Month: December 2022

For the second consecutive year, a British artist leads the year-end Billboard Global 200 songs chart. Dua Lipa passes the torch to Harry Styles, who leads the list with “As It Was.” A year ago, Lipa’s “Levitating” was tops. (“As It Was” also leads the 2022 year-end Billboard Global Excl. U.S. chart.)

Meanwhile, Bad Bunny finishes 2022 at No. 1 on both the Billboard Global 200 Artists and Billboard Global Excl. U.S. Artists roundup.

Explore All of Billboard’s 2022 Year-End Charts

Styles’ year-end triumph on the Billboard Global 200 is especially impressive considering “As It Was” missed the first 22 weeks of the tracking period, debuting atop the April 16-dated chart. During that span, six different songs topped the survey, including Glass Animals’ evergreen “Heat Waves,” which reigned from March 5 until April 9.

But “As It Was” arrived, fully formed, at No. 1 where it began a record-setting 15-week run on top. Further, the song spent its first 20 weeks at Nos. 1 or 2, first 24 weeks in the top three, and first 29 weeks inside the top five. Despite missing the first five months of the 2022 chart year, the track’s hyper-focus in the upper reaches of the survey during the eligibility period combined to make it the chart’s strongest song performer of the year.

“As It Was” repeats at No. 1 on the year-end ranking for Billboard Global Excl. U.S. chart, becoming the first song to top both lists’ year-end tallies – though the year-end rankings only began in 2021. (The Global 200 and Global Excl. U.S. chart launched in September 2020, but their first year-end recaps were produced in 2021.)

Beyond Styles’ repeat at No. 1, both global year-end charts share the same top 10 songs, though in slightly different orders. Glass Animals follows at No. 2 on both charts with “Heat Wave,” while crowning the year-end Billboard Hot 100 Songs list. On all three weekly surveys, it set a record for the longest trip to No. 1.

The rest of the Billboard Global 200 top 10 includes Ed Sheeran (twice), GAYLE, and Adele, plus collaborations from Elton John and Dua Lipa, The Kid LAROI and Justin Bieber, Imagine Dragons and JID, and The Weeknd and Ariana Grande. Two of those duets – “Stay” by The Kid LAROI and Bieber and “Save Your Tears” by The Weeknd and Grande — also placed in the top 10 on both year-end lists in 2021.

Bad Bunny is the No. 1 artist on both charts’ year-end recaps. Though already omnipresent on the two Global charts with material from his pair of 2020 releases, 2022’s Un Verano Sin Ti secured his No. 1 spot. All 23 songs from the album debuted on the May 21-dated rankings and logged a combined 81 weeks in the Billboard Global 200’s top 10 between then and the end of the 2022 tracking period.

Bad Bunny scores 12 songs on the year-end Billboard Global 200 chart and 10 on the corresponding Global Excl. U.S. list, taking up more than 10% of the year-end global rankings.

He is followed by Latin artists Rauw Alejandro, Karol G, Farruko and Chencho Corleone in the top 30 both of artist rankings. Elsewhere, South Korea’s BTS and BLACKPINK represent for non-English-language acts.

Billboard’s year-end music recaps represent aggregated metrics for each artist, title, label and music contributor on the weekly charts dated Nov. 20, 2021 through Nov. 12, 2022. The rankings for Luminate-based recaps reflect equivalent album units, airplay, sales or streaming during the weeks that the titles appeared on a respective chart during the tracking year. Any activity registered before or after a title’s chart run isn’t considered in these rankings. That methodology details, and the November-November time period, account for some of the difference between these lists and the calendar-year recaps that are independently compiled by Luminate.

Christian music in 2022 showed off its welcoming aspect to diversity with multiple women leading the charts and offering many collaborations between Christian and gospel artists.

The Top Christian Artist of 2022 is Kanye West, who concurrently reigns as the top male artist of the year. It marks two years straight that West leads both categories. His Donda album is No. 1 on the year-end Top Christian Albums tally for a second year in a row.

The hip-hop superstar is also the Top Gospel Artist of 2022. West wins the day on the strength and longevity of his second faith-based album, Donda, which is No. 1 on the Top Gospel Albums recap for a second year running.

