Blinding Lights milestone
- The Weeknd’s "Blinding Lights" was celebrated as Spotify’s most-streamed song ever in recent social buzz. (x.com) - Social posts highlighted the song’s longevity and streaming dominance across global playlists. (x.com) - The milestone came alongside other streaming and anniversary chatter across music social feeds. (x.com)
Spotify said Thursday that The Weeknd’s “Blinding Lights” is the most-streamed song in the platform’s history. (newsroom.spotify.com) The ranking appeared in Spotify’s 20th-anniversary list of its all-time most-streamed artists, albums, songs, podcasts and audiobooks, based on global streams counted through April 2026. “Blinding Lights” led the songs list ahead of Ed Sheeran’s “Shape of You,” The Neighbourhood’s “Sweater Weather” and The Weeknd and Daft Punk’s “Starboy.” (newsroom.spotify.com) That formalized a record the song had already reached on August 31, 2025, when Spotify announced that “Blinding Lights” became the first track on the service to hit 5 billion streams. Billboard reported the milestone that day, and Guinness World Records said it also made the song Spotify’s most-streamed track. (billboard.com (guinnessworldrecords.com)) The song’s run started years earlier. Guinness said “Blinding Lights” took over as Spotify’s most-streamed song in January 2023, passing “Shape of You,” which had held the lead since 2017. (guinnessworldrecords.com)) “Blinding Lights” was released in November 2019 as the second single from The Weeknd’s album *After Hours*. Billboard said it spent four weeks at No. 1 on the Hot 100 and became the first song to stay in that chart’s top 10 for a full year. (billboard.com) Billboard had already elevated the song beyond a streaming hit in November 2021, when it replaced Chubby Checker’s “The Twist” at No. 1 on the publication’s Greatest of All Time Hot 100 songs chart. In January 2025, Billboard also ranked it No. 1 on its Top Hot 100 Songs of the 21st Century list. (billboard.com 1) (billboard.com 2) Spotify’s new all-time lists also showed how much of that success stayed with The Weeknd across the catalog. He ranked fourth among Spotify’s most-streamed artists ever, and both *Starboy* and *After Hours* made the platform’s top-20 albums list. (newsroom.spotify.com) The latest tally did not include a fresh stream count for “Blinding Lights,” but the song entered Thursday with a long lead in third-party Spotify tracking. ChartMasters listed it at more than 5.37 billion streams as of April 22, 2026. (chartmasters.org) A song released before the pandemic is still sitting at the top of the world’s biggest streaming service. Spotify’s anniversary list turned a social-media talking point into the company’s own all-time record book. (newsroom.spotify.com)
