The Weeknd breaks two Guinness Records, becomes world's most popular artiste, Latest Music News - The New Paper
Music

The Weeknd breaks two Guinness Records, becomes world's most popular artiste

LOS ANGELES – Canadian singer The Weeknd has broken two Guinness World Records and has been crowned the most popular artiste in the world.

In a press statement on Monday, the organisation announced that the 33-year-old is not only the first artiste to hit 100 million monthly listeners on Spotify, but he also set the record for the most monthly listeners – 111.4 million – on the music streaming platform.

The Weeknd – whose real name is Abel Tesfaye – has almost 30 million more monthly listeners than Miley Cyrus, who is in second place with 82.4 million.

Others on the list include Shakira (81.6 million), Ariana Grande (80.6 million), Taylor Swift (80.2 million), Rihanna (78.5 million) and Ed Sheeran (77.5 million).

The surge in streaming figures comes on the back of the remix of his 2016 song Die For You, featuring Grande.

The track, released in February, went viral on TikTok and shot to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart on March 11. It became the seventh chart-topper for both singers.

Grande had teased the song with a TikTok video of herself in the studio, writing that she “wrote and recorded a verse for my friend after a 14-hour day on set. This certain exception had to be made”, referring to The Weeknd.

The most-streamed track on Spotify remains Blinding Lights from his fourth album, After Hours (2020), with over 3.4 billion streams as of February.

He holds two other Guinness World Records titles, awarded in 2016: one for the most-streamed album (Beauty Behind The Madness) on Spotify in 2015 and another for the most consecutive weeks in the Top 10 of Billboard’s Hot 100 by a solo male artiste.

the weekndGuinness World Records