Billboard’s year-end music recaps represent aggregated metrics for each artist, title, label and music contributor on the weekly charts dated Nov. 20, 2021 through Nov. 12, 2022. The rankings for Luminate-based recaps reflect equivalent album units, airplay, sales or streaming during the weeks that the titles appeared on a respective chart during the tracking year. Any activity registered before or after a title’s chart run isn’t considered in these rankings. That methodology details, and the November-November time period, account for some of the difference between these lists and the calendar-year recaps that are independently compiled by Luminate.

Explore All of Billboard’s 2022 Year-End Charts

Let Us Recap: On the Billboard charts in September 2021 Donda debuted atop the all-genre Billboard 200 with 309,000 equivalent album units earned in the U.S. according to Luminate. It marked West’s 10th Billboard 200 leader. It simultaneously hit No. 1 on the Top Christian Albums and Top Gospel Albums charts.

Donda followed West’s first spiritual LP, 2019’s Jesus Is King, which was his ninth No. 1 on the Billboard 200.

Donda has spent all of 2022 at Nos. 1 or 2 on Top Christian Albums.

Plus, the year’s rundown of the top tracks on the streaming-, airplay and sales based Hot Christian Songs ranking includes two songs by West inside the top 5.

“Praise God,” which dominated the survey for seven weeks starting last December is at No. 2 and “Hurricane,” which ruled for 12 weeks beginning in September 2021 is the No. 4 title on the year-end list.

West was not absent from the weekly Christian charts in 2022. His featured role on DJ Khaled’s “Use This Gospel (Remix),” which also featured Eminem, arrived at the Hot Christian Songs apex in September, awarding West with his fifth leader and the first for Khaled and Eminem.

The top female Christian artist for 2022 is Katy Nichole, who records for the Franklin, Tenn.-based Centricity Music. Nichole is also Billboard’s Top New Christian artist.

The 22-year-old singer-songwriter from Mesa, Ariz. owns the No. 1 Hot Christian Songs title of the year with her launch single “In Jesus Name (God of Possible).” The song concurrently leads the Christian Airplay Songs year-end ranking. Nichole co-wrote “Name,” with Ethan Hulse, David Spencer and Jeff Pardo, the latter of whom also produced it solo.

“I’m blown away and so incredibly honored,” Nichole tells Billboard. “It is such a gift to be able to use music to bring the love of Jesus to so many. I’m beyond grateful for everything that God has done in this past year and for the impact of the songs and stories I’ve shared.”

Plus, Nichole is one of the first successful Christian artists to come from social media. She currently boasts over 450,000 TikTok followers and before she was signed to Centricity she first gained traction by posting videos on TikTok as well as Instagram.

“Name” led the weekly Hot Christian Songs chart for 20 weeks and Christian Airplay for nine frames. Her sophomore hit “God is In This Story” reigned the lists for three and two weeks respectively.

A full studio album from Nichole is expected in early 2023.

Meanwhile, for King & Country is crowned as Billboard’s top Christian duo/group of 2022. The sibling duo comprised of Luke and Joel Smallbone ranks second among all Christian acts.

“For God Is With Us,” which became the pair’s second of two No. 1s on Hot Christian Songs, is the No. 5 top song of the year. It led for one week on the Aug. 6 dated chart and for three frames on Christian Airplay beginning in July.

The pair’s first Hot Country Songs leader, “Relate” which dominated Hot Christian Songs for three weeks in February finishes as No. 11 on the year-end tally.

“Relate” also led Christian Airplay for three frames starting February 12.

In July “For God Is With Us” topped the survey for its first of three frames and gave the duo its 11^th No. 1.

The act also extended its record streak to eight consecutive Christian Airplay leaders (encompassing songs in lead roles promoted as proper, non-holiday radio singles, unless seasonal songs contribute to that run).

The duo began its run of eight straight No. 1s on the Aug. 18 dated tally when “joy.” commenced a four-week domination.

Billboard’s Top Gospel Artist of 2022 is Kanye West, who concurrently reigns as the top male artist of the year. West repeats, marking two years straight that he leads both categories.

The multi-genre superstar is simultaneously the Top Christian Artist of 2022. West reigns again mostly due to the staying power of his second faith-based album, Donda, which is No. 1 on the year-end Top Gospel Albums list.

Billboard’s year-end music recaps represent aggregated metrics for each artist, title, label and music contributor on the weekly charts dated Nov. 20, 2021 through Nov. 12, 2022. The rankings for Luminate-based recaps reflect equivalent album units, airplay, sales or streaming during the weeks that the titles appeared on a respective chart during the tracking year. Any activity registered before or after a title’s chart run isn’t considered in these rankings. That methodology details, and the November-November time period, account for some of the difference between these lists and the calendar-year recaps that are independently compiled by Luminate.

