Karol G Wraps Her U.S. Stadium Run With “BbY WOW” Back at No. 1 Worldwide

Karol GLatin · Medellín, ColombiaArtist profile →

Karol G wrapped the North American stadium leg of her Viajando Por El Mundo Tropitour in Arlington, Texas, on Oct. 15 with more than 1 million tickets sold, and the song that soundtracked it is still the biggest in the world. “BbY WOW,” with Judeline and rusowsky, rebounded 3-1 on the Billboard Global 200 dated Oct. 17 for a fifth week at No. 1, Billboard reports.

It drew 46.2 million streams (down 6%) and 1,000 sales worldwide from Oct. 2 to 8, per Luminate, and went 2-1 on Global Excl. U.S. with 34.4 million streams. Taylor Swift’s “Patient Zero” drops to No. 2 on both. The run breaks a tie with Bizarrap and Quevedo’s “Bzrp Music Sessions, Vol. 52” for the longest stay on top by a song billed to a Spaniard act since the Global 200 launched in 2020. Only one Spanish-language track has led longer: Eslabon Armado and Peso Pluma’s “Ella Baila Sola,” with six weeks in 2023.

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Latin radio has caught up. The song rose 2-1 on Latin Airplay dated Oct. 17, the first No. 1 there for Judeline and rusowsky and Karol’s 22nd, which makes her the woman with the second-most leaders behind Shakira’s 25. It’s also the first song by a Spaniard act to lead the overall tally in over a year, Billboard says, and it has now spent eight weeks atop Hot Latin Songs.

It almost wasn’t on the album at all. Karol told LOS40 in September, as Consequence reported, that she wrote the song in January with Judeline and her team but felt something was missing:

I didn’t feel like it was finished. It wasn’t going on the album.

Karol G, to LOS40, Consequence

The fix was rusowsky, whose verse she said “put the cherry on top.” Judeline, a co-writer on the track and on three others from No Me Arrepiento de Sentir Tanto, told Rolling Stone she never saw the hit coming: “I didn’t expect it at all.”

To celebrate the end of the U.S. leg, Karol shared a live video for the song on Friday. It stitches together clips from MetLife Stadium, where she performed it with Tainy, Judeline and rusowsky for the first time, and from Boston, where Los Menor3s, the creators of the viral “BbY WOW” dance, joined her, per Rolling Stone. Watch it below.

The U.S. leg set records along the way. Her Toronto show became the highest-grossing concert by a Latin artist in Canadian history, and she was the first Latina artist to headline three consecutive sold-out nights at SoFi Stadium. The song has been No. 1 on Spotify’s Global chart for 46 days. Next up is the Latin American leg in November, with stops in Mexico, Chile, Argentina and her native Colombia, before the tour ends in Europe. Here’s what the album is about.