Illenium logs onto Zoom from his Los Angeles home studio in a moment of relative chill, given what his last year has been like.

The producer born Nick Miller released his sixth studio album, Odyssey, today (Feb. 6) and on March 6 will launch a nine-date Sphere residency of the same name that will make him the second electronic artist in history after Anyma to headline the venue.

As such, Illenium and his team have spent the last year creating an entirely new world around the project, with the process starting with the creation of a storyline for the show that then inspired Odyssey. The LP is Illenium’s first with Republic Records, and includes collaborators Ellie Goulding, Kid Cudi, Bring Me the Horizon, Dabin, Alok and Ryan Tedder. Odyssey also finds the producer, whose work pioneered the future bass genre, leaning into house, tech house and trance of the first time.

After the story and the visuals and the album was finished, the work continued, with Illenium spending, he says, “eight to 20 hours per song” to mix the album into spatial audio, a technological component of Sphere that Illenium is employing more than any other artist who’s played a residency there thus far. As he tells it to Billboard, it’s all coming together well enough to leave him with a big smile on his face during rehearsals.

“The only people that are probably going to notice [the spatial stuff] are those who’ve been to Sphere before for shows without it, but people that are going there for the first time are probably just going be like, ‘Wow, that sounded really good.’ It’s like, “Goddammit, we worked so hard on that!’”

So how did this new album Odyssey come about?

For me to really grind on an album, I have to put so much love behind it. I had done five albums, an album every two years, and was going to take a year to chill, to collect my thoughts and figure out what I really wanted to pursue. I’m so glad I did. I still worked on music in that time, a couple singles, the Ellie Golding song that I’m putting out, but I wasn’t grinding on an album yet.

When did that shift?

I really started once Sphere came into the picture about 14 months ago. Once we did the storyboard for that and had a world built for the show, I knew I needed a new album for it. It needed to be completely fresh. I wanted to make music for this storyline for the show and have brand new visuals, brand new music, everything new. I’m so glad I did that, because it turned into this major focus where I had tunnel vision for what I needed to do, and that was super fun.

I was wondering if Sphere came first and then the album, or vice versa?

Without going into a two hour ramble, last January we decided we were going to shoot for a Sphere residency. In order to do that, we needed a story. We were like, “We want to make a movie.” Every show I’ve seen there has done an amazing job pushing boundaries, but I do feel like there’s room to push the combination of an immersive show and a movie storyline that’s impactful, emotional and has this captivating immersion to it.

How did you do that?

The first phase was getting the storyboard. The story is very much a metaphor for accepting the dark and light parts of yourself, going through a journey of accepting who you are and that there’s beautiful aspects to the light and beautiful aspects to the darkness. It’s really a roller coaster ride of that yin and yang, made at a macro scale. We use a lot of space and black holes and visuals of worlds being created in these two polar opposite… I just got obsessed with this whole storyline.

If it’s a movie, are there characters?

Yes, it gets really intricate with the character development. We wrote that, then I would have a reference image and a scene, then we would go in the studio and write a song to that scene. Building the show was building the album at the same time. It was totally in tandem. The show has a different layout and order and a lot of different edits, and the album has a different ebb and flow to it

That’s interesting given that the last time we spoke you said you were interested in film scoring, although I can’t image you thought it’d be like this. Are you saying that you’re playing the show in order of the album tracklist?

Not at all. I built the show first and then went back and finished the album. Normally it’s album first, then the show.

Obviously Sphere is so different than any other show you’ve done. Who did you work with to make it and how complicated was it to do?

[Laughs] That’s another two hour conversation. The first show I saw was Dead & Co., and then I saw Anyma, and then Backstreet Boys. I think all three of them did a fantastic job. I mean, the canvas you get there is just so different creatively. You get so many more possibilities and so much more immersion — the haptic seats, the spatial audio, which a lot of artists haven’t fully used to its full potential. We’re going fricken’ HAM on all that.

