As regular readers will know, I am a big believer in the overwhelming musical abundance of the present moment. I’m pretty optimistic about this—that is, I think that a lot of doom and gloom narratives around popular music decline as the twenty-first century chugs along are mostly circling around a loss of the value of US-centric framing of how the doomers tend to define pop music.
One way that I’ve been trying to get a sense of this shift is to look at non-US-centric charts, particularly what I’ve been abbreviating as the GXU, the Billboard Global 200 Excluding US. US listeners have a big impact on a subset of American popular music on the regular Global 200—e.g., country doesn’t do very well on the GXU even though the global charts including US listeners places country music pretty high.
However, there’s a problem with using these charts to keep up with the songs that are bubbling up in the rest of the world outside the US, and that is the effect of lax chart recurrence rules—that is, how long old songs are allowed to stay on the charts.
For many years now, accounting for streaming in the charts has created a situation where a huge number of entries on many major charts are random back catalog songs that are perennially popular—like the Killers’ “Mr. Brightside,” which famously spent a cumulative 10 years in the UK Top 100 since its release and has been in the Global 200 for hundreds of weeks. There are plenty of random old songs that have gone viral for both expected reasons (Michael Jackson songs after the biopic, Justin Bieber and Bad Bunny songs after successful live performances) or obscure reasons (why on earth won’t “Iris” by the Goo Goo Dolls ever leave the charts?).
The Hot 100 has taken a few steps to get rid of these recurring songs, most recently at the end of last year, when they forced songs off the charts after one year if they fall outside the top 10 or after a year and a half if they fall outside the top 5. The major problem on the Hot 100 until then was songs hanging around in the lower reaches of the Top 40 for multiple years in a row—the new rules immediately wiped out Teddy Swims’s “Lose Control” and several persistent 2024 favorites.
The global charts, including both the Global 200 and GXU, still have this recurrence problem, though—right now by my count, fewer than half (86) of the 200 songs on the GXU are from 2026 or late 2025.1 Some songs songs effectively never leave the charts: “Save Your Tears” by Ariana Grande and The Weeknd, “Shape of You” by Ed Sheeran, “Count Your Stars” by OneRepublic,” and “Sweater Weather” by the Neighbourhood have all been on these charts for over three hundred weeks, which is about as long as the Global 200 has existed.
You can also see which songs go viral after years of not seeming to have made as much of an impact. You would notice this on the Hot 100 with Zara Larsson’s 2017 “Lush Life” going viral a decade later, but maybe not with Dua Lipa’s 2024 “Training Season,” which has been in the top 5 of the global charts for several months now but isn’t included in the Hot 100.
But a lot of the tracks clogging up the global charts are just streaming noise, with classic rock hits, old pop songs, and pop playlist favorites crowding out new songs.
All of this raises questions about what exactly the charts are supposed to do. Because of my own ambivalence to the charts, I don’t usually have strong opinions about this. There is an argument to simply account for the most popular stuff by a number of different metrics and show it to people, though this is more like inventory than discovery. But I also think this means there should be more kinds of charts, showing more specific subsections of listener behavior, presented in a way that doesn’t require someone to individually pore through the charts of every country in the world to make sense of global trends.2
For discovery on the charts, the simplest solution is to be stringent and kick things off the charts for many more reasons. This might be because the song is too old, or it’s been on the charts at too low a placement for too long, or it’s a boring automatic effect of fan activity around a new album release. Both the Hot 100 and UK Singles Chart have implemented rules around some of these issues within the past few years—in the UK, only the top three tracks from one album can debut on the chart simultaneously, which leads to an amusing cyclical artifact for many major album releases of “the single, the fan favorite, and the other one” (often just the second or third track of the album).