Explore All of Billboard’s 2022 Year-End Charts

On the Billboard charts dated Sept. 11, 2021, Donda started with a splash. It debuted in the penthouse on the all-genre weekly Billboard 200 plus Top Gospel Albums and Top Christian Albums with 309,000 equivalent album units earned in the U.S., according to Luminate.

It marked West’s 10th Billboard 200 leader and his second No. 1 on Top Gospel Albums (as well as Top Christian Album).

Donda followed his first spiritual LP, Jesus is King, which crowned both lists as well as the Billboard 200. King started with 264,000 weekly units in November 2019, which was a record at the time on the two faith-based tallies.

On the weekly Top Gospel Albums chart, Donda has held the summit every week during 2022. Donda is second to only Jesus is King on the list for the longest reigning titles in the history of Top Gospel Albums which started in 1983. Both sets are north of 65 frames each.

As for the top albums of 2022 Donda is No. 1 while Jesus is King ranks at No. 5.

Plus, West holds the Nos. 1 and 2 positions of the year on the year-end streaming-, airplay and sales based Hot Gospel Songs tally with “Praise God” at No. 1 and “Hurricane” at No. 2.

The top female gospel artist of the year is CeCe Winans, who is No. 4 among all acts. Winans was also the leading woman of 2021.

Winans’ LP Believe For It: A Live Worship is No. 3 on the Top Gospel Albums’ year-end tally. The set entered at No. 1 in March 2021 becoming her ninth No. 1. It ruled for seven weeks and has spent all of 2022 in the top 10.

The LP’s title track is the No. 8 song of 2022 on Hot Gospel Songs.

“Believe” dominated the weekly version of the multi-metric ranking for 12 weeks beginning in June and led Gospel Airplay for two frames starting on Jan. 29.

Winans’ “Goodness of God,” is the No. 2 track of 2022 on Gospel Digital Song Sales. The song rang up 13 weeks atop the list after it reached the penthouse in February, giving Winans her third leader.

“Goodness” reached No. 6 on Hot Gospel Songs in October, her fifth top 10.

Billboard’s top duo/group of 2022 and No. 2 among all acts is the Atlanta-based worship collective Maverick City Music.

Old Church Basement, the collaborative project with popular Christian act Elevation Worship, ranks as the Top Gospel Albums No. 2 LP of 2022. Basement, which opened at No. 1 on Top Gospel Albums in May 2021 with 19,000 units, has been in the top 3 for the entirety of 2022.

Maverick City Music posts two of its songs inside the top 5 on Hot Gospel Songs’ top tracks of 2022: “Promises,” featuring Joe L. Barnes and Naomi Raine is at No. 3, and “Jireh,” a collaboration between Maverick City Music and Elevation Worship is the No. 4 title for 2022.

“Jireh” also crowns the year-end ranking on Gospel Digital Song Sales.

Gospel music’s top new act of 2022 is E. Dewey Smith, whose rookie single, “Your Presence Is a Gift,” topped Gospel Airplay on the survey dated April 30. It peaked at No. 18 on Hot Gospel Songs.

Smith is based in Macon, Ga., and serves as the senior pastor and teacher at The House of Hope church in Atlanta.

Smith also released the holiday-themed album Let Praises Ring which arrived and peaked at No. 7 on Top Gospel Albums last December.

Most songs wouldn’t be the No. 1 on Billboard’s year-end Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart – or any other genre-based chart of a similar ilk, for that matter – two years after its initial release.

But “Heat Waves,” Glass Animals’ still-inescapable No. 1 of the year, isn’t most songs.

Explore All of Billboard’s 2022 Year-End Charts

A year after “Heat Waves” climbed to No. 2 on the year-end ranking (alongside Glass Animals’ own first-time rule on the 2021 Top Rock & Alternative Artists survey), the Dreamland tune lifts to No. 1 for 2022, staving off challenges from songs released in 2021, 2020 and even 1985. Which is of course emblematic of the music industry as a whole as 2022 comes to a close: old can be new, two years isn’t necessarily too long a runway against which to gauge a song’s success, and what seemed to work to break an act years ago may not be part of the playbook anymore.

