Here’s what happened
Prizefighter arrived in February 2026 and carries four guest features - Hozier, Chris Stapleton, Gigi Perez, and Gracie Abrams on Badlands.
Three of those became singles. Badlands
did not, and sitting at track eleven as a stripped-back piano ballad with no video, we were brought in as a challenge to help work it.
An album cut competing against the label’s own prioritised singles, with TikTok as the only lever.
The reading
The approach: three niches, three entry points
Rather than build content around the artists, we built it around the contexts where the song could live. Each format targeted a different established TikTok niche.
Landscape and outdoor footage cut to the record. Folk audiences have a strong existing visual grammar on TikTok and this content sits natively inside it.
Fan edit communities are among the highest-volume content producers on the platform, and they select sounds by emotional fit rather than by artist. A yearning piano ballad is exactly the material those communities need. This lane reached people who would never encounter a Mumford & Sons release through music channels.
Built around the chorus, using the song as an emotional bed rather than as a music post.
FIG. 01
Across the three niches, as posted
And the results?
Badlands
finished as one of the highest-streaming tracks on Prizefighter, ahead of records that received full single campaigns.
The track has passed 25 million streams, delivered at a $1.72 CPM.