Welcome to Sleeper Hit Support Group, a column diving into the song currently occupying the bottom spot of the Billboard Hot 100.

In a pop landscape that asks more questions that it answers, I'm setting out to answer three questions about each of these songs: how it got here, if the song is good, and where it's going. In this 100th spot we'll find unlikely ascents, falls from grace, and resurgences of hits from bygone eras.

Today, we're taking a look at "Sweet Boy" by pop newcomer Malcolm Todd.

How did it get here?

Unlike many of the artists covered in this column, LA native Malcolm Todd does not have a long, elaborate backstory – at least not yet. Sometimes it's fun to learn about someone new.

Todd (born Malcolm Hobert) is exactly one month older than me. If he were a normal kid, he'd also be a few weeks out from graduating college. Todd intended on going to The University of Oregon to study music production, but convinced his parents to let him take a gap year to pursue music while scooping ice cream at Cold Stone on the side. Now, he has two songs sitting on the Hot 100.

Todd's family is no stranger to the entertainment industry. His father Tim was a TV screenwriter best known for his work on the long-running ABC sitcom The Middle. His older sister, Audrey, is an ascendant pop star in her own right. After finding success writing Gracie Abrams' two biggest hits "I Love You I'm Sorry" and "That's So True," her 2025 debut record Who's The Clown? has garnered her a cult following, and she is rapidly finding herself playing bigger stages.

My proximity in age to Todd allows for an innate understanding of the kind of dude he is (or at least appears to be). Like many others in our age cohort, Todd starting self producing his own music in high school during COVID lockdowns. His first EP, Demos Before Prom, includes those songs. It's very clear Todd took influence from the bedroom pop/alternative R&B boom of the late 2010s: your Rex Orange Countys, your boy pablos, Flower Boy.

The influence Todd wears directly on his sleeve, though, is Steve Lacy. He'd market those early songs on TikTok by claiming they were unreleased Steve Lacy tracks (just as Lacy himself was finding mainstream success with "Dark Red" and "Bad Habit"). Eventually, he'd stop lying.

Todd's first big break came when his single "Art House" went viral on TikTok in 2023, which resulted in him inking a record deal with Columbia soon afterwards.

The following year saw the release of Sweet Boy, the mixtape that would serve as Todd's Columbia debut. While the song we're examining today is the title track from that mixtape, it's only making its Hot 100 debut now. Todd wouldn't achieve his first entry on the chart until the rollout of Sweet Boy's follow-up, his eponymous debut record.

The real breakthrough hit for Todd was "Chest Pain (I Love)," a song with a chorus lab-made for TikTok – whether or not it was intended as such. The chorus repeats "I Love" over and over, so the possibilities for short form video content are truly endless: a video compilation of your partner, a video of your pet, a video of a product you can buy on TikTok shop, even. It's the same reason Mitski's "My Love Mine All Mine" got so popular on the platform: the lyrics are as straightforward in their communication of emotion as possible. The track peaked at #68 and has been used in more than 2 million TikToks.

That self-titled debut record came out in April of 2025, which included a collaboration with Omar Apollo after Todd had opened for him on tour, but that record has already taken a backseat. Both of the songs he has sitting on the Hot 100 right now are from Sweet Boy. Why? Effective clipping campaigns.

We'll get to clipping campaigns in a second, but first...

Is the song any good?

It's fine. I'm kind of over this kind of bedroom-y alternative R&B because of how omnipresent it was during that initial boom in the late 2010s. It reminds me of being 15 and I don't necessarily want to be reminded of being 15. Todd has a nice voice and I like the little guitar solo at the end, and that's kind of where my feelings start and end. They are at best innocuous and at worst a little douchey. Ultimately, this kind of song has been made a million times over, and I'm just not finding anything particularly special about "Sweet Boy."

Where is it going?

