The Weeknd at the 2021 Billboard Music Awards

(Emma McIntyre/Getty Images)

ready for the weeknd

The Weeknd’s “Blinding Lights” is about to hit 5 billion streams on Spotify

The song is hundreds of millions of streams ahead of the competition.

8/29/25 8:12AM

They said it couldn’t be done. They said, maybe, it shouldn’t be done. But it’s about to happen: we (Spotify’s 675 million monthly active users) are about to send The Weeknd’s 2019 earworm “Blinding Lights” past the 5 billion stream mark on the platform, making it the first song in history to pass the round-number threshold.

Shut up and play the hit

As the second single from “After Hours,” The Weeknd’s fourth studio album, the song was a solid hit at the time, spending four weeks at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 — a “respectable stay,” per Stereogum, but by no means absurd. The synth-pop track’s staying power since, on the other hand, has been frankly insane.

The song has been streamed more than 4.995 billion times, and is still clocking about 1.4 million streams a day almost six years after its release. Presuming that figure increases a little on Fridays and Saturdays, with many of The Weeknd’s tracks lending themselves nicely to, well, the weekend, “Blinding Lights” should cross the barrier over the next three days.

Wildly, another one of his tracks isn’t that far behind in the rankings either.

Spotify most streamed songs chart — Sherwood News

For a song that was first teased on a Mercedes ad on German TV one Sunday, the feats “Blinding Lights” has gone on to achieve have been remarkable. Released in November 2019, the song went on to become the biggest song of 2020 by sales and size, standing as the only song to spend a full year in the Top 10 in the US and overtaking Chubby Checker’s 1960 hit “The Twist” as the Billboards’s top Hot 100 hit of all time in 2021.

With such impressive stats behind his biggest hit, earlier song “Starboy” also breaking Spotify’s top three most streamed songs of all time, and a staggering 26 more entries with over 1 billion plays on the streamer, per Kworb figures, it’s no surprise that The Weeknd is one of the biggest stars on the platform. Only three artists — Bad Bunny, Drake, and a certain Ms. Swift — are racking up more daily streams at the moment.

Millie Giles1/14/26

OpenAI set to air a minute-long Super Bowl ad for a second consecutive year, per WSJ

OpenAI is expected to broadcast a lengthy commercial at Super Bowl LX, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.

Having aired its first-ever paid ad at last year’s Big Game, the ChatGPT maker is set to take another 60-second ad slot during NBC’s broadcast on February 8, according to people familiar with the matter.

Exclusive | OpenAI Set to Run Another Super Bowl Ad as Chatbot Competition Heats Up

Millie Giles

GOLDEN RATIO

1/12/26

Big winners at the Golden Globes could indicate this week’s Oscar noms

With the Academy’s nominations voting opening today, the results of the Globes might signal the direction of certain Oscars categories (statistically speaking).

Chalamet with award at the Golden Globes

Millie Giles1/9/26

Tamagotchis are making a comeback, 3 decades after first becoming a global toy craze

If you were a ’90s kid, you might remember the craze around little egg-shaped toys with an 8-bit digital screen, displaying an ambiguous pet-thing that demanded food and attention.

Now, on the brand’s 30th anniversary, the Tamagotchi — the Japanese pocket-sized virtual pet that launched a thousand cute and needy tech companions, from Nintendogs to fluffy AI robots — is making a minor comeback.

Tamagotchi Google Search Trends — Sherwood News

Looking at Google Trends data, searches for “tamagotchi” spiked in December in the US, up around 80% from just six months prior, with the most search volume in almost two decades.

While the toys are popular Christmas gifts, with interest volumes often seen ticking up in December each year, the sudden interest might also have something to do with the birthday celebrations that creator and manufacturer Bandai Namco are putting on, including a Tokyo exhibition that opened on Wednesday.

Game, set, hatch

More broadly, modern consumers appear to have a growing obsession with collectibles (see: Labubu mania), as well as a taste for nostalgia (see: the iPod revival, among many other trends).

But, having finally hit 100 million sales in September last year, the brand itself is probably just glad to exist, giving a whole new generation the chance to experience the profound grief of an unexpected Tamagotchi death.

Millie Giles

PANDORA’S BOX OFFICE

1/5/26

“Avatar: Fire and Ash” surpasses $1 billion globally after 18 days

James Cameron is now the first director in history to have four consecutive movies gross over a billion dollars.

$5.6B

Max Knoblauch12/23/25

Disney could be well on its way to its third billion-dollar film of the year following a $345 million opening weekend for “Avatar: Fire and Ash.” The film’s opening gross puts the “Avatar” franchise’s total box office earnings at $5.6 billion — and counting.

The latest film, the second “Avatar” entry under Disney’s tent, earned about 75% of its total box office gross internationally — in line with previous movies in the (as of now) trilogy. Domestically, this one earned $88 million, falling short of expectations.

“Fire and Ash” was the widest Imax release ever, debuting on 1,703 screens globally and earning $43.6 million through the format. The $345 million “Fire and Ash” opening weekend was the second-highest of 2025, behind Disney’s “Zootopia 2,” which recently passed the $1 billion mark, globally.

Year to date, Disney has earned $5.8 billion globally at the box office.