Thank TikTok and other short-form video apps especially. The year-end Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart’s top 10, after all, is full of success stories from that corner of the Internet – and there’s even more to discover in the top 20, the top 30 and so on.

“Heat Waves” famously cracked the code in 2021, driving the song to an eventual 37-week reign on the weekly Hot Rock & Alternative Songs list that began in September 2021 and only concluded for good in June 2022.

“Heat Waves’” tremendous success fuels Glass Animals’ finish at No. 1 on the 2022 Top Rock & Alternative Artists recap.

Billboard’s year-end music recaps represent aggregated metrics for each artist, title, label and music contributor on the weekly charts dated Nov. 20, 2021 through Nov. 12, 2022. The rankings for Luminate-based recaps reflect equivalent album units, airplay, sales or streaming during the weeks that the titles appeared on a respective chart during the tracking year. Any activity registered before or after a title’s chart run isn’t considered in these rankings. That methodology details, and the November-November time period, account for some of the difference between these lists and the calendar-year recaps that are independently compiled by Luminate.

The No. 2 Hot Rock & Alternative Songs title of the year, GAYLE’s “Abcdefu,” initially blew up on TikTok in late 2021 and climbed to No. 2 on the weekly survey. Imagine Dragons and JID’s “Enemy,” the No. 3? It did well on TikTok alongside its radio and streaming success after its initial premiere as the theme song to Netflix’s Arcane: League of Legends.

Speaking of Netflix: count the film and TV streaming service as one of the other main drivers of success on the Billboard charts in 2022. It singlehandedly caused the return of 1985’s “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God),” previously a No. 30 hit for Kate Bush that year on the Billboard Hot 100. In fact, it wasn’t so much a return to form as it was a new cultural high for the song, which eventually peaked at No. 3 on the Hot 100 and ruled Hot Rock & Alternative Songs for 11 weeks once the reign of “Heat Waves” had ended.

“Hill” wasn’t a flash in the pan brought about by a quick sync in film or TV, as is sometimes seen in the entertainment industry. It was reserviced to radio, playing a part in prolonging its impact alongside the song’s return in Stranger Things’ second part of its fourth season later in the summer. All told, it’s the No. 4 song on the year-end Hot Rock & Alternative Songs list and ranked as the No. 1 on the year-end Rock Digital Song Sales tally, while alternative radio stations embraced it to the point that it appears at No. 17 on the Alternative Airplay Songs year-end survey.

And that wasn’t all for Stranger Things. Released a year after “Hill” in 1986, Metallica’s “Master of Puppets” boasted similar virality with its sync in the back-end of the fourth season, reaching the Hot 100 for the first time (peaking at No. 35 in July) and crowning the weekly Hot Hard Rock Songs chart for nine weeks, a run that drove the song to be No. 1 on the latter’s year-end ranking while Metallica itself is the year’s Top Hard Rock Artist. All that for a band that last released an album of fully new material in 2016, while Bush last did so in 2011.

Other TikTok and streaming successes include Zach Bryan and Steve Lacy, who rank as the Nos. 1 and 2 artists on the New Top Rock & Alternative Artists chart for 2022, respectively. Both, in addition to rock and/or alternative cred, create music difficult to neatly assign to just one overarching genre – Bryan in the country and folk corners of the industry, Lacy with material spanning pop, R&B and soul.

Bryan’s chart success was buoyed not only by his 34-song major label debut American Heartbreak and subsequent EP Summertime Blues (the former crowning the weekly Top Rock & Alternative Albums survey for eight weeks) – he also boasted entries in the chart year from the self-released DeAnn from 2019 and Elisabeth from 2020.

In addition to ranking at No. 1 on the new artists rundown, Bryan also appears at No. 3 on the Top Rock & Alternative Artists list for 2022.

Lacy, meanwhile, sported chart hits from 2022 album Gemini Rights as well as the 2017 TikTok trender “Dark Red,” reaching the top 10 of the year-end Rock Streaming Songs list twice, with “Bad Habit” at No. 3 and the aforementioned “Red” at No. 10. “Habit” even climbed to No. 1 on the Hot 100, reigning for three weeks late in the year.

Bryan, Lacy and Bush are three of six soloists in the top 10 of Top Rock & Alternative Artists, exemplifying the continued rise of single-person acts on the rock and alternative charts. They’re joined by Billie Eilish, GAYLE and Machine Gun Kelly at Nos. 5, 6 and 8, respectively. In no other year since Top Rock & Alternative Artists (formerly Top Rock & Artists) began in 2011 did more than four soloists reach the top 10.