I think you get a pretty interesting chart this way, and I might start paring the chart down to exclude Anglosphere tracks and old hits as a quick global guide. Here are the 25 songs from 2026 (or late 2025) currently on the GXU (as of October 10) not from the Anglosphere:3
Karol G: Bby Wow (Colombia/Spain)
Shakira & Burna Boy: Dai Dai (Colombia/Nigeria)
BTS: Swim (South Korea)
Hugel: Movin’ to the Sun
Hugel: Jamaican Rum (Bam Bam) (France)
Natanael Cano, Tito Double P, Victor Mendivil & Ovi: Olivia La Flaka (Mexico)
Dave and Tems: Raindance (UK/Nigeria)
DJ Goja, Jason Derulo & Melody: Mi Chico (Romania/US/Brazil)
Aitana: Superestrella (Spain)
LATIN MAFIA & Fred again..: Te Estoy Correteando (Mexico/UK)
Vacra & La Rvfleuze: Fille A Papa (France)
BTS: Normal (South Korea)
ILLIT: It’s Me (South Korea)
Jay Wheeler: De Lejitos (Puerto Rico)
LISA: SaWaDiKa (South Korea)
Mauvais djo: Pile (France)
ATEEZ: Bad (South Korea)
CORTIS: REDRED (South Korea)
Joao Gustavo & Murilo & Grelo: Postinho de Gasolina (Brazil)
Ya Ice Dilan X Rey Tony X Helabusador: Dichavate (Cuba)
GENER8ION & Yung Lean: Storm II (France/Sweden)
EBiDAN f. SUPER*DRAGON, Sakurashimeji, ONE N’ ONLY, BUDDiiS, ICEx & Lienel: Yes! Tokyo (Japan)
Marc Segui & Pol Granch & Rauw Alejandro: Tiroteo (Spain/Puerto Rico)
Danny Ocean: Me Rehuso (Venezuela)
Karan Aujla: Ashke (India)
Even this minor sampling of global music gets you an interesting cross-section of international scenes. But imagine how many more songs might be on this chart if recurrence rules stopped the approximately 115 out of 200 songs that are just old songs that get big streaming numbers. Even if there were always double the number of new Anglosphere songs than non-Anglosphere on this list, you’d still have another forty songs from around the world to add to this list of 25.
As is, the chart is really only useful to control for US influence on the Global 200, to figure out which songs are really just regional US hits and don’t take off in the rest of the world. For discovery, you’re better off following regional and country-level charts to find new artists somewhere that doesn’t just remind you that people around the world still like decade-old Weeknd songs, Fleetwood Mac, The Police, and yes, still “Mr. Brightside.”
My own discovery routes mostly involve me plowing through a lot of music very quickly. I think there should be better alternatives for a lightly curated snapshot of global hits, especially for people less sickos.jpeg than I am. A functioning GXU chart would be a simple way to get a sense of what’s going on around the world, but it’s hopelessly cluttered with garbage data. Set a cut-off point for old songs, create a separate “recurring” chart, or do anything else to get these old songs out of the new music charts.
1. Disiz f. Theodora: Melodrama
France/DRC-France
2. Vacra f. La Rvfleuze: Fille à Papa
France/Senegal-France
3. Aya Nakamura f. La Rvfleuze: Sexy Nana
Mali-France/Senegal-France
To the global charts we go for some of the Francophone pop I was writing about last week. I have had the full “Choosin’ Texas” turnaround on “Melodrama,” the year-long hit in France which I heard at the end of 2025 and didn’t think much of. Now that I’ve heard it many more times for research purposes, I think it fits in nicely with “Texas” and “Rein Me In” as a soft crowd-pleaser. You’ll get a bit more pulse from “Fillè A Papa,” the La Rvfleuze feature currently on the French (and global) charts, and more pulse than that from my favorite of the bunch, an Aya Nakamura smash from earlier in the year that was notably uncontroversial over at the Singles Jukebox.
4. Sindika f. TRK, Ameka Zrai: Nouchi in Paris
Côte d’Ivoire
Kworb informs me that this song made it to #96 on the Apple Music charts in Côte d’Ivoire, so perhaps I can step away from chart analysis and just tell you that this one sustains the atmosphere of what ended up being a fairly chill mix overall this week. Makes me wonder if the energy from the Nigerian Afrobeats boom settled mostly in Francophone rap and R&B.
5. Typhee: Telerama
France
And maybe more than just the energy settled there, too, as this Afropiano-backed freestyle from French rapper Typhee, via Marseille Capitale du Rap, suggests.
6. David Campana: Pas Ma Faute
Canada
Somehow the Great Bouyon Speed-Up keeps managing to slow itself down in spirit without technically making the tempos slower.
7. Mayezus: Chica G
Equatorial Guinea
Here is the Equatorial Guinean pop from Jonathan Bogart that I mentioned in the last newsletter. A reminder that there are 80 more songs from around the world where that came from.
