Americans are singing Wanna Be, while cross-border sellers are counting their money.

"Trending audio can push your content to new audiences, boost engagement, and truly integrate brands into the current cultural context," writes social media analytics firm DashSocial.

In fact, on TikTok, some merchants selling "hot girl" style women's clothing have long discovered this phenomenon. For example, using the song "Wanna Be" as background music in videos results in better backend data than usual — not occasionally, but consistently, time and time again.

Research shows that videos using trending audio receive an average of 21% more exposure than other videos. If you jump on the trend when the audio is not yet massively popular, with only a few thousand uses, the reach multiplier can expand to 3-5 times.

This track is a collaborative single by American rappers GloRilla and Megan Thee Stallion, released in April 2024. Two months later, Cardi B joined a remixed version that climbed to No. 11 on the Billboard Hot 100, with total streams across all platforms exceeding 550 million plays.

If you are familiar with the logic of viral TikTok BGMs (background music), once a song becomes a ubiquitous trending audio, sales of related categories will surge accordingly — and "Wanna Be" plays exactly this role on social platforms including TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube.

For e-commerce sellers, the value of a song is measured by how much search traffic it drives, how many orders it generates, and how much GMV it unlocks. By this metric, "Wanna Be" has not stopped delivering results to this day.

01

Why This Song Specifically?

The fundamental reason "Wanna Be" continues to gain traction in e-commerce lies not in algorithms, but in emotion.

The lyrical theme is simple: being unapologetically yourself, no need for others' approval. This sentiment is not a new trend that emerged in a single year — it has long existed among female consumers, but most of the time, there was no sufficiently satisfying outlet for it.

GloRilla and Megan Thee Stallion articulated this feeling at the right moment, in the perfect way, delivering it directly and powerfully.

GloRilla was born in 1999 in the Frayser neighborhood of North Memphis, one of ten children in her family, and she was the eighth. Before her debut, she worked at a Checkers fast food restaurant. Her music carries a distinct Memphis street texture, anchored by deep drum machine beats, with a vocal delivery that feels like conversational chanting — a natural, unapologetic aura that needs no explanation or pandering.

Megan Thee Stallion went a step further, systematizing this sentiment into the "Hot Girl" culture: bodily autonomy, consumption freedom, and living unapologetically well.

This concept has long transcended her personal identity to become an independently circulating cultural symbol. Every one of her brand partnerships with Nike, Popeyes, and Coach represents the real-world implementation of this symbol.

With two powerhouse artists on the same track, the emotional intensity naturally doubles. What's more, the song's musical structure is inherently catchy: GloRilla's dense, powerful bassline is perfectly suited for repeated loops in 15 to 30-second short videos, getting stuck in listeners' heads after just one play.

A ResearchGate study on TikTok marketing strategies notes that the role of trending audio goes far beyond grabbing attention: "Users sometimes aren't watching the video content — they're waiting for that specific sound to play again."

Repeated listening behavior in turn signals algorithms to continue distributing the content, creating an unstoppable positive feedback loop. The logic of viral earworms that works on Douyin translates perfectly to TikTok, just with a different set of gameplay and audience.

Cardi B's addition to the remixed version at the end of May served as the second ignition point. During the New York stop of Megan's Hot Girl Summer tour, the three artists performed the track together on stage for the first time, and the live performance video spread rapidly. In the first week of the remixed version's release, US streams hit 19.7 million, a 51% increase from the previous week, downloads exploded by 6210%, and Airplay audience impressions rose 115%.

Achieving this level of growth nearly two months after the song's initial release is because the three artists each bring distinct audience circles, and the remixed version activated all of them simultaneously.

For sellers operating on algorithm-driven platforms, this extended the trend window significantly, giving them far more time to enter the market than with ordinary audio tracks.

02

How Emotion Translates to GMV

The first category where this emotion landed was wigs.

GloRilla is famously passionate about changing wigs, and her stylist @iamlashae has posted countless behind-the-scenes TikTok videos, ranging from 613 blonde lace updos to the custom wig printed directly with her album cover. Every post spawns a wave of makeup and styling replication content.

After "Wanna Be" went viral on the platform, massive users encountered content related to the track, and GloRilla's signature looks were seen by more and more people. The reaction from fans and casual viewers was straightforward: they searched for her exact hairstyle products on TikTok.

Search data confirms this trajectory. DC Fashion Week figures show that from June to October 2024, TikTok searches for "wig" rose 114.81%, "lace wigs" surged 620%, and "lace front wigs" exploded by 3600% — three terms that exactly correspond to GloRilla's most iconic styling styles. A song made an artist famous, and that artist made a product category famous.

It's not just wigs. Press-on nails, "hot girl" style dresses, and chunky western-style jewelry accessories — every product that aligns with the song's vibe is seeing growth.

The approach for TikTok sellers is simple: attach the song's audio to product videos, add the #WannaBeChallenge tag, and link directly to the product page below the video. The algorithm uses the audio to identify which interest circle the content belongs to, then pushes it to the corresponding audience, allowing consumers to place orders while scrolling.