When you saw Anyma and Backstreet Boys, did you know by that point that you were doing your own show there?

When I saw Anyma we were talking to them and going through the approval process, so I knew it was a potential, but it wasn’t confirmed. Backstreet Boys, yes, we were already working on it.

You said you and the team were “shooting for a sphere show,” so obviously it’s something you knew was a possibility. How did you guys get it across the finish line?

Once it became a reality, the only way to do it was to fully commit. It became our entire focus for 12 to 14 months. Not just myself, but my whole team. The only way to do it is to make it your entire life.

You’re working with the Woodblock animation studio on the visuals, right?

That’s my entire visual team, and they’re freaking awesome. My mind is very character driven, so we took a while to fine tune the characters and how we want them to look, walk and fly. So then you get sketches of those characters in each scene, then we start dissecting like, “We really want this part to be impactful and for everything to flow with the music.” Everything needs to be driving to the music.

No matter how amazing all the shows I’ve seen at Sphere have been, I feel like there needs to be more [emphasis] on those impactful musical moments and really driving with them, really feeling it. That’s where that immersion element comes in so well. A big moment starts coming, and you feel a rumble in your seats that takes you to this rumble you see visually. It’s very tied together.

If you’re saying it’s like a movie, is there going be dialog?

There’s no dialog, actually, besides one tiny piece at the very beginning. It’s tricky, because we’re going to make a movie and tell a story, but nobody gets to talk. That’s where writing for the scenes is so helpful. For example there’s this one moment called “Into the Dark,” and it’s the intro song to my album, and it’s these two characters coming into contact for the first time, and they have to follow each other into the dark. The lyrics work with what’s happening visually really well, so it’s almost like writing for a movie.

The music is the dialog.

Yeah, exactly.

Will there be any of symbolism that we’ve seen previously in your shows and that have defined your world and aesthetic for a long time? Are you adapting that pre-existing world?

Not exactly. The world is new. There are similarities in terms of the phoenix being present, but not as constantly present. I love like that the phoenix is kind of godly or higher power-esque figure that has these special powers and can create worlds, and from the ashes of a feather can create an entire universe type of thing. I like that kind of massive thought.

It’s like the end of Men in Black when you find out it’s all taken place in marble of some alien.

Right there! Spoiler alert. There’s some cool stuff.

Did signing with Republic during this time open any opportunities for you and make the album process in any way different?

They’ve been such a family vibe. When we signed with them, they knew we were doing Sphere. It was pretty much like “I’ve got a quick timeline. We’ve got to go!” I went from not doing much to “We’ve got to go hard, fast.”

They’ve been so supportive. I love everyone on the team. I’ve been through a lot of different label families, and there’s always pros to a lot of them, and cons to some, and I feel like overall, Republic has been really invested in what I want to do as an artist creatively. They’re excited to be a part of Sphere and were super helpful, because I had to get so many sessions done in a short amount of time. I had to write that album in six months, really.

I was just listening to the Ellie Goulding track “Don’t Want Your Love,” which really goes and also feels like an evolution for you in terms of having a more tech house sound.

For sure. I haven’t dabbled in the house or trance space a lot, and had so much fun working on that. “Feels Like You” with Ellie Duhé too, I love that song. I had a really fun time implementing my sound into that genre. There were some amazing vocals that called for it, that I was like, “I’ve just got to go to this world, it’s just meant to be there.”

Do you think your fans are ready for these kind of genre diversions?

I can’t wait for them to hear the Bring Me the Horizon collab. That thing is fully psychotic. I haven’t made a song that aggressive ever. Fans that want the same half-time big synth drops, they’ll get some of that, but I want to mess around. I don’t want to just do that constantly. There are some amazing songs that are very Illenium sounding, but there are diverse songs too. At first people might get tripped up on that, but with a second or third listen, I think people are going to get really obsessed.

The atmosphere at Sphere obviously changes so much from artist to artist. The Dead shows were a super Dead vibe and the Anyma shows were very futuristic and techno. I feel like your people are gonna create a really nice atmosphere.

