WASHINGTON – Taylor Swift and Bad Bunny dominated streams on the music platform Spotify in the nation’s capital this year.
The top five artists were Taylor Swift, Bad Bunny, Drake, Kanye West and The Weeknd. The top genres in Washington were pop, rap, hip hop, dance pop and trap, according to Spotify Wrapped.
Taylor Swift’s popularity tracks with Tony Tomelden’s experience. Tomelden owns The Pug, an H Street dive bar.
Most days, the bar plays punk, rock and hip hop music. But twice in the last month, it’s become the place to be for local Swifities. Somebody asked on Twitter for a bar that would host a listening party for the release of “Midnights,” Swift’s latest album.
“People were like ‘well, Tony will definitely play it,’” Tomelden said. “And somebody else called in and asked if we would really do that, and I said that I couldn’t do it the night it comes out but I’ll definitely do it that Monday night.”
“And it’s just sort of exploded,” he added. “We already had a group of folks that watch ‘The Bachelor’ every Monday night in here. I don’t know if those two things intersect totally, but there’s a base crowd of younger folks out here who love ‘The Bachelor,’ so I got a copy of it on vinyl and played it Monday night.”
There was a line out the door. Tomelden replicated the event with Swift’s album “Red” last Monday. He said the bar intends to do similar events on a monthly basis in the future.
Tomelden said Taylor Swift wasn’t number one on his own Spotify Wrapped, but he’s excited about the popularity of the listening parties nonetheless.
“Me personally, I like that ‘cheerleader in the bleachers’ song,” he said. “I’m this grumpy old man, and I think it’s kind of fun that they come in and they sing along to every lyric, just like I did when I was that age to The Clash. It was perfect.”
Spotify Wrapped – DC Edition by Jonathan Hunter Donville
Bad Bunny was the second-most streamed artist in Washington, but he was the number one streamed artist on Spotify in the world for the third year in a row with more than 18.5 billion streams. He was also recognized as Artist of the Year by Apple Music and Billboard.
“He started getting on our radar around 2017 with a very distinctive sound,” said Leila Cobo, chief content officer of Latin at Billboard.
“He has a very deep voice which is unusual for someone in his genre, which is reggaeton rap,” she said. “And himself – his persona, his vocal style, his aesthetic – was also very unusual. His music was also different, I think, a little bit more aggressive in its production, more aggressive and more streamlined. So he very quickly got a big Latin following behind him at a time when streaming was really breaking out in Latin (communities).”
Bad Bunny’s continued popularity is a unique cultural moment, Cobo said. Other artists – like Shakira, Ricky Martin, Mark Anthony and Jennifer Lopez – have historically been number one on the global charts. But there’s never been a number one artist whose discography is solely in Spanish.
“I think (the fanbase) has transcended from people that only speak Spanish to people that don’t speak Spanish and don’t care, and someone like Bad Bunny was very effective at doing that,” Cobo said. “And I don’t think he was trying to do that.”
His music just happens to be very danceable,” she said. “It’s very catchy. So even if people don’t understand what the heck he’s saying, they like it and they like him. And that’s really opened up the door, I think, for a lot of other artists.”