Guinness World Records gathered streaming data from the world’s biggest stars, and the Blinding Lights hitmaker came out on top
THE Weeknd, a Canadian singer-songwriter, has been named the world’s most popular musician by Guinness World Records. This comes after he set two new Guinness World Records by becoming the first artist to exceed 100 million monthly Spotify streams.
He was also recognised as the artist with the most monthly listeners on the platform, with 111.4 million listeners (as of March 20), according to a report on the official website of Guinness World Records.
The Weeknd, whose actual name is Abel Tesfaye, presently has 30 million more monthly listeners than Miley Cyrus, who has 82.4 million monthly listeners, followed by Shakira (81.6 million) and Ariana Grande (81.6 million) (80.6 million).
Blinding Lights, from his fourth album After Hours, is also the most listened-to song on Spotify, with over 3.4 billion streams as of February 2023.
Another reason contributing to The Weeknd’s spike in listeners, according to the report, is the release of his Die for You remix starring Ariana Grande earlier this year, which has created waves on TikTok.
The song has also reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100, making it The Weeknd’s eighth number one single. Apart from the iconic Michael Jackson, he is the only solo male artist to achieve several number one hits on the Billboard Hot 100 from various albums.
This is not The Weeknd’s first time being acknowledged by the Guinness World Records as he broke two records previously in 2016. The first was for the most streamed album on Spotify in 2015 and the other record was for the most consecutive weeks in the Top 10 Billboard’s Hot 100 by a solo male artist.
– The Vibes, March
