Photo Courtesy of The Hollywood Reporter
Since the release of his previous two albums, “After Hours” and “Dawn FM,” The Weeknd has taken the Billboard charts by storm, shattered streaming records, earned his fourth diamond-certified song and rocked a record-breaking tour. His latest big accomplishment, you ask? Becoming the world’s number one most streamed artist on Spotify.
The Weeknd has overthrown Ed Sheeran’s long-held reign of the platform. Not only has The Weeknd claimed the number one spot, but he has also broken the record for the most monthly listeners ever achieved by any artist in Spotify history. At the time of this writing, the superstar is sitting on a whopping 97,135,513 monthly listeners worldwide, just under 20 million more than Ed Sheeran, and just below 18 million more than Taylor Swift, who briefly overruled Sheeran following the release of her smash hit record “Midnights” and who currently holds the number two spot behind the Weeknd.
So how did Spotify’s biggest star get to this point? Let’s take a look at some of the icon’s recent headline-grabbing achievements.
The Weeknd’s fourth studio album, “After Hours,” released in 2020 and debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200 with 444,000 album-equivalent units sold in the first week. It would go on to become the longest running number one album on the Billboard Top R&B Albums chart in history at 40 weeks. The album’s hit single, “Blinding Lights,” would become Spotify’s highest-streamed song ever (currently sitting at over 3.3 billion streams) and one of The Weeknd’s four current diamond-certified songs.
Although the world of music was flipped upside down by the pandemic, the fact that people turned to music streaming as one of the most effective ways to maintain their sanity in quarantine worked to The Weeknd’s advantage. TikTok is largely to thank for the artist’s pandemic success.
Following the album’s launch, there came a point in time where you simply could not escape songs like “Blinding Lights” or “Save Your Tears,” another record-breaking “After Hours” hit, while scrolling through the “For You” page. Despite the inability to tour at the time, the star headlined the 2021 Super Bowl Halftime Show, where he was able to give fans a live taste of the songs they’d been holding on to throughout quarantine.
Two years later, The Weeknd showed no plans of slowing down, releasing his fifth studio album, “Dawn FM.” The project charted 24 songs on the Billboard Global 200 chart, setting the record for most entries in a single week by a solo male performer.
With the touring industry nonexistent during the release of “After Hours,” The Weeknd decided to embark on a combined album tour which he named the “After Hours til Dawn Tour,” as the world began to slowly open up again.
The North American leg of the tour took place this past summer, where The Weeknd broke the record for the highest-grossing show by a Black artist with his So-Fi Stadium show in Los Angeles, raking in over $11 million.
The international leg of the tour is set to begin this upcoming summer. As for his most recent feats helping him to demand the Spotify crown, The Weeknd has reclaimed a top 10 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 with his 2016 single, “Die For You,” and has shared in the chart success of Metro Boomin’s newest hit, “Creepin’,” on which he is featured.