I can’t wait. It’s getting to the point where I am personally blown away by being there and looking and watching. I cannot f–king wait to see fans in it. Right now I’m just in an empty venue with a huge smile on my face. Every run-through I’m like, “Wow, this is gonna be f–king insane.”

I’m so excited for you to have the moment of the first note of the first show.

I don’t get that nervous for a lot of shows, but I’m sure I’ll be f–king losing my fricken self.

You’ve already done such big stuff, like your stadium shows. I’d been wondering how you’d do anything bigger than what you’d already achieved, so this all makes perfect sense.

Creatively, doing a stadium show is so fun. I do get nervous for those, but it doesn’t take as much longterm work as a Sphere show. The rush of a stadium show is really fricken’ crazy. You almost have your own show that you’re watching from the stage, because it’s so massive and we have so many lighting effects out in the crowd.

But the Sphere residency is a whole different type of work. I’ve never done a lot of this. It’s super immersive. We’re adding sound effects to all these these visual aspects and layering with the music and making edits. It really feels like making a movie, which is so fun, because I love that s–t.

He did it! With just a few hours left to go before the 2026 Olympics opening ceremony, SUNGHOON of ENHYPEN successfully did his part carrying the torch in the Winter Games relay in Milan on Thursday (Feb. 5).

As captured in a video posted to Instagram by the Olympics and the boy band’s account, SUNGHOON wears his official Olympic uniform — a white jacket with an orange and pink design on the shoulders — and gloves as he steps out of a car and carefully handles the silver torch. As he walks his stretch of the Italian city, he waves at excited fans and points to his Olympic ring sunglasses.

“We’re literally mesmerized!” the caption reads. “ENHYPEN’s SUNGHOON arrived in Milan and handled being a @MilanoCortina2026 torchbearer with his usual grace and charm.”

It was first announced in January that the boy band member would be participating in the traditional torch-bearing ceremony, which involves the passing of the Olympic flame from one person to another on a route in the games’ host city leading up to the opening ceremony, which marks the official kickoff of the weeks-long sporting event. SUNGHOON is just the second K-pop star to be selected for an overseas Olympic torch relay, following Jin of BTS in 2024 for the Summer Games in Paris.

SUNGHOON’s trek through the streets of Milan comes just after ENHYPEN dropped its latest EP, THE SIN : VANISH. Thanks to the project, the band ascended to No. 1 on the Billboard Artist 100 chart for the first time.

ENHYPEN is also gearing up for the March premiere of its ENHYPEN [WALK THE LINE SUMMER EDITION] IN CINEMAS documentary in theaters.

Watch SUNGHOON’s portion of the 2026 Olympic torch relay below.

When Forrest Frank and his booking team at UTA opened up ticket sales for the Christian music singer’s 26-city Child of God Tour Part 2 in December 2024, they made a calculated risk — taking the artist from the 2,000- to 5,000-seat standing-room clubs where he had been performing hits including “Good Day” and “Up!” to 6,000 to 7,000 average paid capacity venues that would offer more comfortable seating for the families and younger fans attending his shows.

“We were very intentional about wanting to play smaller arenas,” UTA music agent Jonathan Roberts says. Forrest Frank had also just released “Your Way’s Better,” a catchy pop song that was bolstered by a viral TikTok dance in 2025, resulting in his solo Billboard Hot 100 debut.

“All the songs had snowballed. Dickies Arena in Fort Worth [Texas] sold out [12,000 tickets] on day one of the presale,” Roberts says. “We couldn’t add dates because of certain parameters of time we could work with, so the only thing we could do was find every seat in the buildings we were in and get as many people in as possible.”

For the tour stop at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena in April 2025, that meant opening upper levels. “We had the intention of only playing the lower bowl, up to the 200 level, because that still would have been 8,000 people,” Roberts says. “We ended up with 13,000 people in the building.”

