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There’s no way of speeding up the time that’s still left before The Weeknd‘s Hurry Up Tomorrow premieres, but some lucky fans will get to see the film a little bit early.
As announced on his social media accounts Tuesday (April 8), the artist born Abel Tesfaye is planning a nationwide one-night-only early fan screening set for 6 p.m. local time May 14, two days before the movie — which serves as a companion project to the star’s album of the same name — officially premieres in theaters. Tickets go on sale April 17.
Those who scoop tickets will be among the first to see Hurry Up Tomorrow. They’ll also get to see exclusive never-before-screen bonus content after the film ends.
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Starring the “Blinding Lights” singer, Jenna Ortega and Barry Keoghan, Hurry Up Tomorrow tells the story of a fictionalized version of The Weeknd, who — “plagued by insomnia” — becomes wrapped up in an “odyssey with a stranger who begins to unravel the very core of his existence,” according to a description.
Tesfaye previously raved about his costars in a January interview with Variety, gushing, “Jenna brought so much depth to the character … there was a scene where Trey and I looked at each other like, ‘On paper, this is just ridiculous — how is it going to translate on screen?’ And she said, ‘I have an idea.’ She led that whole scene — none of it was rehearsed, and a lot of my reactions in it are not acting.”
“[Barry] was a friend of mine prior to all this, and he was always number one on my list for his role,” he continued at the time. “What makes him different from Jenna is that his talent is so raw, it just comes so naturally to him.”
The film also serves as a good-bye to Tesfaye’s The Weeknd alias, which he confirmed he’d be retiring in the Variety interview following his Hurry Up Tomorrow album era. Released in February, the LP debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and follows 2020’s After Hours and 2022’s Dawn FM in a now-complete album trilogy.
Shortly before the film hits theaters, Tesfaye will hit the road on his After Hours Til Dawn Tour kicking off May 9 in Phoenix.
See the fan screening event announcement below.
For the third time — and in the second different calendar year — Ariana Grande’s Eternal Sunshine tops the Billboard 200 this week.
The album, which originally debuted atop the chart dated Mar. 23, 2024 and spent two weeks at No. 1, returns to the apex with 137,000 units moved, according to Luminate. The album’s resurgence comes following the release of its Brighter Days Ahead deluxe edition, which boasts six bonus tracks — all of which appear on this week’s Billboard Hot 100, led by “Twilight Zone” at No. 18 — and comes with a short sci-fi film of the same name, starring Grande and her father, Edward Butera.
Do we think the commercial response validates the relatively lengthy wait for the deluxe edition? And what do we make of this mini-movie? Billboard staffers discuss these questions and more below.
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1. Eternal Sunshine returns to No. 1 on the Billboard 200 this week — a year after topping it the first time — with 137,000 units moved, following the release of the set’s Brighter Days Ahead edition. Is that performance better than, worse than, or about what you would have expected?
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Hannah Dailey: Overall, I would say that it’s even better than I expected for a deluxe edition released a full year after the original – but I did anticipate the deluxe doing well in general. I think a lot of people really underestimate just how loved this album is. I’m certainly not surprised that there’s still so much interest in it all this time later!
Kyle Denis: Much better. I assumed the album would return to the bottom half of the top 10 – especially because there’s no current radio single from the standard version and “Twilight Zone” didn’t exactly explode upon release – but to pull a six-figure total and return to No. 1 over a behemoth of a Playboi Carti album and Lil Durk’s latest set is amazing.
Lyndsey Havens: What I would expect. Ariana is a consistent chart-topper at this point, and the only thing I wouldn’t see coming is if Brighter Days Ahead fell short of the tally’s top spot. And the thing I love about this particular feat is that it wasn’t a curiosity rebound, meaning I don’t get the sense people listened only out of curiosity and then moved on. The songs on this deluxe are that good — and if Eternal Sunshine didn’t tell such a tightly knit story, they could have easily arrived then. But that’s what I love most about this deluxe; it arrived when the stories in these songs needed to be told, and when Ari was ready to tell them.
