The Weeknd is competing with himself on the charts at this point as his megahit, “Blinding Lights,” has broken another Spotify streaming record.
According to a press release on Friday (January 12), the 2020 Max Martin-produced After Hours single became the first song to eclipse four billion streams on Spotify.
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“I’ll never stop being humbled by anything I create making its way to millions of people let alone billions!,” The Weeknd wrote in a statement. “I’m so thankful this song makes people feel a way that they keep going back to listen.”
This latest Spotify accolade wasn’t it for Abel. The Canadian superstar broke his own record for monthly listeners on the platform, which has now ballooned to over 113 million fans.
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“He is the real new king of pop, the only one that could top MJ,” a fan wrote under Spotify’s Instagram post celebrating The Weeknd’s latest accomplishment.
Watch the music video and find Spotify’s official announcement below.
Behind “Blinding Lights,” other songs with a chance to reach four billion streams include Ed Sheeran’s “Shape of You,” Lewis Capaldi’s “Someone You Loved,” Post Malone and Swae Lee’s “Sunflower” and Harry Styles’ “As It Was.”
The Weeknd made more moves on the Spotify charts to close out 2023 when “Starboy” surpassed Drake’s “One Dance” on the all-time chart.
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Per Pop Crave, “Starboy” slid into sixth place on the list of the most-streamed songs on Spotify ever, with over 2.9 billion streams to push Drake’s bop one spot lower.
Drake and The Weeknd were also back-to-back when Spotify revealed its top streaming artists for 2023 last month with Abel taking the No. 3 spot — despite not having dropped an album in 2023.
However, Abel sparked album excitement earlier this month when he posted the cover art for his last two albums, 2020’s After Hours and 2022’s Dawn FM, followed by a question mark teasing a third and final installment in the trilogy. He also shared a “3” emoji in the post.
The Weeknd also retweeted a post from a fan account that read: “pain, regret, rebirth” with three different silhouettes of the singer, the most recent showing him as a child against a purple backdrop.
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The singer previously hinted at After Hours and Dawn FM being part of a trilogy in 2022.
“I wonder… did you know you’re experiencing a new trilogy,” he wrote on X at the time shortly after the release of the latter.