A product curation consultant who has long served top US-region TikTok sellers told Brand Factory: "Creator behavior is the most accurate metric, far better than any ranking list. While 'Wanna Be' was blowing up, sellers of wigs, accessories, and hot girl dresses posted video after video with product links. That's when we knew this audio was genuinely driving sales, not just traffic."

On Instagram, data shows that Reels using trending audio see an average 42% higher engagement, and fashion is already the platform's most searched vertical category, accounting for 12% of all platform searches.

The audience for "Wanna Be" overlaps heavily with Instagram's core demographic of "hot girl" fashion content consumers. As the song went viral, Reels creators began mass-producing replicated looks, with tagged accessory and outfit videos repeatedly appearing on users' discovery pages.

YouTube's effect is slower to build but the most long-lasting. After the official "Wanna Be" MV was released, countless makeup tutorials and outfit challenge videos accumulated on the platform. These pieces have a far longer search lifecycle than TikTok short videos, so months-old content still appears when users search for "GloRilla hairstyles" or "hot girl outfit tutorials."

YouTube's 2025 Shopping Ecosystem Report notes that 61% of users aged 14 to 24 on the platform say YouTube helps them discover new brands and products they never knew about. For wig and accessory sellers, YouTube creator content acts as continuous, organic SEO — even after the song's hype fades, the content remains, searches continue, and sales keep coming in.

03

Pop Culture Activates Consumption

"Wanna Be" is not an isolated case — similar phenomena happen constantly. Looking back, Doja Cat's 2020 track "Say So" spawned over 20 million UGC videos after a 17-year-old TikToker created a viral dance to it, pushing the song to No.1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and spurring brand partnerships with fashion labels like PrettyLittleThing.

This logic has been repeatedly validated in recent years. After Sabrina Carpenter's "Espresso" was released, it surpassed 1 billion streams on Spotify (now over 3 billion) and generated nearly 500,000 related videos on TikTok. The music video has a retro aesthetic, and a vintage 1960s swimsuit from Norma Kamali that appeared briefly in the frame was rediscovered and purchased by consumers. Searches for "platform heels" rose 180%, and Victoria's Secret directly named Carpenter a key partner driving Gen Z engagement.

Charli XCX's "Brat" took a different path, relying not on MV visuals but on the jarring acid green color of its album cover. Collins Dictionary selected "brat" as its Word of the Year, and fashion search platform Lyst reported a 17% short-term surge in searches for neon green apparel. Sales of green clothing, Y2K-style hot pants, and Von Dutch-style trucker hats all rose, as every product matching that color palette and vibe saw gains. Launchmetrics calculated the total media impact value of the entire "Brat Summer" trend at $22.5 million.

Even in 2026, "Brat"'s influence persists: Cash App launched a physical themed Visa card, and the track is still used as background audio in TikTok's "Euro Summer" trend. The lifecycle of an aesthetic symbol can truly outlast the control of its creator.

2026's *The Devil Wears Prada 2* followed this same logic, swapping music for film as the medium. It grossed $233 million globally in its opening week, with a soundtrack featuring Lady Gaga, Doechii, and Dua Lipa that quickly became background audio for fashion content on TikTok and Instagram, while outfit tutorials related to the film accumulated rapidly on YouTube.

A Vanessa Bruno lace blouse sold out across South Korea in four weeks, prompting restocks with new colorways, and Rockstud heels made their way back into consumers' shopping carts after appearing for just a few seconds in the trailer. A prominent wide belt in the trailer led users to search for "statement belt."

An MCN director who has managed TikTok content for multiple Chinese cross-border brands told Brand Factory that their content planning logic has shifted from "finding influencers" to "finding emotions."

"When we take on a new brand, the first question is never 'what's your budget' — it's 'what emotion does your product align with?' If it doesn't fit any existing emotional trend, no amount of creator spend will deliver results. During the 'Wanna Be' wave, we worked with a nail art brand that nailed the 'I call the shots' vibe, and their content went viral organically with almost no ad spend."

Putting these cases together reveals a clear pattern: pop culture first activates a shared emotion, that emotion defines an aesthetic, and that aesthetic ultimately translates to tangible product purchases. Every viral item — hats, shoes, hairstyles, colors — can be traced back to a hit song or blockbuster film.

So the real question cross-border sellers need to answer is not "how long will this song stay popular," but "what underlying trend does it represent." GloRilla's hairstyles point to wigs, Charli XCX's acid green cover points to neon green apparel, and *The Devil Wears Prada 2*'s trailer points to sheer blouses and Rockstud accessories. None of these are hindsight insights — when content first starts to gain traction, data-savvy sellers can already read the signals.

The TikTok Creative Center updates regional trending audio rankings daily, and Instagram's Reels creation tool also features trending audio tracking. A fashion brand operations specialist says she checks these audio rankings every day.

"Target the early phase when usage numbers are just starting to climb, under 10,000 total uses. The algorithm hasn't fully saturated the audio yet, so that's when you can drive maximum impact. By the time the entire platform is using the song, joining the trend only benefits the early movers."

The sellers who have mastered this playbook are not necessarily the first people to hear the song — but they are definitely the first to watch that backend usage curve closely.

This article is from the WeChat official account "BrandsFactory", written by WANG Xiaohan, and republished with authorization from 36Kr.