Jason Lipshutz: Better. Deluxe editions of major albums typically don’t arrive one year after the original album’s release, and considering how much of Ariana Grande’s focus has been on Wicked (and the upcoming Wicked: For Good), it’d be easy to surmise that she and her fans had moved on from Eternal Sunshine. So the fact that these deluxe tracks arrived less like a belated thank-you and more like the completion of a beloved project, with a six-figure equivalent album units total and a return to the top of the Billboard 200, represents a major win for Grande, on an occasion that she could have dismissed as minor.
Andrew Unterberger: Definitely better. This deluxe came a long time after the original album, and it feels it — since so much else happened in the interim, both in Grande’s career and pop music in general. To still have enough in interest in you and your most recent project to chart a half-dozen new songs on the Hot 100 (and none that low), while moving six digits’ worth of album units, should all feel pretty validating for Grande.
2. A year is a long time in 2025 to wait to release a proper deluxe edition of a hit album. Do you think it has proven a smart strategy for Grande, or should she have come with it a little sooner?
Hannah Dailey: I’d usually say a year is an egregiously long time to wait between an album and deluxe, but in this specific case, I think the distance was to Grande’s benefit. First of all, a lot of the big pop releases that came after Eternal Sunshine in 2024 kind of overshadowed the album and pushed it out of the general public’s consciousness a bit; waiting this long to drop the deluxe gave it more than enough space from those other releases to totally stand out and have a second chance at being a quintessential pop moment of 2025, if not 2024. Second, it was nice to have a breather from all the Wicked craziness before Eternal Sunshine Part 2. It gave us a bit of time to miss Grande before she did anything else and re-orient our brains back to thinking of her as in pop star mode, not Glinda mode.
Kyle Denis: I think it’s absolutely proven correct. She was risking serious overexposure if she launched a deluxe edition with six new songs and a movie while she was still knee-deep in Wicked press. The standard version got ample time to shine, and the deluxe now has several months – before Wicked: For Good press ramps up – to itself. It also helps that Grande put out a “slightly deluxe” version of the album in between its initial release and Brighter Days Ahead, so her Eternal Sunshine rollout has been meticulously plotted to avoid having too much Ari at one time.
Lyndsey Havens: I’m genuinely curious how much of it was strategic and how much of it was basic logistics and/or intuition. Since Eternal Sunshine has arrived, Ariana has mostly been in Wicked promo mode. For the deluxe to arrive after awards season makes perfect sense on paper. But what could make even more sense is that Ariana could have still been living in or stuck on the stories behind these songs, and all they needed was a bit more time and space. Either way, I would love if this practice is adopted more. Take SZA’s Lana, for example: Was it a stretch to call it a deluxe? Sure. But was it nice to have some space in between projects? I think so. And at the end of the day, I think the best strategy is releasing something when the artist feels it’s ready — because that’s when it will likely hit the hardest.
Jason Lipshutz: Six months ago, I would have said the latter… but as it turns out, Grande was smart to roll out these songs following Wicked campaign. A months-long awards tour made it impossible for Grande to focus on Brighter Days Ahead promotion, so if these songs had arrived in late 2024 or early 2025, there likely would have landed as more of an afterthought during a hectic time. And instead of serving them up a month or two after Eternal Sunshine’s release, Grande let the standard edition stand on its own — and “We Can’t Be Friends (Wait For Your Love)” grow into one of her most enduring hits — before giving these deluxe tracks their own moment. A unique strategy for unique circumstances, but she pulled it off expertly.
Andrew Unterberger: I think it’s proving pretty smart. Intuitively I would’ve said it was a little late, but most deluxe projects come so early these days — sometimes just days, if not mere hours — after their originals that Grande actually giving some real breathing room between the two is something I’m more grateful for than I would have expected. (The songs being good also certainly helps!)
3. “Twilight Zone” is the clear leader of the new tracks from the reissue on the Hot 100 this week, debuting at No. 18. Does it feel like a long-lasting hit to you, or will it fall once the reissue’s early momentum wears off?
Hannah Dailey: It definitely sounds like a hit to me, and I love how it adds to the narrative of the rest of the album. I predict that it’ll be a slow grower – it’s not the splashiest-sounding pop song, but it’s one that’s been getting randomly stuck in my head repeatedly ever since it came out, and I’m guessing I’m not the only one. I think that people will continue to keep coming back to it more and more over the next few weeks.
