While Lady Gaga remains stuck at global number 1 on Spotify thanks to ‘Die with a Smile’, her duet with Bruno Mars, her new album of jazz covers, ‘Harlequin’, will not suffer a similar fate, in a more or less expected way. . More so because ‘Harlequin’ is a collection of already well-known standards, of dubious interest to an audience that demands novelties; less so because it is Gaga who released it and, furthermore, it is an album announced by surprise, whose existence was unknown until a few days ago.
But the truth is that ‘Harlequin’ has not generated enough interest for any of its songs to appear on Spotify’s global chart on its release day. With 7 million total views, none of the 13 tracks from ‘Harlequin’ have made it into the top 200 on Spotify globally, nor among the top 200 on Spotify in the United States or the United Kingdom. ‘Happy Mistake’, the original ballad, written for the occasion, has attracted more attention than any other track on the album to exceed one million listens on its first day, but it has not been enough for it to enter Spotify’s global list.
In the Apple Music universe things change slightly: ‘Happy Mistake’ is positioned at number 13 in Brazil, 27 in Norway or 28 in Sweden, and ‘The Joker’ appears at number 11 in Brazil, 19 in Lebanon or the 34th of Serbia. ‘Harlequin’, the album, is positioned at number 1 in up to 24 countries, remember, on Apple Music. In Spain it enters 2 on this platform.
The performance of ‘Harlequin’ on Spotify could improve after the release of the film ‘Joker: Folie à deux’, in which some of its tracks are played. The film opens on October 4. Still, there’s no doubt that the first single from Gaga’s actual new album, out in October, will be an instant hit.
Returning to Spotify, the most important entry is left by another artist, The Weeknd. Nothing less than the number 1 most listened to artist in the world, The Weeknd places his new song ‘Timeless’ with Playboi Carti directly at number 2. In other words, he can’t beat ‘Die with a Smile’, but he comes in with great force. ‘Timeless’ opens with more than 10 million plays on Spotify, and practically doubles the initial figure of ‘Dancing with the Flames’, which disappointed on its first day, entering a discreet 10th place and marking 5.7 million streams in the Spotify global.
‘Dancing with the Flames’, the first official single from The Weeknd’s new album, ‘Hurry Up Tomorrow’, has not enthused the audience either and already appears outside of Spotify’s top 50 and today salutes from position 65. It seems that ‘Timeless ‘will save the furniture.