According to Luminate’s 2025 Year-End Report, the global music industry earned 5.1 trillion on-demand audio song streams, rising 9.6% from 2024. The Christian music genre outpaced the industry’s general growth, rising 18.5% in on-demand global audio song streams in 2025 compared with 2024.

Several Christian artists have found themselves in the middle of the genre’s commercial swell.

In May 2025, two Christian music songs appeared on the Hot 100 simultaneously for the first time in 11 years: Forrest Frank’s “Your Way’s Better” and Brandon Lake’s “Hard Fought Hallelujah.” After first releasing a solo version of “Hard Fought Hallelujah,” Lake teamed with country artist Jelly Roll for a collaborative version, vaulting the song into the Hot 100’s top 40. Christian artist Josiah Queen, who is booked by the Jeff Roberts Agency, also made his Hot 100 debut in 2025 with “Dusty Bibles,” as did Phil Wickham with “What an Awesome God.”

Forrest Frank released his Child of God II project in May 2025, reaching No. 1 on Top Christian Albums and No. 12 on the Billboard 200. In June, Lake released King of Hearts, which peaked at No. 7 on the Billboard 200 and No. 1 on Top Christian Albums. Lake followed “Hard Fought Hallelujah” with such songs as “Sevens” and a featured performance on Queen’s three-week Christian Airplay No. 1, “Can’t Steal My Joy.”

UTA, which launched its Christian music division in 2024 and represents artists including Forrest Frank, Lake, Wickham, Lecrae, Elevation Worship, Elevation Rhythm and bodie, has seen that uptick in consumption translate to wins on the road.

According to UTA, average attendance for Forrest Frank’s shows nearly tripled from 2024 to 2025, rising from 2,840 to 8,320, as part of his Child of God Tour Part 2 arena trek, which included sold-out shows in Nashville; Anaheim, Calif.; and Tulsa, Okla.

UTA also reports that Lake’s 2024 tour dates brought an average of 8,199 attendees per show, while his 2025-26 King of Hearts tour has drawn an average of 11,436 to date. Lake and Wickham’s co-headlining Summer Worship Nights run drew 10,325 average attendance per show in 2024 and rose to an average of 16,823 in 2025.

“Ever since I got back into [venues] after 2020, it felt like there was something that broke open, that has not changed, just a hunger in the church for the presence of God, a longing for real connection with each other in God,” Wickham says. “It doesn’t feel like I’m preaching that from the stage, hoping people will respond. It feels like people are preaching it back to me with their faith in the room. I’m joining a wave of what’s happening and it’s so beautiful.”

For UTA agent Nick Barnes, who leads the agency’s Heartland initiative (a group focused on shared values of community, faith and family), a few other moments that signaled the genre’s influence on mainstream culture happened backstage at the Bridgestone Arena shows on Frank’s Child of God Tour Part 2 and the Lake-Wickham trek.

“I noticed the amount of crossover musicians, celebrities, actors, artists that were backstage, wanting to hang in the culture,” Barnes says. “When you see that, you know the tide is turning.”

WME partner of Christian music Mark Claassen says, “A big part of this is the breaking down of genre walls, especially with Gen Z. Their playlists consist of Christian and worship songs mixed right in with country, hip-hop, pop, alternative and more. It’s just not separated or segmented the way it was in the ’90s and 2000s.”

Genre mainstay artists such as Chris Tomlin and tobyMac, who are booked by Platform Artists, have long headlined at storied venues such as Kia Forum in Los Angeles and Colorado’s Red Rocks Amphitheatre. But Claassen notes that historically, younger and newer Christian artists were limited to headlining church venues or Christian colleges. That has changed, as agencies have increasingly worked with not only established Christian music promoters such as Awakening Events and TPR but also Live Nation and AEG. Elevation Rhythm’s Goodbye Yesterday tour included stops at New York City’s Irving Plaza and Nashville’s Cannery Hall. Queen’s Mt. Zion Tour includes stops at Phoenix’s Arizona Financial Theatre and Boston’s Citizens House of Blues.

