Bad Bunny Levels Up & Makes History in 2022: The Year in Streaming Charts

When Bad Bunny appeared at No. 24 on 2021’s year-end Streaming Songs Artists chart, he found himself in a fairly elite group of acts who primarily record within Latin genres and in the Spanish language to make the annual list. What was more: he did so by virtue of multiple entries on the weekly Streaming Songs ranking. His predecessors, Luis Fonsi (No. 19, 2017) and Daddy Yankee (No. 25, 2017), made that year’s rundown solely on the strength of the Justin Bieber-featuring global phenomenon “Despacito,” also that year’s top-streamed song. Conversely, Bad Bunny’s 2021 included a slew of entries, including a pair of No. 2-peaking songs on the weekly survey (“Dakiti,” alongside Jhay Cortez, in November 2020 and “Yonaguni” in June 2021).

But the artist born Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio leveled up in 2022 with May’s Un Verano Sin Ti. The streaming juggernaut of an album – by way of the streaming popularity of its songs –lands him at No. 1 on 2022’s Streaming Songs Artists chart.

In doing so, Bad Bunny becomes the first artist who records primarily in a language other than English to rule the year-end ranking, besting the likes of Taylor Swift, Harry Styles, Morgan Wallen and Drake at Nos. 2-5, respectively. (The annual year-end Streaming Songs Artist recap began in 2013.)

Explore All of Billboard’s 2022 Year-End Charts

2022 saw Bad Bunny land his first weekly Streaming Songs No. 1, the two-week ruler “Me Porto Bonito” with Chencho Corleone. Exemplifying the long-tail virality of Un Verano, the song didn’t even hit No. 1 until its 10th week on the ranking and was still in the top five well into October.

Billboard’s year-end music recaps represent aggregated metrics for each artist, title, label and music contributor on the weekly charts dated Nov. 20, 2021 through Nov. 12, 2022. The rankings for Luminate-based recaps reflect equivalent album units, airplay, sales or streaming during the weeks that the titles appeared on a respective chart during the tracking year. Any activity registered before or after a title’s chart run isn’t considered in these rankings. That methodology details, and the November-November time period, account for some of the difference between these lists and the calendar-year recaps that are independently compiled by Luminate.

Six songs from the album debuted within the top 10 upon release week (May 21, 2022), too, with “Titi Me Pregunto” (No. 4) remaining in the top five or 10 through October, too.

In 2021, two Bad Bunny songs – “Dakiti” (No. 13) and “Yonaguni” (No. 62) – appeared on the year-end Streaming Songs ranking. 2022 finds him with eight, including his first top 10s: “Bonito” (No. 5) and “Pregunto” (No. 6).

The year, however, wasn’t all about Bad Bunny on streaming services – no matter what it may have felt like at times. After falling off Streaming Songs Artists entirely in 2021, Taylor Swift roars back with a vengeance at No. 2, her first time in the top 10 since she was No. 4 in 2015 and her highest year-end rank since it began being tabulated.

Chalk that one up to two different albums in the tracking period – one with fully new material, the other rerecorded. Her Red (Taylor’s Version), released in November 2021, boasted a weekly No. 1 in “All Too Well (Taylor’s Version)” and a collection of top 10s, while the release of November 2022’s Midnights marked the second time ever that an act occupied the entire top 10 of Streaming Songs in a single week, paced by “Anti-Hero.”

The sheer volume of Swift material to make the chart throughout 2022 is so staggering, in fact, that on the year-end song ranking, she appears just once – at No. 66 – with “All Too Well.”

An artist like Glass Animals took a separate approach. “Heat Waves” ranks as the No. 1 entry on the year-end Streaming Songs tally, while the band appears at No. 10 on the artists ranking, all by virtue of just one charting song on the weekly survey.

Originally released in 2020, “Heat Waves” first made the weekly Streaming Songs in April 2021 and had broken into the top 10 by the end of the 2021 chart year. The song never actually rose higher than No. 3, but it spent the entirety of the weeks Jan. 29-May 7, 2022 anywhere between Nos. 3 and 8, and largely in the top 20 after that. Basically, the song – which now holds the record for the most weeks spent on the Billboard Hot 100 in its history (91) – refused to go away, and even when it felt like it wasn’t everywhere anymore, it was still in the periphery.

“Heat Waves” becomes the second song in a row to reign over the year-end Streaming Songs chart despite having not been released in that chart year, following Dua Lipa’s “Levitating,” which ruled in 2021 after premiering in March 2020. The similarities don’t stop there, either – guess where “Levitating” peaked on the weekly Streaming Songs? That’s right, No. 3. Steady wins the game.

Harry Styles appears at No. 3 on the year-end Streaming Songs Artists survey after never ranking higher than No. 15 (2020). His 2022 finish was buoyed by two-week No. 1 “As It Was,” the year’s overall No. 2 (and, due to “Heat Waves,” the highest-ranking song actually released in 2022).

He’s followed by Morgan Wallen, who backs up being No. 11 in 2021 by rising to No. 4 on the Streaming Songs Artists roundup. All that despite not releasing an album in the tracking year; many of the country star’s streams came from 2021’s Dangerous: The Double Album, plus a trio of newly released singles and a featured role on Lil Durk’s “Broadway Girls.”

Wallen is the first act releasing music primarily in the country genre to appear in the ranking’s year-end top 10, let alone top five. And he paces a slew of artists from the genre who make the 25-position list; he’s followed by newcomer Bailey Zimmerman (No. 16), veteran Chris Stapleton (No. 22) and newer-guard acts Walker Hayes, Zach Bryan and Luke Combs at Nos. 23-25, respectively. Last year? It was just Wallen and Combs.

2022 also marks the return of Disney film franchises to the year-end chart, particularly its top 10. Encanto’s “We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” a 13-week No. 1 at the start of the year, ends up at No. 7 on the Streaming Songs tally, following in the footsteps of Idina Menzel’s “Let It Go” from 2013’s Frozen, the No. 5 on the year-end 2014 list.