Kyle Denis: I think it depends on how much Grande is willing to do for the song. If it gets a standalone video and some kind of live performance, I can see “Twilight Zone” sticking around the charts as a cute springtime hit. If she lets these songs sit and shifts her focus back to Wicked, I anticipate “Twilight Zone” falling a bit faster than the average Grande single.
Lyndsey Havens: What’s crazy to me is while all five of the new tracks compete for the title of my favorite, “Twilight Zone” doesn’t often lead the list. It’s almost like each new song is better than the last, as I loved “Warm” but then “Dandelion” (the horn!) into “Past Life” into “Hampstead” is just an incredible run. But I do think “Twilight Zone” is the most sonically linked to Eternal Sunshine, which is why it was the perfect track to open the deluxe — and maybe why it’s connecting the most right now.
Jason Lipshutz: I think “Twilight Zone” is actually in for a pretty lengthy run, based on three things: the quality of the song, Grande’s established presence at top 40, and the fact that no new non-Wicked music is on the horizon. “Twilight Zone” travels down the same cozy synth-n-B path as “We Can’t Be Friends,” and streaming playlist curators and radio programmers should embrace it pretty quickly; the Wicked For Good campaign will dominate Grande’s focus during the second half of the year, so even if Eternal Sunshine tumbles back down the Billboard 200, this song will stand as her traditional pop bid in the months leading up to the film.
Andrew Unterberger: It does feel like a hit to me, but I’m not sure that it actually will be. Top 40 is just embracing so few new songs from anyone these days — even from proven hitmakers like Grande — and I’m not sure if the format will cut into its Benson Boone or Gracie Abrams spins for this deluxe edition song, especially if Grande isn’t really gonna push it herself. I hope it does, though — or that it finds footing enough on streaming to be a long-lasting hit there — because it certainly does deserve to have that kind of endurance.
4. In addition to the new songs, Brighter Days Ahead comes with an accompanying short film of the same name, featuring many of the album’s tracks. Does the mini-film add much to the album era/experience to you?
Hannah Dailey: Honestly, the short film didn’t do much for me by way of enhancing the album. I more just love to see Grande marrying her loves for music and acting in a way that clearly makes her feel really fulfilled creatively, and in general it was nice to have something extra to end the Eternal Sunshine era on a grander note.
Kyle Denis: In some ways, yes. Longtime Grande fans are very aware of how rocky her relationship with her father has been throughout her career, so to see him make a cameo in the film as the doctor who uses music to put her back together after the press tore her to shreds… that was an unbelievably beautiful full-circle moment. Brighter Days Ahead is also easily the strongest distillation of Grande’s creative pysche that she’s offered so far; her beloved horror elements are on full display, and the film’s throughlines help emphasize the message of Eternal Sunshine and flaunt her dramatic acting skills. While the pacing was a bit clunky, the short film only leaves me more excited to see where Grande (and Christian Breslauer, or perhaps a different collaborator?) goes next visually.
Lyndsey Havens: Only in the sense that it’s a great metric for fans to understand that in this case, similar to what I said above, this deluxe isn’t necessarily a strategic play. Creating and delivering a short film to accompany these new tracks only proves how much of a story is baked into them, and how moved Ariana felt to not only tell that story, but bring her fans into it, in more ways than one.
Jason Lipshutz: The short film adds a compelling visual element to the Eternal Sunshine deluxe edition, but ultimately, “Twilight Zone” transcends the greater context around it, just like prior Hot 100 chart-toppers “Yes And” and “We Can’t Be Friends.” Grande has spent time over the past eight years re-positioning herself as a traditional albums artist after breaking through with a string of hit singles beginning in 2013… but full-length statements like Thank U, Next, Positions and Eternal Sunshine still contain those hits, and her latest album is defined by those radio-ready standout moments. If the short film better exemplifies the tone of Eternal Sunshine, Grande’s latest chart hit prolongs the era with more powerful commercial intent.
Andrew Unterberger: I can’t be mad at any music video with real ambition (and a real budget!) in 2025.
