Colombian Star Karol G’s ‘BbY WOW’ Outlasts Taylor Swift for Sixth Week Atop Global 200

Karol G’s “BbY WOW” is back on top of Billboard’s global charts, and the most telling part of its run is what it had to beat to stay there. For one week, Taylor Swift’s “Patient Zero” took the crown with exactly the kind of launch the modern music business is built to produce. The following week, the song Karol G made with Spanish artists Judeline and rusowsky took it back, and it has held on since.

That is an odd career for a track nobody planned as the biggest hit of her life. “BbY WOW” started as a Karol G solo song and became a trio late, when she reopened it to two artists from Spain’s alternative scene. Its climb was already underway before the dance trend that much of the coverage credits for its rise. Up close, the streaming giant of the autumn looks less like a campaign and more like a last-minute creative call that paid off.

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A launch week against a long run

Billboard’s own numbers make the contrast plain. “Patient Zero,” one of four new songs on Swift’s deluxe edition The Life of a Showgirl: The Encore, opened at No. 1 on the Billboard Global 200 and Global Excl. U.S. charts dated Oct. 10 with 70.7 million streams and 80,000 copies sold worldwide, according to Luminate. “BbY WOW” slipped to No. 3 that week after four weeks on top. Seven days later it was No. 1 again with 46.2 million streams while “Patient Zero” fell to No. 2, and on the charts dated Oct. 24 Swift’s single sits at No. 3.

The new tracking week, Oct. 9 to 15, gave “BbY WOW” 45.4 million streams worldwide, down just 2% from the week before, plus 1,000 copies sold. About three of every four of those streams, 34.1 million, came from outside the United States. Shakira and Burna Boy’s World Cup anthem “Dai Dai” owned the summer before “BbY WOW” ended its reign in September; Billboard noted at the time that Karol G’s song was the first No. 1 on the global charts performed mostly in Spanish since Bad Bunny’s “DtMF” finished its run in March.

For Karol G, it is new territory. Her only previous leader on the lists, “TQG” with Shakira, topped them for its debut week in March 2023. “BbY WOW” gave her a first multi-week global No. 1 in September and, in the U.S., her second Hot 100 top 10 after that same Shakira duet.

A solo song, reopened two weeks before release

How the song reached its final shape is the part the chart celebrations skip. Judeline told NYLON that she wrote with Karol G in Malibu, with Tainy and rusowsky in the room, while the Colombian star was rehearsing for Coachella, and that “BbY WOW” “was supposed to be a song for her and only her.” About two weeks before the album came out, Karol called asking for Judeline and rusowsky on it. “We did the song in two days,” Judeline said. She cut her verse in a studio she tracked down near her hometown, hidden behind what looked from the street like a fried-fish shop, and the song was out a week later.

Karol G described the same decision to Rolling Stone, as quoted by Songfacts: “The first version was just me. But I felt like, live, I wanted to sing that song with more people on stage and for it to turn into a party.” The credits carry that collaborative streak. Karol, Tainy, Omer Fedi, Judeline and rusowsky all share production, over a flip of the Coolie Dance Riddim that Nina Sky’s “Move Ya Body” made famous in 2004. Judeline’s hand on the album goes well beyond the feature: she co-wrote four songs on No Me Arrepiento de Sentir Tanto, including the opener “Te Llevas To.”

The dance arrived after the climb

In France, NRJ framed the run as the work of a TikTok choreography by the creator trio Los Menor3s, posted on Aug. 24, whom Karol later brought on stage during her U.S. tour. The trend was real and it spread fast. The chart timeline, though, says it poured fuel on a fire that was already lit. The song entered Spotify’s global daily chart on Aug. 12, according to La República, and jumped from No. 171 to No. 37 on the Global 200 in the tracking week that closed on Aug. 20, Complex reported, four days before the dance went up. The weeks that followed, a 37-to-5 leap on a 45% gain in streams and then the move to No. 1, are where the song and the trend pushed together.

What the global crown measures now

There is a fair caveat inside all of this. Billboard’s global charts blend official streams and download sales from more than 200 territories, and in practice they are streaming rankings: “BbY WOW” sells around 1,000 copies a week worldwide. “Biggest song in the world” now means the song most replayed on platforms where playlists and short-video trends do much of the distribution. That system rewards a huge opening, as Swift’s week showed. It also rewards the songs listeners keep returning to, which is how a track that sold a fraction of her copies took the top spot back.

For the two Spaniards, the scale has changed completely. Judeline, who grew up in Cádiz, became the first Spanish woman to reach No. 1 on Spotify’s global chart, according to LatiNation and N+. In 2024 she played London’s The Lower Third to 250 people; on Sept. 5 she closed her first headlining tour in front of 26,500 at Plaza Mayor in Valladolid, she told NYLON. rusowsky, the Madrid producer and singer born Ruslán Mediavilla and known for his bedroom-pop records, scored his first Hot 100 top 10 alongside her.

No Me Arrepiento de Sentir Tanto, Karol G’s sixth studio album, came out Aug. 7 and debuted at No. 1 on Top Latin Albums. Her tour is still working through the Americas and reaches Europe next year, opening in Barcelona on June 3, 2027, with Paris on July 1.

The song Karol G first recorded alone has already spent six times as many weeks at No. 1 on Billboard’s global chart as the rest of her catalog combined.

Tags: Karol G, Judeline, BbY WOW, Billboard Global 200, rusowsky

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