By the way, Eilish was no slouch in 2022. She’s No. 1 on the Top Alternative Artists chart for 2022 and boasts the No. 1 on the year-end Top Alternative Albums ranking: Happier Than Ever, initially released in August 2021 and the No. 5 entry on the 2021 recap.

The year-end radio tallies see Red Hot Chili Peppers return in a big way following a pair of albums, Unlimited Love and Return of the Dream Canteen, the band’s first LPs since 2016’s The Getaway and the pair that marks the return of guitarist John Frusciante to the fold.

“Black Summer,” the lead single from the first release, comes in as the No. 1 Top Rock & Alternative Airplay song of the year and the No. 2 Alternative Airplay song, while also appearing at No. 6 on the year-end Top Mainstream Rock Airplay list.

The band is kept from No. 1 on the Alternative Airplay recap by the aforementioned “Enemy” from Imagine Dragons and JID, a juggernaut that’s now spent over a year on the weekly list, including nine weeks at No. 1 early in the year. Imagine Dragons last crowned the year-end Alternative Airplay song ranking in 2017 with “Believer.”

The Black Keys nab the No. 1 on Adult Alternative Airplay Songs for the year with “Wild Child,” the band’s first to do so since “Fever” in 2014, while Spoon ranks atop the artist-based survey after a trio of hits at the format, one of which – “The Hardest Cut” ruled for three weeks. And at Mainstream Rock Airplay, it’s perennial heavyweight Three Days Grace who takes top artist and song honors with “So Called Life,” their first time ruling the latter since “Break” led 2010’s year-end tally.

Nobody has been able to unseat Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio as the year’s Top Latin Artist for the last three years, and 2022 is no different as Bad Bunny crosses the finish line at No. 1 for a fourth consecutive year.

Notably, 2022 marks the eighth straight year that a male finishes atop the ranking (since Jenni Rivera’s 2013 domination). Before Bad Bunny’s four-year rule, Ozuna was the 2018 champ, preceded by Daddy Yankee in 2017, the late Juan Gabriel in 2016, and a back-to-back command by Romeo Santos in 2014-15.

Billboard’s year-end music recaps represent aggregated metrics for each artist, title, label and music contributor on the weekly charts dated Nov. 20, 2021 through Nov. 12, 2022. The rankings for Luminate-based recaps reflect equivalent album units, airplay, sales or streaming during the weeks that the titles appeared on a respective chart during the tracking year. Any activity registered before or after a title’s chart run isn’t considered in these rankings. That methodology details, and the November-November time period, account for some of the difference between these lists and the calendar-year recaps that are independently compiled by Luminate.

Explore All of Billboard’s 2022 Year-End Charts

Bad Bunny upholds his ‘YHLQMDLG’ (short for “I do whatever I want”) stance releasing all-Spanish-language tunes to global audiences without reservations. He’s secured a global fanbase thanks largely to his knack for melding rhythmic melodies with elements from multiple genres, zigzagging from one format to another within the same song, which translated into a provoking shift in Latin music. Thanks to his solid chart performance, in addition to completing the year at No. 1 on the year-end Top Latin Artists chart, the Puerto Rican adds more achievements to his resumé in 2022, taking home the trophies for Top Latin Artist – Male, Hot Latin Song, and Top Latin Album.

Bad Bunny continues as the No. 1 Top Latin Artist for a fourth straight year thanks to his extraordinary success during the 2022 chart year on both the weekly Top Latin Albums chart and Hot Latin Songs chart, as well as his blockbuster concert earnings as reported to Billboard Boxscore.

His latest album, Un Verano Sin Ti, arrived at No. 1 on the weekly Top Latin Albums, Latin Rhythm Albums and all-genre Billboard 200 charts (dated May 21, 2022). On both Top Latin Albums and Latin Rhythm Albums, it spent the rest of the 2022 chart year at No. 1. On the Billboard 200, it notched 13 nonconsecutive weeks in the lead.

The set opened with 274,000 equivalent album units earned in its first week in the U.S., according to Luminate, the largest weekly sum by a Latin album during the 2022 chart year. Concurrent with the album’s debut, mammoth streaming numbers (356.66 million on-demand official streams of the set’s tracks) yielded a Bad Bunny monopoly of the entire top nine on the Hot Latin Songs chart the same week. In addition, he broke the record for the most simultaneous titles on the chart in the same week, placing a total of 24 on the list (23 from the album).