5. Has your relationship with or view of Eternal Sunshine changed any over the past year from when it was released?
Hannah Dailey: I loved Eternal Sunshine on my very first play-through, and I have loved it (and listened to it on, at minimum, a weekly basis) ever since. To me, it still represents Grande in a place of full creative liberation – you can hear that she made these songs, both original and deluxe, not because she had to, but simply because she had music and words inside of her that desperately needed to come out in the studio. If anything, I’ve come to accept more since its release that this could very likely be the last album we get from her in a long time as she shifts her focus to acting, which makes listening to it a little more bittersweet.
Kyle Denis: I already loved it upon release, and I’ve only grown to appreciate it more. Eternal Sunshine is now officially my favorite Ari album. She’s really settled into post-Imogen Heap/Brandy lane that suits her damn-near perfectly.
Lyndsey Havens: Hm, not really. I think another benefit of releasing a deluxe so long after the album itself is that it can reignite interest. While I listened to Eternal Sunshine on loop for months after it came out, naturally that fades with time and with more and more new music always incoming. So, while my love for the album never waned, this deluxe has only helped strengthen my relationship with it once again. And now, perhaps unfortunately for me, it’s only left me wanting even more.
Jason Lipshutz: Definitely — after previously considering Eternal Sunshine a mid-tier Grande project, the album’s emotional maturity has resonated with me in a clear way in the months following its release. The Brighter Days Ahead songs have underlined the overall project’s tone and purpose — so, chart performance aside, the deluxe edition has been an unequivocal success.
Andrew Unterberger: Not really, but I do have more of a belief now that it will go down as a classic album and a major part of her legacy.
As part of the multi-media blitz to promote their first joint album together, Who Believes in Angels?,” Elton John and Brandi Carlile are inviting fans to watch the raw studio footage of the sessions. In a first for John, the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer allowed cameras to film the entire process, resulting in the 32-minute YouTube short Who Believes in Angels?: Stories From the Edge of Creation, which dropped over the weekend.
As John has hinted in interviews, the decision to enter the studio with no song ideas or sketches was a challenge that initially made him very nervous. The film opens with producer Andrew Watt trying to flint a creative spark from the pop icon by bringing up late 1960s confessional singer Laura Nyro, who John has long said was one of his biggest inspirations.
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That, of course, led to the recording of the album’s nearly seven-minute opening track, “The Rose of Laura Nyro,” which viewers can see come to life as John picks out the song’s refrain in real time as his career-long lyricist, Bernie Taupin, stands by his side to help punch things up.
At another point, an excited Watt enthusiastically strums an acoustic guitar while he explains John’s process in voiceover. “I asked Elton how does he write songs,” Watt says. “He sits and read a lyric, he sees a movie scene in his head and then he scores the movie.” Knowing that John also reveres rock originator Little Richard, Watt says he surmised that if the piano man saw a lyric about the “Tutti Frutti” star he was going to “feel rock n’ roll,” which resulted in the appropriately flamboyant “Little Richard’s Bible.”
One of the revelations is hearing Taupin say that he was more than open to allowing Carlile to participate in tweaking lyrics in a new spin on the two mens’ decades-long creative partnership. The film also features footage of Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith rocking out in the studio during the 20-day blitz of writing and recording. According to a release, the half hour’s worth of footage was culled from thousands of hours of raw tape.
In a testament to the pleasure and pain of the sessions, we see Carlile and John repeatedly praise each other’s talents, as well as the 78-year-old singer tear up and toss lyric sheets after losing his cool while trying to figure out how to harmonized with Carlile on her song “Swing For the Fences.”
At another point, John gets emotional after laying down his parts on the Carlile-penned ballad “Someone to Belong To,” a track she wrote to honor John’s 30-year relationship with husband/ manager David Furnish. He also flat-out breaks down in tears while recording the emotional “When This Old World Is Done With Me,” a Taupin-written weeper about the passage of time that that gets him when he hits the line, “When this old world is done with me/ When I close my eyes/ Release me like an ocean wave.”
“Pretty f–king great album, huh?” Watt tells John near the end of the doc as Elton recalls how depressed and despondent he was when the project began. “I feel like my heart’s attached to your heart,” Watt says, patting John on the shoulder and then hopping up to dance along to a mix of one of the songs.
