Along with bringing one of Adam Sandler’s most beloved characters back onto the fairway, Happy Gilmore 2, is brimming with musical co-stars (most prominently Bad Bunny, who makes a comic turn as Gilmore’s caddy) and cameos (including Eminem, Post Malone and Kid Cudi). That’s a whole lot of appearances from modern music stars — yet the actual music featured in Happy Gilmore 2 skews toward classic rock, with multiple songs receiving sizable streaming bumps since the film hit Netflix last Friday (July 25).
“Tuesday’s Gone,” the Lynyrd Skynyrd slow-down classic also featured in the ’90s original, has been one of the big winners due to its re-appearance in the sequel: the song earned 756,000 official U.S. on-demand streams during Happy Gilmore 2’s first four days of release (July 25-28), which represented a 44% increase compared to the same four-day period during the previous week (525,000 from July 18-21), according to Luminate. Foreigner’s “Juke Box Hero” (up 18%) and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ “The Waiting” (up 15%) posted smaller percentage gains with bigger totals, but The Replacements’ Tim highlight “Swingin’ Party” more than doubled its streams, from 15,000 from July 18-21 to 38,000 from July 25-28.
And while Bad Bunny does not perform any of his own music in Happy Gilmore 2, he does get an elaborate fantasy sequence involving Travis Kelce and a bear attack — arguably even better than a streaming boost. – JASON LIPSHUTZ
