Why Are Old Songs Trending? We Counted Spotify's Top 50

Leaving Christmas songs aside, 14 of the 50 most-streamed songs on Spotify's global chart for 3 November 2026 were released ten or more years earlier, by our count, and they drew 25.4 percent of the top 50's streams. The autumn 2019 chart had none. The count jumped in April 2026, after Justin Bieber's Coachella set, the film Michael and a TikTok revival of a Katy Perry single.

From July 2025 to March 2026 the saved charts held between five and ten songs that old, and the chart for 30 April held 16. Eight of the 14 on the November chart, though, had been in the global top 200 a year earlier, before any of those events. We counted 83 saved charts from April 2016 to November 2026 and checked the release date of each of the 1,425 tracks in their top 50s.

How many old songs are on Spotify's global chart?

Spotify publishes a daily global chart of its 200 most-streamed songs, and Kworb, a chart-tracking site, keeps a copy that it replaces every day. We used 82 copies of that page saved by the Internet Archive since 2016, about one a month from 2022 on, plus the copy we read on 5 November 2026. For each saved chart we took the top 50, looked up each song's release date on its Spotify page and counted the songs that were at least ten years old on the chart date. Christmas songs, and Halloween songs on charts from 15 October to 5 November, were left out of the counts, because they return every year on the calendar.

On the 23 saved charts from 2016 to 2021, the top 50 never held more than two songs that old. Averaged over each year's saved charts, the count was 1.0 in 2022, 1.6 in 2023, 4.4 in 2024, 6.4 in 2025 and 12.6 in 2026 up to 3 November.

Some of this rise comes from the calendar, since every year another year of releases crosses the ten-year line. Shawn Mendes's "Treat You Better" and Mac Miller's "Cinderella", both from 2016, could not have counted before 2026. To take that effect out, we also counted songs released before 2010, a fixed line that no song can cross by getting older. There were none in the top 50 on the autumn charts of 2019 and 2023, three in 2024, four in 2025 and seven on 3 November 2026: "Iris", "Creep", "Mr. Brightside", "Billie Jean", "Every Breath You Take", "Yellow" and "Wonderwall". Those seven drew 11.9 percent of the top 50's streams.

What sent Billie Jean and Beauty and a Beat back in April 2026

The chart for 31 March 2026 had five songs ten years old or more in its top 50. The one for 30 April had 16, and they drew 31.8 percent of the top 50's streams. Three events came in between.

Justin Bieber headlined the first weekend of Coachella in April. Part of his set used a laptop and archival clips of his early career, and in it he revisited old songs, "Beauty and a Beat" among them, according to Variety, which reported on 14 April that the 2012 single was at No. 3 on Spotify's global chart. On the 30 April chart it was No. 1, with three more Bieber songs from 2010 to 2015 in the top 50.

The film Michael, about Michael Jackson, opened in the UK on 22 April and in the US on 24 April. "Billie Jean" went from No. 110 on the 31 March chart to No. 4 on 30 April and No. 1 on 30 May. Seven Jackson songs were in the global top 50 that day, and the count of songs ten years old or more reached its peak of 17, with 34.6 percent of the top 50's streams.

Katy Perry's "The One That Got Away", a single from 2011, rose from No. 99 to No. 19 on Spotify's global chart during April. Wikipedia dates its TikTok resurgence to that month. TikTok, which said a new generation found the song on the app over the summer, later named it its global song of the summer for 2026 and said it had been used in more than 42 million videos.

Songs that reached No. 1 on Spotify ten years after release

Kworb's record of the daily global chart begins in August 2014. Before 2026, leaving holiday songs aside, we found only one song that reached No. 1 on it ten or more years after release: Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill", from 1985, which led for 17 days in 2022 after it was used in the Netflix series Stranger Things. In 2026 three more did it outside the holidays, not counting one August run that followed news of an artist's death.

England's players sang "Wonderwall" with their fans after wins at the 2026 World Cup. After England beat Norway on 11 July, Spotify recorded 51 percent more listeners for the song than in the same hour a day earlier, PA Media reported, and RouteNote reported that it reached No. 1 on the global daily chart in the tournament's final week. Michael Jackson's "Thriller" added one day at No. 1 on 31 October, Halloween.

