It’s official! The Weeknd is the most popular musician on the planet, according to the Guinness Book of World Records.
The 33-year-old Canadian, Abel Tesfaye, set two new records: he is the first artist to reach 100 million monthly Spotify listeners and has the most monthly listeners on the platform, with 111.4 million. Furthermore, this is only part of it.
The Weeknd’s “Blinding Lights” is the most streamed song 9(of all time) on Spotify, with over 3.47 billion plays as of Monday. Despite being overlooked by the Grammys, Blinding Lights spent 90 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, making it the longest-charting song of all time. Nobody comes close to The Weeknd’s outstanding streaming performance.
Shakira has 81.6 million listeners, followed by Ariana Grande (80.6 million), Taylor Swift (80.2 million), and Rihanna (78.5 million). With 77.5 million monthly listeners, Ed Sheeran is the closest male competitor to the Toronto native. The Weeknd’s two new world records stem from the massive success of his most recent single, a remix of Die For You featuring Ariana Grande. The Weeknd and Grande’s sixth number-one single, the song peaked at number one on the Billboard Hot 100.
The rapper first included “Die For You” on his 2016 album Starboy. It is Grande and The Weeknd’s fourth collaboration, following Love Me Harder in 2014, Off the Table in 2020, and the “Save Your Tears” remix in 2021. Following 2015’s Beauty Behind the Madness and 2021’s After Hours, Starboy is The Weeknd’s third album with multiple number-one singles.
The Weeknd is in good company, as Michael Jackson is the only solo male artist with multiple number-one hits from three albums. The rapper also holds several Guinness World Records. In 2016, he won awards for Most Streamed Album of 2015 and Most Weeks Spent in the Billboard Hot 100 Top 10 by a Male Solo Artist.
The announcement came after The Weeknd reached an agreement with Suniel Fox and Henry Strange, two musicians who sued The Weeknd in 2021 for allegedly stealing one of their works with his 2018 single “Call Out My Name.”
According to the BBC, Fox and Strange’s attorneys filed a motion to dismiss the case in federal court in Los Angeles on Friday, claiming that the two musicians had reached an agreement with Tesfaye and his team and were “still in the process of formalizing, executing, and consummating” it.
When the case was filed, Fox and Strange, who perform as Epikker, claimed that the “lead guitar and vocal hooks” of Call Out My Name resembled their song Vibeking. Although Tesfaye denied the allegations, the duo claimed they had evidence that the singer had previously heard the song. In 2015, Fox and Strange allegedly sent Vibeking to one of Tesfaye’s collaborators, Eric White, who reportedly responded by saying Tesfaye thought the song was “fire.”
Fox and Strange claim that White later told them that Tesfaye had “listened and liked” Vibeking but hadn’t done anything with it; he then allegedly wrote them to say that he would tell Tesfaye that his crew, not Fox and Strange, had composed the track.
According to Fox and Strange, they were never given credit or permission to use original music elements. Tesfaye has denied that Call Out My Name violates Fox and Strange’s copyright, but he has never provided a detailed response to their allegations.