The narrative/personality being formed around Malcolm Todd feels very back-to-basics. He wants his bare chest to grace a poster on your wall; he wants to be your "white boy of the month." Before it was changed to some magic 8 ball gimmick to promote a single, his website's homepage displayed a teen girl's bedroom with Malcolm Todd heartthrob paraphernalia interspersed throughout. If anything, Columbia is doing a pretty solid job with crafting a brand around Todd's sheepish charm. "Wholesome Rockstar" is the terminology they seem to be using, and it seems to be working pretty well for him.

Todd's social media presence is – as he admits himself – a balancing act. There is a level of calculation and intentionality in what he posts, but to say it's all for show would be a bit cynical. Take the following from Todd's interview with The Line of Best Fit's Laura David:

"Part of what Todd has mastered is stardom in the Internet era. His social media presence is perhaps almost as famous as his songs, mainly just for the fun of it. When I ask Todd if there’s any strategy behind it, I’m surprised to hear that he was almost reluctant to dive in at first. 'It’s a slippery slope, man,' he says of the apps. TikTok, he says, was a strange pill to swallow at first. It’s a weird thing having to balance being a musician with being a content creator. But if you know the world you want to build, as Todd does, it’s relatively easy to translate that into whatever format you have to. Posting often and early, he said, would give him the freedom to be more tasteful and take his time with the records if he played his cards right. 'If [a song] becomes a ten-second clip and it’s that ten-second clip over and over again for TikTok, like, sure, it’s a bit tacky. But at the end of the day, if you go to the song and listen to it, I’m so proud to show you that song. So if that ten-second clip that might get annoying to people got you there, then I’m glad that it happened,' he says. 'And, I love being on my stories and just fucking around. I love making funny jokes and I appreciate the art of instagram. It can be very genius to me,' he says with a smile."

The clipping campaigns being run for both "Sweet Boy" and "Earrings" from the same mixtape are a bit difficult to pin down, but it's very evident that they are happening via some combination of in-house work at Columbia and freelancers.

For those unfamiliar with clipping, the practice was the center of a barrage of discourse in recent weeks that (for whatever reason) coagulated around the Brooklyn indie rock band Geese. It's a digital marketing tactic that requires mass posting to social media to meet consumers where they're at and getting songs heard by as many people as possible. If you want a more extensive explainer, I'd recommend this video by YouTuber MicTheSnare and/or the Billboard podcast interview with the founders of the digital marketing agency Chaotic Good that they probably regret agreeing to.

"Sweet Boy" currently has over 1 million TikToks using the sound. There are three clipping tactics I can see at play here. This can also serve as a guide to identify clipping campaigns if you suspect a song is undergoing one.

1. TV show/movie edits/fancams

TV fancams are a highly valued arm of clipping campaigns, as they're the hardest to parse the authenticity of. There's a lot of them here, and they all seem to have been posted around January and February of this year.

2. "Yellow font" videos

These kinds of videos are often made by freelancers and the artists themselves, with some kind of quote or message placed in front of a video of someone's face or a slideshow of images. While the font isn't always yellow, that's the catch-all terminology for these types of videos. They're meant to serve as fodder to share with loved ones based on whatever the text says. The emphasis on sharability will both get the song out to more people and boost the video in TikTok's algorithm.

This creator is likely paid for these videos. The tell here is the email in bio and that all of his output are "yellow font" clips like the one above.

3. "We should lowk build legos together" trend

This trend seemed to be created with similar strategy to the yellow font videos. The prospect of a cozy Lego-building date coincides with the lyrics soundtracking it: "Can we go home now? / It's getting later, baby." If you really want to get tin-foil-hat with it, perhaps Lego has some sort of stake in this too, but I have no way of proving that.

Will Malcolm Todd have a long, fruitful career? Maybe. I think he needs to make more interesting music first. The "wow this song sounds just like [insert popular artist]" can only take you so far.

He has potential, but until Todd can prove that he has more in the tank beyond what pops off on TikTok, I'm not convinced.