Who Believes in Angels?: Stories From the Edge of Creation is available to stream for free on YouTube now. In addition to the short, fans can also read a song-by-song breakdown of the new album by the two singers, watch their recent performance on SNL, check out the one-hour concert An Evening With Elton John and Brandi Carlile on Paramount+ and hear the duo’s song “Never Too Late” from the Disney+ doc Elton John: Never Too Late.
Check out the YouTube short below.
Eric Andre has a well-earned reputation as a guy who is not afraid to try just about anything once. Well, except for going on a date with Madonna. On Monday night’s (April 7) Jimmy Kimmel Live! the Bombing With Eric Andre podcast host revealed that “Madonna has a bit of a crush on me.” In […]
First the good news. Adam Levine confirmed on Monday night’s (April 7) Tonight Show that Maroon 5 will be be back in our ears this year. The bad news is that, for now, the details are a bit fuzzy. “I am gonna confirm the rumors are true,” Levine said to huge shouts from the studio […]
Ed Sheeran‘s been making music long enough to know that not everyone’s going to be a fan of what he puts out — and the same goes for his new song, “Azizam.”
After one reviewer had a particularly harsh assessment of the carefree dance track, which dropped Friday (April 4), the singer-songwriter shared a hilarious, brief response before keeping it moving. The critic — a popular TikToker who shares thoughts on music and pop culture under the name The Swiftologist — had blasted “Azizam” in a recent video, calling the track “the same f–k-ng thing” as many of Sheeran’s past hits.
“‘Shivers,’ ‘Bad Habits’ and ‘Shape of You’ are all the same song [as ‘Azizam’], and they’re all so f—ing annoying,” he’d continued. “There has been no evolution from 2016. I feel like I’m going crazy … I’ll never get these two minutes of my life back.”
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The Swiftologist, whose real name is Zachary, also criticized the four-time Grammy winner’s songwriting style as a whole in the video. “The songs are good in the way that, I don’t know, heroin is good for people,” he’d added. “It’s addictive in a way that is not supposed to be good for the human brain. The way that he writes songs with the specific intention for them to be hits, he is soulless.”
So, how did Sheeran react? “lol,” the musician simply wrote in the comments.
For what it’s worth, Zachary offered in response to Sheeran’s reply: “King I’m so sorry. But we need to come up with something else.”
It’s certainly not the first time someone has critiqued the British superstar’s songwriting, and with Sheeran recently announcing plans to release at least five more albums in the coming years, it won’t be the last. In March, he appeared on The Tonight Show and revealed that his next album, Play — for which “Azizam” serves as the lead single — will be followed by LPs titled Pause, Rewind, Fast-Forward and Stop.
The series mirrors the sequence of Sheeran’s first five albums, which fit a mathematics theme: + (2011), x (2014), ÷ (2017), = (2021) and – (2023). And though critics such as Zachary may not be a fan of the musician’s catalog, a lot of other people are; all five of the aforementioned LPs reached the top 5 of the Billboard 200, while nine songs spread out across those albums have charted in the Billboard Hot 100‘s top 10.
See The Swiftologist’s review of “Azizam” — and look for Sheeran’s comment — below.
Lizzo is gearing up to release her next album Love in Real Life, and she’s reflecting on the mental health break and journey she had leading up to the album.
The star joined the On Purpose With Jay Shetty podcast, where she discussed taking a “gap year” in releasing music. “I don’t feel like I’ve expressed myself fully in the last two years, like how I want to. I feel like I’ve been kind of holding my tongue and like staying to myself, but I think that it’s for the best because you know, running your mouth these days,” she said. “Sometimes it’s just unnecessary and sometimes it can get you into some stuff you wasn’t even trying to get into because people will misinterpret it and run with it. I found when I was like, I’m taking a gap year, I’m protecting my peace. But like, people were like, wait, so what’s that supposed to mean?”
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Lizzo has already released two songs from her upcoming album, “Still Bad” and the title track. Aside from “Pink” for Greta Gerwig’s 2023 Barbie soundtrack, the first singles from the project mark the Yitty founder’s first proper releases since 2022’s Special, which reached No. 2 on the Billboard 200 and spawned two-week Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 single “About Damn Time.”
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It also marks her first album since the harassment lawsuit brought by three of her former dancers in August 2023.