8. NO11 f. Gabzy: Coachella
US-Nigeria
I mentioned new routes for the general atmosphere of Afrobeats and invoked the mostly tapped-out Afropiano Nigeria/South Africa pipeline above, but it turns out you can overcome the low odds of producing an interesting song in this area by adding a violin and a bunch of references to nepo babies. (As far as I can tell, NO11, who was born in Houston but grew up in Abuja, does not have famous parents.)
9. Dawn Richard: Only Fans
US
Seems like the house-pop crossover artist of the year is Tinashe, whose album is good but has gotten enough shine elsewhere for me not to have to dig in too deeply. (I will, however, be stumping for Ashe, who has nothing in common with Tinashe outside of her name, whose The Girl of Your Dreams is threatening to overtake Six Sex on the top of my albums list.) But I’m still partial to Dawn Richard when she makes songs like this instead of mood music for art installations.
10. Logic1000 f. Yunè Pinku: The Girl
Australia/UK
11. Manon Lisa: Le Petit Pêcheur
France
Back to France! The sort of flat speak-rap-sing that sounds great in French.
12. Ingratax: Bonsai
Mexico
Light reggaeton-pop that’s kept relatively spare, with little splashes of color for emphasis.
13. Shanguy: La Money
France-Poland/Italy-Poland
The sort of unspecific Latin pop that I associate mostly with European trend-hopping and especially with Italian pop, so I guess I receive partial credit for this being a French and Italian duo based in Poland who have a new Bulgarian lead singer Nika Paris.
14. Meghan Oak: Chaos
Canada
Francophone A-pop? Lovely sun-dappled Quebecoise alt-confessional.
15. Mei Semones: Howl
Japan-US
Mei Semones can clearly do no wrong, especially if, like me, you are a huge dork for light acoustic bossa pop with tricky time signature flourishes.
16. Lulina f. Ana Frango Elétrico: Outras Vezes
Brazil
Barbara Scarambone at Boombop Indica recently did a great round-up of recent Brazilian albums, and this Lulina record was one of the keepers. It opens with a light psych indie-pop duet with Ana Grango Elétrico.
17. Calibro 35: LSD on Sunet Blvd
Italy
Hip soundtrack stuff from an Italian group that specializes in the sort of music that you might play as our wry anti-hero schlub posing as a detective gathers a few clues in a montage.
18. Amanar de Kidal: Aljahalat
Mali
Tuareg! Good!
19. Velito el Bufón, Yeyito DK, Fernando Produce: De Cara
Cuba
Haven’t really distinguished specific sonic features of Cuban reparto to listen for—most of the songs I get are pretty stylistically diverse within a broad definition of reggaeton-leaning Latin pop styles. Guess I will continue to go song by song.
20. Mpho.wav, Shimza: Mamano
South Africa
21. Sir Trill, Okwanda, Udoti Udemedi, ZiiBeats: Cinderella
South Africa
Am I going to end the final few mixes of the year crammed with a bunch of South African house music to pad out the runtime and juke my regional stats? Find out (along with me) next week!
That’s it! Until next time, tell someone to fix the GXU!
—Dave Moore (the other one)
Title from NO11 f. Gabzy: Coachella
There was a jump in new songs the following week, October 20, which I’m looking at the day before this posts, including five tracks on the new album by K-pop boy band PLAVE. Other new entries: a single from K-pop girl group A2O LITE, indie-pop from the Philippines by Mariah Deborah, Turkish girl group Manifest, and two Brazilian duos, Felipe & Rodrigo and Hugo E Guilherme.
I’m not a chart fanatic and think you could mostly accomplish this on Billboard by adding stricter recurrence rules. But I do occasionally check Kworb, a simple aggregator of streaming data that’s the sort of passion project held together by one of the many load-bearing randos who keep the internet chugging along.
I’m excluding both ADÉLA and Katseye here as “Anglosphere” artists but they’re worth mentioning—ADÉLA, who has two tracks on the GXU both of which are in the top 5 as of October 20, is from Slovakia, and Katseye, with three songs on the chart, has members from the Philippines and South Korea. There’s also the odd case of Imael Angel, a fully A.I.-generated act by a Hungarian Suno user, appearing on the chart at #142. Imael Angel also generated the song that Hugel rerecorded as “Movin to the Sun” with Ultra Naté.