Every week, my robots scour the biggest nine New Music Friday playlists in the world to see whose getting backed hard by the big green machine. This week:
🏆 The Champ: Ellie Goulding
Ellie Goulding’s “Like A Saviour” was a unanimous choice for the top nine New Music Friday lists this week, with her 32m followers making her the biggest act to achieve the full sweep as she blows the starting whistle ahead of her new album.
🚀 The Challenger: Caroline Polachek
Caroline Polachek’s “Blood And Butter” also made it onto all of the big nine, the second time in a row she’s managed it (the last time was in November with “Welcome To My Island”). Once again, Polachek makes it onto more of the big NMF lists than some notably more established artists – not only is this artist being backed, the tracks are likely delivering strong numbers to persuade both the algorithm and the editors to give up that much playlist real estate.
🥊 Punching Above: Nia Archives
Nia Archives’ “Conveniency” made it onto six of the big nine this week, one of only three artists with less than a six-figure following to do so, and the only one with less than 70k followers. Something’s clearly brewing here, and this level of support promises more strong moves from this exciting UK artist.
🧛♂️ New Blood: Drew Sycamore
Drew Sycamore – whose bio contains the immortal line, “like Barrymore, but sick!” – released “In The Club” this week, and promptly made it onto five of the nine biggest NMFs, the only artist with less than 20k followers to do so. Plenty more established artists would have been delighted with that result, so it’s totally notable that this artist made it there ahead of them.
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📸 Drew Sycamore: no photo credit found