Spotify's most-streamed song of 2024 is 'about dying,' artist says: Are you a fan?
(NEXSTAR) – Sorry, Sabrina Carpenter: Despite earlier indications that her hit song “Espresso” was Spotify’s top-streamed track of the last year, the final figures show Billie Eilish’s “Birds of a Feather” has usurped Carpenter’s hit to become most-played song on the platform in 2024.
The news, touted Wednesday by Interscope Records, was confirmed by Variety the following day.
As reported by Variety, “Birds of a Feather” had racked up 1,775,172,881 total streams on Spotify by the end of 2024, while “Espresso” earned 1,774,525,704.
Spotify had earlier suggested that “Espresso” was the most-streamed song of 2024 in its annual Spotify Wrapped feature, which was based on streams through early December. Carpenter even remarked on the achievement on her Facebook page, thanking her fans for their support.
At the time, Spotify’s data showed “Birds of a Feather” to be the third-most played song of 2024, behind Benson Boone’s “Beautiful Things.”
The last few weeks of the year proved to be a popular period for Eilish, whose “Birds of a Feather” was released months after “Espresso.” (“Birds of a Feather” was released in July as the second single from Eilish’s “Hit Me Hard and Soft,” while “Espresso” came out in April as the lead single from Carpenter’s “Short n’ Sweet.”)
A representative for Spotify was not immediately available to comment.
“Birds of a Feather,” as Eilish told NPR in December, was her and brother/songwriting partner Finneas O’Connor’s attempt at writing a love song, which they ultimately took in a “darker” direction.
“It made so much more sense to twist it and go kind of darker with it and make it a cry for help. It’s kind of supposed to feel like an intoxicating, unhealthy, almost love-bombing of a song, where you’re just like, ‘I want you to stay until I rot away, and I’m dead and I turn blue.’ It’s very kind of threatening and weird. But that’s how you feel when you love someone so much,” she said.
“But then there are not metaphors, and it’s also about dying,” she added. (In the opening verse of the song, Eilish sings, “I want you to stay/'Til I'm in the grave/'Til I rot away, dead and buried/'Til I'm in the casket you carry.”)
Eilish and O’Connor shared the same explanation in a video published to Eilish’s YouTube page in September, breaking down their songwriting process.
“There’s a lot of songs about dying for somebody, and loving them until they die,” O’Connor said, “and I thought it was really fun to lean in and —"
“Reverse it. … ‘Til I die for real,” Eilish added.