“We are in a season where all concert promoters are seeing the value and ticket sales and want to work with these artists, all the way down to local independent clubs and theaters,” Claassen says.

After his Child of God Tour Part 2 ended in May, Forrest Frank continued releasing a deluge of songs that reached the top 10 on Billboard’s Hot Christian Songs chart, including “Nothing Else” (featuring Thomas Rhett), “God’s Got My Back” and “Lemonade” (with The Figs).

All those hits primed the recent on-sale for his 29-city The Jesus Generation Tour presented by TPR, which launches in June. Forrest Frank will play a mix of arenas and outdoor stadiums, including Nashville’s GEODIS Park (23,000 capacity), Pennsylvania’s Hersheypark Stadium (30,000) and Arlington, Texas’ Globe Life Field (35,000) while arena stops will feature in-the-round seating. Roberts estimates that over 500,000 tickets have already been sold for the tour.

Awakening Events founder and CEO Dan Fife has also witnessed the growth in the genre. Among the promoter’s current tours are tobyMac’s Hits Deep Tour, Seph Schlueter’s Counting My Blessings trek and Chris Tomlin’s annual Good Friday Nashville event (which, in 2024, set the record for the largest ticketed Christian concert at Bridgestone Arena with 15,889 attendees). According to Awakening, last year it promoted 355 shows, selling over 820,000 tickets, with 2026 projections to be over 400 shows.

“This has been my primary genre for the past 25 years and it’s been fun to see the growth,” Fife says. “It’s a genre where radio is still as important as streaming. Between the [digital service providers] and some of the great radio networks out there, that’s a one plus one equals three situation.”

WME launched its Christian division, WME CMG, more than 10 years ago and has seen its touring income nearly double since 2018, largely due to more arena tours from clients including Lauren Daigle, Kirk Franklin, worship collective Maverick City Music, MercyMe and Crowder. (Former Maverick City Music members Chandler Moore and Naomi Raine are now signed as solo artists with WME.)

From 2023 to 2025, WME CMG continued having steady growth, from booking 800 shows with 3.3 million in attendance in 2023 to booking over 900 shows in 2025 with over 4 million attendees.

WME’s Claassen points to the opening weekend of Daigle’s 2020 global tour — which was cut short by the COVID-19 pandemic — as a turning point. “At that time, no artist coming directly out of the Christian music space had reached that level of ticket counts or grosses,” Claassen says. “We were selling out arenas at on-sale. That tour was doing comparable business to artists like Carrie Underwood and the Jonas Brothers, which made it clear this wasn’t niche growth anymore. It was mainstream-level demand.”

According to WME, gospel music artist Kirk Franklin and Maverick City Music’s 50-city Kingdom Tour in 2022 marked a major milestone by grossing over $1 million for individual shows.

“Combining the biggest gospel act of all time with the hottest [contemporary Christian music] and worship act at that moment hit at exactly the right time. It felt like a true crossover of worlds, where everyone in the room felt welcome, and it became a never-been-done-before kind of show,” says Mike Snider, partner, Christian music at WME.

Like their Gen Z and Gen Alpha fans, today’s rising and established artists are social media-savvy, harnessing TikTok, Instagram and other platforms to promote their music, with more faith-based songs finding homes on secular playlists.

Over the past several years, artists ranging from Ye to Florida Georgia Line and Carrie Underwood have released faith-inspired music or albums. Barnes predicts the next several months will have more mainstream artists entering the contemporary Christian music space: “They’re inviting people into the CCM world [to be] themselves, and that’s working.”

Christian artists have also increasingly made appearances at mainstream festivals in recent years, with NF and Daigle playing Lollapalooza, Lake performing at CMA Fest, Anne Wilson performing at Stagecoach and Franklin appearing at All Points East. Forrest Frank will perform at RodeoHouston this year, and Christian artists Caleb Gordon, 1KPhew, whatuprg, Anike, Nathan Davis Jr. and JAN will play hip-hop sets that will open the final day of this year’s Rolling Loud festival.

