The Weeknd, “Blinding Lights” Courtesy Photo
The Weeknd is now the first artist to rack up 4 billion streams for a single song on Spotify, with “Blinding Lights” hitting the milestone this week.
“I’ll never stop being humbled by anything I create making its way to millions of people let alone billions!” The Weeknd (real name Abel Tesfaye) says in an exclusive statement. “I’m so thankful this song makes people feel a way that they keep going back to listen.”
“Blinding Lights” was released in November 2019 as the second single from The Weeknd’s fourth studio album, After Hours. It spent four weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was the first song to remain in the chart’s top 10 for an entire year. In November 2021, “Blinding Lights” dethroned Chubby Checker’s “The Twist” as the No. 1 Hot 100 hit of all time, topping Billboard’s Greatest of All Time Hot 100 chart.
Streaming played a big role in the unprecedented success of the song, which surpassed Ed Sheeran’s “Shape of You” in December 2022 to become the most-streamed song on Spotify.
“The Weeknd continues to reach new heights year after year on Spotify,” Jeremy Erlich, Spotify’s global head of music, tells Billboard. “This is one of many records he has broken with us. As our platform continues to grow globally, his music reaches more and more people, and his fandom deepens. The success of ‘Blinding Lights’ is a prime example that nothing connects people more than music. It’s an exceptional song in a class of its own.”
The Weeknd is currently the No. 1 artist on Spotify, with 113 million monthly listeners, and back in February 2023, he was the first artist to hit 100 million monthly listeners on the platform.
In a 2021 Billboard cover story celebrating “Blinding Lights” becoming the No. 1 Hot 100 hit of all time, Tesfaye was thankful that the monumental song — co-written and co-produced with legendary pop hitmaker Max Martin — didn’t come earlier in his career.
“By the time ‘Blinding Lights’ happened, I was 10 years into my career and established as a music figure in the industry already,” he said. “So I’m glad ‘Blinding Lights’ happened when it happened as opposed to it being the first single I’ve ever dropped. That’d be scary for me.”