Sweater Weather and the songs that never left the chart

Eight of the 14 old songs on the 3 November chart were already in the global top 200 on 1 November 2025, before any of the 2026 events. Two of them, The Neighbourhood's "Sweater Weather" and Coldplay's "Yellow", were in the top 200 on every one of the 60 charts saved since January 2022.

The eighth, "Billie Jean", was No. 46 a year earlier. The day counts are Kworb's totals for the global chart from August 2014 to 3 November 2026, a span of 4,469 days, so "Sweater Weather" has been on the chart on just over half of them. The other six old songs on the November chart came back in 2026 after missing the top 200 a year earlier: "Beauty and a Beat", "The One That Got Away", "Wonderwall", "Treat You Better", "Cinderella" and P!nk's "Just Give Me a Reason" with Nate Ruess.

Is new music losing the top of the chart?

New songs still held the top of the chart on 3 November. The seven most-streamed songs, led by Tate McRae's "Housewife", were all released in the past two years, and the highest old song was "Beauty and a Beat" at No. 8. The old songs sat lower: only two of the 14, at No. 8 and No. 9, were in the top ten. They took about a quarter of the top 50's streams that day, against none on the autumn chart seven years earlier. More of our chart counts are in the Charts & Data section, including how the Hot 100's longest run at No. 1 was counted.

Old songs are trending in 2026 for two reasons that show up in the chart counts. One-off events sent particular songs back to the top: a concert, a film, a World Cup and a TikTok trend, three of them in the same April. Underneath them sits a layer of older songs, "Sweater Weather" and "Yellow" among them, that has been on the global chart for years, while the top 50 of October 2019 had no song that old.

About the data

Charts are Spotify's global daily top 200 as copied by Kworb. The 3 November 2026 chart was read from Kworb on 5 November; the other 82 are copies of the same Kworb page saved by the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, the first copy saved in each month where one exists. The Archive has few copies from before 2022: the 2016 to 2021 figures rest on 23 charts, and none of them is from 2018. Our autumn comparison uses the saved chart closest to early November in each year. The 2025 one fell on 1 November, a day after Halloween, when four Halloween songs held places in the top 50 and "Yellow" was No. 53.

Release dates come from each track's Spotify page, which gives the release date of the album the track sits on. Where Kworb shows a track on the global weekly chart before that date, we used the first chart week instead, because the song had already come out; this applied to 70 tracks, among them "Treat You Better". Where Spotify gives only a year, we counted from 31 December of that year. Neither date can be earlier than a song's real release, so a song can be counted as younger than it is but never older, and the counts may be too low but not too high. The years in our tables are first releases, as a single or on an album, from Wikipedia.

We left out Christmas songs, Halloween songs on charts from 15 October to 5 November, and songs whose chart runs followed news of an artist's death. Days at No. 1 and days on the chart are Kworb's totals as of 3 November 2026. Shares are our calculation: the streams of the counted songs divided by the streams of all 50 songs on the same chart. How Mymyin checks its numbers is set out on the About page.

Sources

• Kworb, Spotify Daily Chart - Global, chart for 3 November 2026, read 5 November 2026, and Spotify Daily Chart Totals - Global, covering 10 August 2014 to 3 November 2026.
• Internet Archive, saved copies of Kworb's global daily chart, April 2016 to November 2026.
• Spotify, track pages for release dates, for example Iris, read 5 November 2026.
• Variety, "Justin Bieber's Coachella Set Sparks Massive Streaming Boost, Sends 'Baby,' 'Daisies' and More Into Spotify Global Top 200", 14 April 2026.
• TikTok Newsroom, "TikTok's Global and US Song of the Summer 2026: Katy Perry's 'The One That Got Away'", 1 September 2026.
• PA Media via The Irish News, "Oasis's Wonderwall streaming numbers soar after England's triumph over Norway", 12 July 2026.
• RouteNote, "How the World Cup sent Oasis' 'Wonderwall' to the top of Spotify's global chart", 21 July 2026.
• Wikipedia, read 5 November 2026: "Michael (2026 film)", "Billie Jean", "Beauty and a Beat", "The One That Got Away (Katy Perry song)" and "Running Up That Hill".