The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles by dancers Arianna Davis, Crystal Williams and Noelle Rodriguez, accuses Lizzo (real name Melissa Jefferson) and her Big Grrrl Big Touring Inc. of a wide range of legal wrongdoing and included dozens of pages of detailed allegations. Lizzo denied the claims in a response shared to Twitter, calling them “false allegations” and “sensationalized stories.”
Lizzo told Shetty of public perception, “I think when it was out of my control and someone else could tell a story about me that wasn’t true and people believed it, it crushed me,” before adding, “I think what I learned about fame is, even if that’s really me, it just becomes kind of like a, a fictional story that you, it’s a character, it’s a brand, it’s a thing that now doesn’t belong to you anymore.”
She continued, “Whoever Lizzo is to the world is not really even me. And that disconnect is depressing. And I think the only remedy to that is continuing to be myself. That’s the time. I just have to continue to be me and people will see me for who I am.”
Ultimately, Lizzo concluded, “I’m never gonna stop… If anything, I’m more careful now. I can’t just let any author into my life who can make me a villain. I can’t do that anymore. ’cause I’m the author and I. Taking back my narrative by continuing to tell my story from me, and thank you for giving me the opportunity to do that.”
Watch the full episode below.
After two decades of snipes and barbed words traded back and forth, Madonna and Sir Elton John are here to report a groundbreaking piece of news — their feud is apparently over.
In a photo posted to her Instagram on Monday (April 7), the “Material Girl” singer is giving the “Rocket Man” star a side-hug, and reported that she and the star are on the same page at long last. “We Finally Buried the Hatchet!!!” Madonna wrote in her caption. “I went to see @eltonjohn perform on SNL this weekend!! WOW.”
In the caption, Madonna revealed that seeing one of John’s shows when she was in high school “changed the course of my life,” helping her realize that she wanted to become a pop sensation. So, when John publicly expressed his disdain for her, she says she felt wounded. “I had always felt like an outsider growing up and watching him on stage helped me to understand that it was OK to be different —to stand out — to take the road, less traveled by,” she wrote. “Over the decades it hurt me to know that someone I admired so much shared his dislike of me publicly as an artist. I didn’t understand it.”
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The pair’s feud officially started in 2002, when John said that Madge’s “Die Another Day” was “the worst Bond tune ever” and that the track “hasn’t got a tune.” He continued to throw digs at the pop singer at the 2004 Q Awards, where he lambasted her winning the best live act award at the ceremony. “Madonna, best live act? F— off. Since when has lip-synching been live?” he asked. “I think everyone who lip-synchs on stage in public when you pay, like, 75 quid to see them should be shot.”
The feud escalated in 2012, when both Madonna and John were up for best original song at the 69th annual Golden Globes — Madonna for “Masterpiece” from W.E., and John for “Hello, Hello” from Gnomeo & Juliet. When Madonna eventually won the award, John’s husband, David Furnish, blasted her win on his Facebook account, claiming that her victory showed the awards had “nothing to do with merit.” Madonna, for her part, reacted to John and Furnish’s comments backstage, saying “[John]’s been known to get mad at me, so I don’t know. He’s brilliant, and I adore him, so he’ll win another award. I don’t feel bad.”
But on her latest Instagram post, Madonna revealed that when she went to go visit with John backstage at SNL on Saturday (April 5), the “Your Song” singer was immediately apologetic. “I needed to go backstage and confront him. When I met him, the first thing out of his mouth was, ‘Forgive Me’ and the wall between us fell down,” she wrote. “Forgiveness is a powerful tool. Within minutes. We were hugging.”
Madge even revealed that this reconciliation could potentially bear fruit. “Then he told me had written a song for me and he wanted to collaborate. It was like everything came full circle,” she wrote. “And you can tell everybody , This is Your Song……….”
John thanked Madonna for “forgiving me and my big mouth” in the comments of the post, highlighting her work as an activist for the fight against HIV and AIDS as one of the many reasons he admires her. “I’m not proud of what I said. Particularly when I think about all the groundbreaking work you have done as an artist,” he wrote. “I’m grateful we can move forward.”
