Justin Bieber is the great commercial beneficiary of the first weekend of Coachella. His performance has been the most talked about for its originality – he played YouTube videos of himself and sang over it – and its impact is being reflected in the daily Spotify charts, where Bieber has just climbed to global number 1 with a song from almost 15 years ago.
This is ‘Beauty and the Beat’, his collaboration with Nicki Minaj which, in an EDM pop style, dominated the charts in 2012. ‘Beauty and the Beat’ has just surpassed the listeners of ‘SWIM’ by BTS and ‘Babydoll’ by Dominic Fike, previous global number 1s, climbing from third place.
Bieber had already placed almost a dozen songs in the top 50, but the news is that these are still rising three days later. Not only ‘Beauty and the Beat’ rises to 1, but ‘Confident’ rises to 6, ‘Daisies’ rises to 7, ‘Baby’ to 8 and ‘Eenie Meenie’ with Sean Kingston to 10. That is, Bieber now has five hits in the global top 10 thanks to Coachella.
Additionally, ‘Sorry’ is at number 15, ‘Love Yourself’ is at number 18, ‘What Do You Mean?’ on 37, ‘Let Me Love You’ on 40 and ‘Never Say Never’ on 42. That’s sticking to the songs that had already entered, because now ‘STAY’ also enters at 32.
Closing the top 50 is ‘YUKON’, but the top 200 reveals other entries. Curious how Bieber’s classics have aged? ‘That Should Be Me’ is at number 52, ‘Ghost’ at number 53, ‘Favorite Girl’ at number 63, ‘Company’ at number 92, ‘One Less Lonely Girl’ at number 108, ‘Somebody to Love’ at number 114 and ‘One Time’ at number 118. Surprisingly, the lead single ‘Boyfriend’ is the one that appears lowest, at number 133. In most cases, the songs climb a handful of positions compared to the previous day. On the negative side, Bieber’s time at Coachella does not seem like it will relaunch the ‘SWAG’ repertoire except for a couple of songs.