Benito also takes the year’s No. 1 on the Hot Latin Songs recap, with “Me Porto Bonito,” a co-billed collaboration with Chencho Corleone. It hovered at No. 1 for 20 weeks on Hot Latin Songs after the superstar ceded the throne to one of his own in October: “Titi Me Preguntó.” “Bonito” concurrently earned Corleone his first champ on the multi-metric ranking.

Bad Bunny has seven of the year-end top 10 songs on the Hot Latin Songs roundup – all from his Un Verano Sin Ti album.

Karol G’s Still Got It: Karol G is No. 1 on the year-end Top Latin Artists – Female chart for a fourth consecutive year. She’s also No. 2 on the overall Top Latin Artists chart – the only female act in the top 10. The success comes after her strong showing in 2022 with her fusion of Colombian rhythmic tunes with pop and Afrobeats – and some big collaborations.

Her 2021 chart-topping album KG0516 spent nearly the entire 2022 chart year in the weekly top 10 of the Top Latin Albums chart, while she notched multiple new hits on the Hot Latin Songs chart, including two No. 1s in “Mamiii,” with Becky G, and “Provenza” (“Mamiii” also marked Becky G’s first No. 1 on the tally).

“Mamiii” spent 10 weeks at No. 1 on Hot Latin Songs and also topped the weekly Latin Airplay, Latin Pop Airplay, Latin Rhythm Airplay, Latin Digital Song Sales and Latin Streaming Songs charts. The song was soon overtaken by its follow-up “Provenza.” As it debuted at No. 2 on Hot Latin Songs, Karol G became only the second woman, after Selena, to hold Nos. 1 and 2 at the same time since 1995.

“Mamiii” and “Provenza” close 2022 at Nos. 4 and 5 on the year-end Hot Latin Songs recap – the only two songs in the top five that are not by Bad Bunny.

Eslabon Armado & Ivan Cornejo Makes Waves for Regional Mexican Music: In a notable showing for the regional Mexican genre during the year, two regional Mexican acts snag the No. 1 spots on key overall Latin recaps. Eslabon Armado is the Top Latin Artist – Duo/Group, while Ivan Cornejo is the Top New Latin Artist.

Eslabon Armado hit its stride in 2022. As the group’s fifth studio album Nostalgia was released, the California-based group made a historic debut across Billboard’s albums charts: it bowed atop Regional Mexican Albums (ruling for six weeks), in the top 10 on Top Latin Albums, while becoming the first top 10-charting regional Mexican album ever on the all-genre Billboard 200. Meanwhile, “Te Encontré,” a collab with Ulices Chaidez, topped Regional Mexican Airplay for one week — its first ruler there.

On Hot Latin Songs, Eslabon Armado charted more hits during the 2022 chart year than any other duo/group – 11.

Ivan Cornejo quickly rose as a favorite among Latin artists fueled by his popularity on TikTok. He took a first shot uploading a requinto cover of regional Mexican artist Esteban Gabriel’s “Hay Niveles” with instant credit from the singer. The 18-year-old crashed in the Latin charts in Oct. 2021, scoring his first top 10 on Hot Latin Songs with single “Está Dañada.” In addition to becoming a fixture on TikTok, the track became just the second title by a regional Mexican act to snatch an entry on the Billboard Hot 100, a list devoid of regional Mexican tunes until the arrival of Gera MX and Christian Nodal’s “Botella Tras Botella” in May of 2021.

Cornejo, who captures the Top New Latin Artist honors, saw his sophomore album Dañado open at No. 1 on the weekly Regional Mexican Albums chart (and spend most of the rest of the 2022 chart year atop the list). On the Top Latin Albums tally, it reached No. 3 and spent months in the top 10.

Further, Cornejo visited the all-genre Billboard 200 for a second time, becoming the fourth regional Mexican act to secure an entry there in 2022 (trailing Junior H, Yahritza y Su Esencia and Eslabon Armado).

Yahritza y Su Esencia’s Youthful Takeover: The regional Mexican genre, meanwhile, caps off the year with a mounting presence on the Billboard charts, thanks in part to the younger generations of singer-songwriters who are setting new rules as they experiment with different sounds. Such is the case of Yahritza y Su Esencia, who finish at No. 2 on the year-end Top New Latin Artists recap.