“We’ve got these artists on our roster that are completely unashamed about who they are and are running headfirst toward it,” Barnes says. “That’s what’s drawing the Gen Z and Gen Alpha kids toward this music, and these kids are looking for something to believe in.” 

Top Christian Artists

1. Forrest Frank
2. Brandon Lake
3. Elevation Worship
4. Josiah Queen
5. Phil Wickham
6. CeCe Winans
7. Lauren Daigle
8. Anne Wilson
9. Ye
10. Leanna Crawford

Top Christian Artists ranks the best-performing acts of the chart year based on activity on the Top Christian Albums and Hot Christian Songs lists, as well as Billboard Boxscore. The 2025 tracking period ran from Oct. 26, 2024, to Oct. 18, 2025.

It was the news that Swifties had long waited for: “Opalite,” the fan-favorite second single from Taylor Swift’s blockbuster The Life of a Showgirl album, was getting a music video. 

The official visual for the breezy pop-rock hit was released to Apple Music and Spotify on Friday morning (Feb. 6), with the YouTube premiere to follow on Sunday. The video co-stars Domnhall Gleeson, who’d joked during a recent co-appearance with Swift on The Graham Norton Show about being in her new video. (Norton also makes a cameo, as do Greta Lee, Jodie Turner-Smith, Lewis Capaldi and Cillian Murphy, who were all also on the episode with Swift and Gleeson.) 

In addition to the video premiere, the song is now out on on 7-inch vinyl for the first time — with the “Life Is a Song Acoustic Version” of “Opalite” on the single’s B-side — and will be available for purchase for just 48 hours. The 7-inch is currently up for pre-order on her website, and is listed as being ready to ship “on or about February 9,” or this coming Monday. (The acoustic version is also available for streaming on DSPs.) 

The lining up of the video’s premiere with the 7-inch’s release in the same tracking week (Feb. 6-12) will undoubtedly lead Swifties and other chartwatchers to be paying close attention to the next week’s Billboard Hot 100 (dated Feb. 21), where we will see if the corresponding bumps in streams and sales can lead the song to capture the No. 1 spot for the first time. “Opalite” previously bowed at its No. 2 Hot 100 best during Showgirl’s debut week on the chart, and has spent most of its chart run since hanging around the top 10 — ranking at No. 10 this week. 

Swift’s decision to premiere the video first on Spotify and Apple Music follows YouTube’s December announcement that it was withdrawing its streaming data from all of Billboard‘s charts. YouTube’s withdrawal followed Billboard‘s Dec. 16 announcement of a change to chart methodology that will continue to weigh subscription streams more favorably than ad-supported streams, in a bid to better reflect changing consumer behaviors and the increased revenue derived from streaming in the industry. (The change means that paid/subscription streams will be weighted against ad-supported streams at a 1:2.5 ratio, narrowed from the previous 1:3 ratio.)

Swift and her fans would no doubt love to see “Opalite” top the chart, giving Showgirl its second No. 1 hit on the Hot 100, following lead single “The Fate of Ophelia” reigning for a career-best 10 total weeks between late 2025 and early 2026. Swift has racked up a stunning 13 No. 1 hits on the chart since she first led in 2012 — leading Drake, by one, for the most among all artists over that timespan — but, in the past decade (since reputation in 2017), they’ve all come from different albums. Her last LP to generate multiple No. 1 hits was her epochal 2014 blockbuster 1989, which spun off three: “Shake It Off,” “Blank Space” and “Bad Blood” (with Kendrick Lamar). 

