The strange case of “AM” by Arctic Monkeys on Spotify

Has everyone returned to the Tumblr era? Or is the album so good that it will never lose its charm? It would be romantic to think so. But the reason why “AM” by Arctic Monkeys, the album that in 2013 established Alex Turner’s band as one of the most loved rock bands of the new millennium, has become a real sensation on Spotify, where it has been popular for 214 weeksis decidedly less romantic. Behind the album revival of “RU mine?”, “Do I wanna know?”, “Arabella” and “I wanna be yours” there is TikTok: it is thanks to the kids who discovered, who knows how and who knows why, on the ballet app

“I wanna be yours”, making it a trend, if “AM” crossed the 1498 day mark this week in the Weekly Top Albums Globalthe ranking of the two hundred most streamed albums worldwide on Spotify. This week “AM” occupies the eleventh position, ahead of contemporary hits such as “Brat and it’s completely different but also still brat” by Charli XCX, “Eternal sunshine” by Ariana Grande, “Utopia” by Travis Scott, “Guts” by Olivia Rodrigo, “F-1 Trillion” by Post Malone.

With those accumulated in the last week “AM” has officially surpassed 10 billion total streams on Spotify. Yes, you read that right: 10 billion streams. More than a quarter of the share is represented by the ratings of “I wanna be yours” itself, which alone has 2.6 billion streams, followed with 2.3 billion by “Do I wanna know?”. “Why’d you only call me when you’re high?” has totaled 1.8 billion streams, while “RU mine?” has 1.1 billion listeners.

If the presence in the charts for the same number of weeks of records such as “Starboy” by The Weeknd (released in 2016) or “Lover” by Taylor Swift (released in 2019) is not surprising, because they are two hyper-exposed pop stars, who have done their constant presence on the scene is certainly one of the strengths of their success the exploit of “AM” by Arctic Monkeys, a band that releases a record – and the related tour – every four, five years, arouses curiosity.

Often there is no logic behind the boom in old songs on TikTok. The case of “Dreams” by Fleetwood Mac, a 1977 song that returned to the charts after a creator, 420doggface208, 1.4 million followers on the app, posted a video in which he was skateboarding at dawn while sipping a drink and singing the song in lip-sync (i.e. moving the lips in synchronization with the audio in the background), he set the tone: it was 2020, three years ago. If at the time one could marvel at the power of TikTok, today the app’s powerful means of over 1.2 billion monthly active users worldwide are no longer surprising.