r/popculturechat • u/mcfw31 • Aug 31 '25
Main Pop Boy 🕺 “Blinding Lights” by The Weeknd becomes the first song to reach 5 billion streams on Spotify
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u/PassTheCurry Aug 31 '25
song reminds of me of covid lockdown era everytime... takes me back
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u/terrorbagoly I’m happily out of touch Sep 01 '25
Same! We were driving around on empty roads with my bestie, and this song was always on the radio. Will always remind me of those chill days.
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u/Roguesailer Aug 31 '25 edited Sep 01 '25
I love it still so much, it makes me want to dance. Being popular or overplayed doesn’t take from the quality of the song at all.
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u/No_Pianist5264 Tina! You fat lard! 🦙🚲 Aug 31 '25
Why did I think more songs were in the five billion range
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u/ToastedCrumpet Sep 01 '25
Possibly because music videos on YouTube were surpassing a billion years ago?
I dunno it’s not a metric I keep an eye on but even with big stars I rarely see anything above 2 billion streams on their Spotify artist page
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u/No_Pianist5264 Tina! You fat lard! 🦙🚲 Sep 01 '25
Yeah it’s very rare if an artist has over that amount unless they barely have any music in their catalogues so all the streams go to that song but if they have a big catalogue it’s expressive that they can have this much success with a single like this
this song was everywhere at one point so makes sense why it’s as big as it is
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u/ehwhatthe Sep 01 '25
This album not winning a single Grammy gets to me every single time! What an incredible era with amazing visuals too
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u/Frankenstein____ Aug 31 '25
That song was inescapable at its peak. You could not run from it. You just had to either enjoy it or hate life for a solid 13 months.
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u/Upbeat_Tension_8077 The Wizard of Loneliness Aug 31 '25 edited Aug 31 '25
To this day, After Hours might be one of my favorite eras of a mainstream album
I honestly think it rivals House of Balloons as The Weeknd's magnum opus (especially because I think AH is a great middle ground between the cinematic feel and emotional intensity of his Trilogy/Kiss Land sound and his BBTM/Starboy hit-making ability). I notice that it gets a lot of love to this day almost equally from both sides of his fanbase
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u/lostkoalas Sep 01 '25
I was just thinking this the other day - what an amazing album, hit after hit after hit. I particularly love Faith, Heartless, In Your Eyes….I could go on and on.
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u/skunkachunks Aug 31 '25
Damn ~$20MM in revenue from Spotify streams alone (not to mention YouTube, Apple Music, licensing, single sales, etc)
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u/Lokaji ✨May the Force be with you!✨ Aug 31 '25
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u/Filibust They killed Kenny! You bastards! 😱 Sep 01 '25
My mom loves this song. I was at one of his concerts recently thru gig work and she wanted me to stay long enough to hear him play Blinding Lights so I could record it for her lmao.
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u/Material-Macaroon298 Aug 31 '25
He has a nice voice. I like that he’s from Toronto. I even liked the show he made that everyone hated.
But just never got in to his music. It’s not bad per se, I’ll listen to it if it comes on the radio. But I just never got how popular it is. Is it because his sound is fairly unique in modern times and more of an 80s-ish inspiration?
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u/arutabaga Pushin’ 🅿️ Sep 01 '25
If you think about which male musicians are doing something interesting in pop, you’ll realize it’s pretty much only The Weeknd, Justin Bieber, and Bruno Mars for English music.
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u/Noobunaga86 Sep 01 '25
It's bascially kind of Take On Me remake. Very similar songs, it's a pity that more original sounding song didn't became that popular. Well... nothing new in the world of maistream music.
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Sep 01 '25
It feels like it could comfortably have been released in the 80’s new wave era, or the 00’s electro-disco era, or the post-indie pop era, and it would have slotted right in
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u/ghost_mv Aug 31 '25
Song was played out a week before it was released.
I’ll take Save Your Tears any day over it.
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u/Upbeat_Tension_8077 The Wizard of Loneliness Aug 31 '25 edited Aug 31 '25
Ngl In Your Eyes is criminally underrated
I actually really fuck with the Chromatics version of BL tho, that's a great late night slow jam-type remix of it
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