The star added that he hoped the two of them could serve as an example to people around the world of what reconciliation looks like in a divided political landscape. “I’m increasingly distressed by all the divisiveness in our world at the moment. Both you and I have wholeheartedly been accepted and embraced by communities who are under threat around the world,” he wrote. “By pulling together, I’m hopeful that we can make great things happen for those who really need support.”
Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars’ “Die With a Smile” scores a 15th week atop the Billboard Global 200 chart. The song also rebounds for a 12th week atop the Billboard Global Excl. U.S. survey. The ballad first led both lists last September.
Plus, Ariana Grande’s “Twilight Zone” debuts in the top 10 of both rankings.
The Billboard Global 200 and Global Excl. U.S. charts, which began in September 2020, rank songs based on streaming and sales activity culled from more than 200 territories around the world, as compiled by Luminate. The Global 200 is inclusive of worldwide data and the Global Excl. U.S. chart comprises data from territories excluding the United States.
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Chart ranks are based on a weighted formula incorporating official-only streams on both subscription and ad-supported tiers of audio and video music services, as well as download sales, the latter of which reflect purchases from full-service digital music retailers from around the world, with sales from direct-to-consumer (D2C) sites excluded from the charts’ calculations.
“Die With a Smile” continues atop the Global 200 with 95.1 million streams (down 1% week-over-week) and 6,000 sold (essentially even) worldwide March 28-April 3. At 15 weeks, the song ties for the second-longest No. 1 run since the chart began:
19 weeks at No. 1, “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” Mariah Carey (2020-25)
15 weeks, “Die With a Smile,” Lady Gaga & Bruno Mars (2024-25)
15 weeks, “As It Was,” Harry Styles (2022)
14 weeks, “Flowers,” Miley Cyrus (2023)
12 weeks, “APT.,” ROSÉ & Bruno Mars (2024-25)
11 weeks, “Stay,” The Kid LAROI & Justin Bieber (2021)
“APT.” holds at No. 2 on the Global 200; Alex Warren’s first top 10 on the chart, “Ordinary,” climbs 5-3 for a new high; Doechii’s “Anxiety” dips to No. 4 from its No. 3 best; and Billie Eilish’s “Birds of a Feather” rises 6-5 following three weeks at No. 1 last August.
Ariana Grande’s “Twilight Zone” journeys into a wondrous land known as the Global 200’s top 10 – signpost up ahead: No. 7. It starts with 43.2 million streams and 6,000 sold worldwide. Her seventh top 10 on the survey was newly released on the Brighter Days Ahead reissue of her 2024 album Eternal Sunshine, which blasts back to No. 1 on the U.S.-based Billboard 200.
“Die With a Smile” rebounds a spot for a 12th week at No. 1 on Global Excl. U.S. with 76.7 million streams (down 1%) and 3,000 sold (on par with a week earlier) outside the U.S.
“APT.” slips to No. 2 after a record 19 weeks atop Global Excl. U.S., beginning last September; “Ordinary” jumps 6-3 for a new best, after becoming Warren’s first top 10; JENNIE’s “like JENNIE” drops to No. 4 from its No. 3 high; and “Anxiety” falls 4-5 after reaching No. 3.
Plus, “Twilight Zone” debuts at No. 8 on Global Excl. U.S. with 27.3 million streams and 2,000 sold outside the U.S., becoming Grande’s seventh top 10.
The Billboard Global 200 and Billboard Global Excl. U.S. charts (dated April 12, 2025) will update on Billboard.com tomorrow, April 8. For both charts, the top 100 titles are available to all readers on Billboard.com, while the complete 200-title rankings are visible on Billboard Pro, Billboard’s subscription-based service. For all chart news, you can follow @billboard and @billboardcharts on both X, formerly known as Twitter, and Instagram.
Luminate, the independent data provider to the Billboard charts, completes a thorough review of all data submissions used in compiling the weekly chart rankings. Luminate reviews and authenticates data. In partnership with Billboard, data deemed suspicious or unverifiable is removed, using established criteria, before final chart calculations are made and published.
Billie Eilish re-enters the top 10 of the Hot 100. Tetris Kelly:This is the Billboard Hot 100 top 10 for the week dated April 12. “Birds of a Feather” is back in the top 10, as is Morgan Wallen’s “I’m the Problem.” His “Just In Case” falls to eight. “APT.” is up to seven, while […]