Karol G's 'BbY WOW' Returns to No. 1 on Both Billboard Global Charts

MEDELLÍN

The top of the global charts has a familiar tenant again. "BbY WOW," the collaboration between Karol G, Judeline and rusowsky, rebounds to No. 1 on both of Billboard's worldwide songs charts this week — climbing 3-1 on the Billboard Global 200 for its fifth week at the summit, and 2-1 on the Billboard Global Excl. US chart. The figures, drawn from Luminate data for the October 2-8 tracking week and reported by Billboard in a chart report syndicated by K-Jewel, underline just how durable the record has become: 46.2 million streams worldwide in a single week, deep into its chart run.

Songs that return to No. 1 after falling away are telling you something that debut-week spikes cannot. A first week at the top can be fandom mobilization. A fifth week at the top, reclaimed after a dip, is the general public — listeners in dozens of countries who keep choosing the song after the launch machinery has moved on. Billboard's Global 200 blends streaming and sales from more than 200 territories, and Luminate's counts for "BbY WOW" show strength on both sides of the Atlantic divide: 34.4 million of those streams came from outside the United States, the engine of its Excl. US crown.

The collaboration is the story

Part of the song's staying power is its construction. Karol G is the biggest Latin music star on the planet, but "BbY WOW" is not a solo coronation — it pairs her with Judeline, one of Spain's most distinctive young voices, and rusowsky, whose dreamy, piano-laced production has made him a cult figure in Spanish-language alternative pop. The result travels: it sounds at home in Medellín, Madrid and Mexico City at once, and the global charts — built exactly to measure that kind of borderless listening — keep rewarding it.

For Karol G, the rebound adds another week to a résumé that has quietly redefined what a Spanish-language artist can dominate. The Global charts were created in 2020 in part because songs like hers were reshaping worldwide listening faster than national charts could capture. Five years on, she is not a beneficiary of that system so much as its defining artist — the one whose records keep proving the charts needed to exist.

Squeezed at No. 2: Taylor Swift

Directly beneath "BbY WOW" on both charts sits Taylor Swift's "Patient Zero" at No. 2, per the Billboard report — the same single that tops the Hot 100 in the United States this week. That pairing at the top of the global rankings captures the current shape of pop: an American superstar at maximum domestic power, and a Colombian superstar whose audience is structurally worldwide. On the Global Excl. US chart the order flips decisively in Karol G's favor, which is precisely what that chart was designed to reveal — who rules when the US is taken out of the equation.

Readers following Swift's historic week can find the full picture in our coverage of her 100th career week atop the Billboard 200 — and the two stories together make a neat diptych of modern chart power: album-scale endurance on one side, single-song global reach on the other.

ADÉLA climbs, Drake collects another record

The rest of the Global 200 Top 10 is busy. ADÉLA's "Nicole Kidman" rises to No. 3, continuing one of the year's most improbable pop ascents, and her "Ain't in LA" sits at No. 5 — two simultaneous Top 5 entries that would have been unthinkable for an independent-minded pop newcomer a decade ago. The highest debut of the week belongs to Drake and Don Toliver, whose "Solar Eclipse" enters at No. 8 with 24.9 million streams, according to the Luminate figures in Billboard's report.

That debut carries a record inside it. "Solar Eclipse" is Drake's 46th Top 10 on the Global 200 — the most of any male artist, and second overall only to Taylor Swift's 47. For Don Toliver, it is his second Global 200 Top 10, a meaningful step for an artist whose streaming footprint has long outrun his chart résumé. Over on Global Excl. US, meanwhile, Dua Lipa's "Training Season" holds a place in the Top 5, yet another marker of how crowded — and how international — the upper tier of these charts has become. Drake's broader chart week is one we have been tracking closely on the Previously music hub, including his recent six-song surge.

What the rebound really means

Chart-watchers sometimes treat a return to No. 1 as a footnote. It shouldn't be. The dip to No. 3 and climb back suggests "BbY WOW" survived its first wave of competition — new releases, viral challengers, the weekly churn that buries most hits — and came out the other side as the default song of the moment again. With 46.2 million streams in the tracking week and no obvious rival consolidating behind it, there is little in the Luminate data to suggest the song is finished.

Karol G has made a career of exactly this kind of patience: records that settle in rather than burn out. "BbY WOW," with Judeline and rusowsky riding alongside her, now has five weeks atop the Global 200 and a matched pair of crowns on both worldwide charts. In a year when the global No. 1 slot has changed hands constantly, the song that keeps coming back might be the truest hit of all.