But the competition on the Feb. 21 chart is already set to be stiff. Previous No. 1-bowing 2026 hits from Bruno Mars (“I Just Might”) and Harry Styles (“Aperture”) have receded in weekly sales and streams from their debut weeks, but are beginning to make up for it with steady radio growth (and, for Mars, a big look on Grammy night last Sunday). Ella Langley’s “Choosin’ Texas” also remains mighty on streaming and country radio — with pop radio starting to come around, as well — and Olivia Dean’s “Man I Need” remains a cross-platform smash, with Dean’s entire catalog seeing major gains following her own huge Grammys night. (The Langley and Dean hits are expected to be the primary contenders for No. 1 on next week’s Hot 100, dated Feb. 14.)

This Friday also brings with it the re-entry of a major chart force in rap superstar J. Cole. While Cole is not as familiar with the top of the Hot 100 as Swift, Mars or Styles — he’s only made it once, as a featured artist on Drake’s “First Person Shooter,” having topped out at No. 2 as a lead artist (“my.life” with 21 Savage and Morray in 2021). But he has still been an impactful presence on the Hot 100 for many years — with 13 total top 10 hits since 2016 — and new set The Fall-Off has the advantage of not only coming after years of anticipation, but being billed as Cole’s final album. 

But perhaps the biggest challenger to Taylor Swift immediately scoring her second Showgirl No. 1 is Bad Bunny. The global superstar is experiencing the biggest gains of anyone from Grammy night, thanks to multiple memorable moments on stage and in the audience, and a trio of wins, including album of the year for his Billboard 200-topping 2025 set Debí Tirar Más Fotos. Bad Bunny’s whole catalog has risen as a result, with Fotos’ total streams tripling on the Monday after the Grammys (Feb. 2). 

The biggest beneficiary of all Bad Bunny songs has been “DtMF,” which has since claimed the top spot on both Spotify’s and Apple Music’s daily charts. The track has averaged more than 3 million official on-demand U.S. streams a day since the Grammys, compared to “Opalite” being in the daily low 1-million range. “DtMF” could return to the Hot 100 in the top 20 or even the top 10 on next week’s chart (dated Feb. 14) — possibly higher than “Opalite,” despite the Grammy bump only impacting the final four full days of its tracking week. 

And it might not even be the biggest streaming bump that “DtMF” gets this month. Even with his big night at the Grammys, Bad Bunny didn’t perform any of his songs — outside of humoring Trevor Noah with a couple bars of “DtMF” during the host’s own rendition of the song — because he was waiting to take the biggest stage of them all: Super Bowl halftime, which he’ll be headlining for the first time this Sunday (Feb. 8). 

Last year, Kendrick Lamar showed the power of what can happen when one of the hottest contemporary performers in music performs at Super Bowl halftime, particularly when they’re coming off a huge Grammys night, as Lamar also was when he went 5-for-5 with “Not Like Us” in 2025. The week after the rap superstar’s Super Bowl performance, he charted 13 songs on the Hot 100, including a stunning four of the top chart’s five — with “Not Like Us,” the most buzzed-about song from his performance, returning to the top of the chart. (“Luther” with SZA, which ranked behind it at No. 2, would claim the top spot the next week and rule for 13 weeks.)

Bad Bunny could certainly be in line for a similar chart-swarming week on the Hot 100 following his own Grammys-Super Bowl back-to-back. And if he performs “DtMF” during his Super Bowl set — which, as the Grammy-nominated quasi-title track to and biggest global hit from his most recent album, seems highly probable — it could pour significantly more gasoline on the song’s already-raging fire, potentially setting it on a path to contend for the No. 1 the next week.  

“Opalite” will certainly have a major radio advantage over any Bad Bunny competitor on the chart, as the song currently ranks in the top 10 on Radio Songs, while nothing from Fotos is nowhere to be found in the 50-song chart. But it will likely ultimately come down to how much the “Opalite” video can help compensate for the likely streaming gap between the two songs, and then if Swift ships enough of those vinyl 7-inches to make for a significant sales margin, as well. 

Regardless, for anyone unsatisfied with the Super Bowl matchup this year, they’ll also have a likely showdown between the Billboard staff’s picks for the two Greatest Pop Stars of 2025 to look forward to.