The Kid Laroi has situated himself atop Apple Music’s global songs chart for 2022, after the streaming service revealed its listener’s year-end analytics.
The Kid Laroi earned the crown for his Justin Bieber-assisted track Stay, which was released in July of last year, and sat at the number spot on Apple Music’s global chart for 51 days straight. Domestically, the song also topped triple j’s Hottest 100 in 2021, and earned the rapper a swathe of nominations and wins at that year’s ARIA Awards.
Apple Music’s data also extended to Shazam, with Elton John and Dua Lipa’s Cold Heart remix being the most captured song on the music identification platform. Meanwhile, We Don’t Talk About Bruno from Disney’s 2021 film Encanto was the track with the most-read lyrics on Apple Music for 2022.
Laroi overtook Harry Styles, whose track As It Was which took the second spot on Apple’s most streamed songs list. Elsewhere in the chart were Adele, Jack Harlow and Glass Animals, who respectively placed within the top ten for their songs Easy On Me, First Class and Heat Waves, the last of which also took the top spot on 2020’s Hottest 100 by triple j.
Hip-hop remained the most listened-to genre for a second consecutive year, with 32 of the top 100 songs falling under that category. Pop music followed with 23 songs, while R&B earned second runner-up with 11 songs. Speaking of the genre presence on the list, Apple’s Rachel Newman pointed to the growing popularity of non-English-language songs.
“It’s really the rise of what was once very niche genres creeping into the mainstream, which is an exciting new development on the platform,” Newman said. It comes ahead of the release of Spotify Wrapped, a similar year-end listening analyser published by Apple’s biggest competitor. Although not yet confirmed, pundits have put forth the first week of December for the rollout of Spotify Wrapped.
