing: “Since I’ve been walking solo/ Dreaming you were back home/ Hi-fi getting down low/ Hide until tomorrow.”
Users proud of their solo journeys — whether it’s the result of a breakup or a death — have rallied around “Without You,” with the original, their BBC Session live performance and a Justice Skolnik remix of the song all getting their own time in the sun. While the BBC Session live performance audio boasts 1.4 million posts, the original plays in another 2.6 million clips.
Oh Wonder only reached No. 80 on the Billboard 200 in its initial run, but maybe this “Without You” revival could help it surpass that peak. — KYLE DENIS
Does Noah Kahan Have Our Newest Calendar Perennial?
On the annual streaming calendar, the beginning of August now means Taylor Swift, and the beginning (and late-middle) of September of course has long meant Earth, Wind & Fire. But what about the end of August? That’s been open terrain — but perhaps no longer.
Noah Kahan’s Billboard 200-topping April 2026 set The Great Divide has already charted all 21 of its tracks on the Billboard Hot 100, with three of them — ”Orbiter,” “Doors” and “Willing and Able” — still hanging around the chart four months later. They may soon be rejoined by a fourth: “End of August,” which has appropriately seen a significant surge in streaming interest since the last full month of summer came to a close.
“End of August” racked up 698,000 official on-demand U.S. streams on Aug. 31, a 35% jump from the day before. It was enough for the song to jump 71 spots (to No. 46) on the Spotify Daily Top Songs USA listing — and it rose another couple spots on Monday (Sept. 1), meaning the beginning of September might not be the end of this song’s seasonal surge. — AU
Lil Naay Eyes Another Fast-Rising Streaming Hit with ‘Perra’
After he first appeared in this column earlier this year with “Mood Brazil” (May 28), Dominican rapper Lil Naay is back with “Perra,” which flips Panamanian former rapper El General’s 1994 hit “Rica Y Apretadita.”
Naay first teased a new single incorporating elements of “Rica” in a July 31 TikTok, and the official song arrived on DSPs by Aug. 15. Since its release, fans have quickly gravitated towards the catchy “No me trates de engañar” vocal loop, Naay’s “Prende!” ad lib and producers Argel Beatz & KOOKIES’ dembow-indebted beat.
In its first full week of availability, “Perra” earned 129,000 official on-demand streams. By the next week (Aug. 21-27), that figure vaulted a jaw-dropping 1,316% to over 1.83 million official streams. During the Monday-Thursday period of Aug. 21-24, “Perra” logged 970,000 official streams, with that number jumping 47% to 1.43 million streams earned a week later (Aug. 28-31). Not only has the official “Perra” video hit over 17 million views in just two weeks, but the song also plays in over 35,000 Instagram Reels and 1.4 million TikToks.
Between “Una Baby En Santiago,” “Mood Brazil” and, now “Perra,” Lil Naay just keeps racking up hits. — KD