Harry Styles & Bad Bunny Lead the Charge: The Year in Global Charts 2022
Written by djfrosty on December 1, 2022
For the second consecutive year, a British artist leads the year-end Billboard Global 200 songs chart. Dua Lipa passes the torch to Harry Styles, who leads the list with “As It Was.” A year ago, Lipa’s “Levitating” was tops. (“As It Was” also leads the 2022 year-end Billboard Global Excl. U.S. chart.)
Meanwhile, Bad Bunny finishes 2022 at No. 1 on both the Billboard Global 200 Artists and Billboard Global Excl. U.S. Artists roundup.
Explore All of Billboard’s 2022 Year-End Charts
Styles’ year-end triumph on the Billboard Global 200 is especially impressive considering “As It Was” missed the first 22 weeks of the tracking period, debuting atop the April 16-dated chart. During that span, six different songs topped the survey, including Glass Animals’ evergreen “Heat Waves,” which reigned from March 5 until April 9.
But “As It Was” arrived, fully formed, at No. 1 where it began a record-setting 15-week run on top. Further, the song spent its first 20 weeks at Nos. 1 or 2, first 24 weeks in the top three, and first 29 weeks inside the top five. Despite missing the first five months of the 2022 chart year, the track’s hyper-focus in the upper reaches of the survey during the eligibility period combined to make it the chart’s strongest song performer of the year.
“As It Was” repeats at No. 1 on the year-end ranking for Billboard Global Excl. U.S. chart, becoming the first song to top both lists’ year-end tallies – though the year-end rankings only began in 2021. (The Global 200 and Global Excl. U.S. chart launched in September 2020, but their first year-end recaps were produced in 2021.)
Beyond Styles’ repeat at No. 1, both global year-end charts share the same top 10 songs, though in slightly different orders. Glass Animals follows at No. 2 on both charts with “Heat Wave,” while crowning the year-end Billboard Hot 100 Songs list. On all three weekly surveys, it set a record for the longest trip to No. 1.
The rest of the Billboard Global 200 top 10 includes Ed Sheeran (twice), GAYLE, and Adele, plus collaborations from Elton John and Dua Lipa, The Kid LAROI and Justin Bieber, Imagine Dragons and JID, and The Weeknd and Ariana Grande. Two of those duets – “Stay” by The Kid LAROI and Bieber and “Save Your Tears” by The Weeknd and Grande — also placed in the top 10 on both year-end lists in 2021.
Bad Bunny is the No. 1 artist on both charts’ year-end recaps. Though already omnipresent on the two Global charts with material from his pair of 2020 releases, 2022’s Un Verano Sin Ti secured his No. 1 spot. All 23 songs from the album debuted on the May 21-dated rankings and logged a combined 81 weeks in the Billboard Global 200’s top 10 between then and the end of the 2022 tracking period.
Bad Bunny scores 12 songs on the year-end Billboard Global 200 chart and 10 on the corresponding Global Excl. U.S. list, taking up more than 10% of the year-end global rankings.
He is followed by Latin artists Rauw Alejandro, Karol G, Farruko and Chencho Corleone in the top 30 both of artist rankings. Elsewhere, South Korea’s BTS and BLACKPINK represent for non-English-language acts.
Billboard’s year-end music recaps represent aggregated metrics for each artist, title, label and music contributor on the weekly charts dated Nov. 20, 2021 through Nov. 12, 2022. The rankings for Luminate-based recaps reflect equivalent album units, airplay, sales or streaming during the weeks that the titles appeared on a respective chart during the tracking year. Any activity registered before or after a title’s chart run isn’t considered in these rankings. That methodology details, and the November-November time period, account for some of the difference between these lists and the calendar-year recaps that are independently compiled by Luminate.