Hurricane ‘Michael’, with Drake’s stampede, has had to come across. The biopic has managed to reposition a lot of Jackson classics on the global charts, with ‘Billie Jean’ being the most popular song, to the point that in recent days it has risen to number 1 on the global Spotify chart, replacing another classic, although not so old: ‘Beauty and a Beat’, by Justin Bieber and Nicki Minaj. At some point, the global top 10 has come to be made up of half new songs and half classics.
Then Drake arrived and, in one fell swoop, unseated Michael from number 1 and took over the entire top 10 with his new album ‘ICEMAN’. ‘Make Them Cry’ debuted this Saturday at number 1 globally, followed at number 2 by ‘Dust’ and at number 3 by ‘Ran to Atlanta’, with ‘ICEMAN’ occupying the entire top 50 of global hits with songs from ‘ICEMAN’ and others from his other two published albums, ‘Maid of Honor’ and ‘Habibti’. On the second day, the hype has passed and ‘Billie Jean’ has returned to number 1 globally, although, in the United States, it is Drake who reigns.
Of course, Drake’s numbers are spectacular: adding 140.2 million streams on its first day, ‘ICEMAN’ has already marked the biggest debut of 2026 for an album and the eighth biggest in the entire history of Spotify. Drake has overtaken BTS, who held the biggest debut of 2026 for an album with ‘ARIRANG’. The fourth and fifth biggest debuts of 2026 on Spotify belong to Harry Styles with 63 million streams and Noah Kahan with 43 million. The other two albums published by Drake, ‘Maid of Honor’ and ‘Habibti’, fall far short of their figures: the first marks 29.1 million and the second, 27.7 million.
Regarding the debut of singles, a small controversy has been generated with BTS, since Spotify had initially reported that ‘Make Them Cry’ had marked the biggest debut of 2026 for a single, with 13.21 million views, but the BTS fandom has disputed the information and forced Spotify to publicly correct it, since ‘SWIM’ by BTS remains the single with the most views on its first day of the year: 14.64 million. Coincidentally, Drake references BTS in ‘Make Them Cry’ in the phrase: “I’m feeling like BTS ’cause it took the whole career for me to be discovered Seoul.” BTS have recorded themselves dancing nonsense.
Biggest single debuts 2026 on Spotify
#1. SWIM — 14.64M
#2. Make Them Cry — 13.21M
#3. Aperture — 12.47M
#4. Body to Body — 11.18M
#5. Dust — 10.92M
#6. Ran To Atlanta — 10.89M
#7. Whisper My Name — 10.72M
#8. drop dead — 10.7M
#9. Janice STFU — 9.58M
#10. National Treasure—9.34M
Biggest All-Time Album Debuts on Spotify
#1 THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT 314M
#2 The Life of A Showgirl 250M
#3 Midnights 186M
#4 1989 (Taylor’s Version) 176M
#5 Certified Lover Boy 155M
#6 A Summer Without You 146M
#7 nobody knows what will happen tomorrow 146M
#8 ICEMAN 140M
#9 MUSIC 139M
#10 Scorpion 132M
#11 UTOPIA 128M
#12 Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) 127M
#13 ARIRANG 112M
#14 For All the Dogs 109M
#15 Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers 100M
The duel MJ vs. Drake is especially poetic, given that Drake is a fan of Michael to the point that the cover of ‘ICEMAN’ pays homage to the king of pop. Furthermore, his references to MJ in his music have been continuous: Drake already mentioned him in ‘When to Say When’ in 2020 and, on his album ‘Scorpion’, he even released a “featuring” with him incorporating an unreleased song by the artist. Another fact: Drake has the same number of number 1 singles in the United States as Michael, a total of 13, although the Canadian could surpass that number thanks to the success of the ‘ICEMAN’ singles. We will continue to inform.
