It looks like Jennifer Lawrence is about to have her first true hit, as her “Hanging Tree” song from “Hunger Games” is already on the way to the top 40 of Billboard’s Hot 100 Singles. The actress has been enjoying strong success both with her fans as well as commercially, and industry experts have been analyzing the potential ongoing success of the song, predicting great things for the coming weeks.
According to some prognoses, the song could easily score 150,000 downloads in just the US alone by the end of November, and it will likely continue to see regular downloads after that as well, at least throughout December. On December 3, Billboard are going to reveal their latest top 10 list – and while there aren’t any serious expectations that Jennifer Lawrence’s song is going to be featured there, a lot of people in the industry are looking forward to seeing it in at least the top 40.
It’s interesting to note that Lawrence was originally not very excited about having to sing, and she actually admitted that on the day when the crew was shooting that part, she ended up crying from the pressure. According to her, singing in public has been a major problem for her for quite a while, and this was a major experience in her life which she found difficult to overcome.
And yet, in the end, the performance was met with nothing but positivity from fans of the show, who were quick to discuss it in detail immediately following the airing of the episode. Critics were quite impressed with Lawrence’s singing skills as well, some even going as far as to comment that the actress could consider a more serious entry into the music industry in the future. On the other hand, Lawrence herself seemed anything but excited about that prospect, so it’s not likely that her fans will get to see her giving any more singing performances anytime soon.
This isn’t the first time that a song from a film – or TV series – has entered the major charts, but despite the good performance that Lawrence gave in the episode, not many people were expecting the song to become this big. Its popularity has reached a point where even people who don’t follow the series have been drawn into the hype, and rock fans in general seem to be quite fond of the performance. It would be refreshing to see something similar in the second part of “Mockingjay”, which is scheduled for release in 2015, although it’s not yet known if this is going to happen. As said above, even if it does, it’s not certain that it will feature Jennifer Lawrence again.