The Mexican American outfit burst out of the gate earlier in the year with unprecedented speed as its debut single, “Soy El Único,” went viral upon its release thanks to TikTok. The momentum yielded a No. 1 start on the weekly Hot Latin Songs and a top 20 debut on the all-genre Billboard Hot 100 chart (making the sibling trio the highest-ranked regional Mexican act in the 64-year-old chart).

“Soy El Único” closes 2022 at No. 34 on the year-end Hot Lating Songs recap while Yahritza y Su Esencia also places at No. 5 on the Top Latin Artists – Duo/Group roundup.

Dance Genre Growth: Dance generated a big impact in Latin music this year. The genre grew at a lightning-fast pace among Latin heavy hitters. A clear example is Farruko and his ubiquitous “Pepas” which led Hot Latin Songs for 14 weeks during the tracking period (a total of 26 weeks in command). The song earned the Puerto Rican – who first reached the chart in 2014 – his first No. 1 on the weekly Hot Latin Songs chart. The track closes 2022 as the No. 9 title on the year-end Hot Latin Songs recap and at No. 3 on the year-end Hot Dance/Electronic Songs roundup.

Other Latin powerhouses dabbling with EDM include Karol G, whose team-up with Tiesto, “Don’t Be Shy,” reached No. 4 on Hot Dance/Electronic Songs (it’s No. 35 on the year-end Hot Dance/Electronic Songs recap), while Skrillex’s partnership with Jhayco on “En Mi Cuarto” and with J Balvin on “In Da Getto” also nabbed a space on the tally (the latter is No. 37 for the year).

Further, Bad Bunny and Jhay Cortez’s “Dakiti” remained in the top 10 on Hot Latin Songs for 25 weeks during the tracking frame (previously topping the list for 27 weeks). It’s No. 13 on the year-end Hot Latin Songs chart.

On a global level, Bizarrap and Quevedo’s “Bzrp Music Sessions, Vol. 52” became a major hit. The club anthem translated into the former’s first top 10 on Hot Latin Songs and the latter’s first career entry there. Plus, both acts made their first trips to the top of the Global 200 and Global Excl. U.S. charts. On the year-end charts, it’s No. 33 on Hot Latin Songs, No. 12 on Hot Dance/Electronic Songs, No. 38 on the Billboard Global 200 and No. 21 on the Global Excl. U.S. recap.

Of course her birth name was Christine Perfect — did you expect Christine Average?

To write about Fleetwood Mac is to write about the story of Fleetwood Mac: the drugs, the sex, the drudgery of staying together with people you’ve long since stopped having feelings about. Yet! A beneficiary and victim of received thinking, Christine McVie — who died on Wednesday (Nov. 30) at age 79 — projected not groundedness so much as buoyancy. Whether a misplaced crush had devastated her or an unexpected one made loving fun, she created an impression of focus so intense that it shamed the guy who had his way with her. She was the mid-1970s’ best chronicler of sensual bliss and erotic loss.   

Approached by two mates who heard a midnight-blue melancholy in her flexible husk, the Lancashire-born singer-songwriter-keyboardist joined Chicken Shack and established herself as a vocalist of unusual empathetic gusto with a U.K. top 15 cover of Etta James’ “I’d Rather Go Blind” in 1969. 

White Britishers covering blues standards was a thing, and Perfect might’ve continued agreeably belting them on the small club circuit for decent annuities. Instead, she dumped Chicken Shack, married and took the name (and never dropped it) of bassist John McVie, and, besotted with the material by blues wunderkind Peter Green, joined the band — named after McVie and his best friend, drummer Mick Fleetwood.

Unheralded because these albums barely broke even, the period between Green’s 1970 departure and Buckingham-Nicks’ arrival in 1975 tested McVie’s ability to write tunes tasty enough for a theoretical mass audience whose palates might’ve adjusted given time. Call them Fleetwood Mac’s Hidden Years. Bare Trees’ “Spare Me a Little of Your Love” gleams. Its one incongruity is McVie’s early tendency to sing whole melodic lines instead of abbreviating them: she wrote verse when a little later she would turn into a short story writer. She had a talent for friendship, in this case with guitarists Danny Kirwan and Bob Welch — her keyboards embellished without overwhelming, and her harmonies deepened Welch’s often glib curiosity, as on the snaky, sensuous FM radio semi-hit “Hypnotized.” On Mystery to Me’s  “Why,” the band eases into the track: in its opening minutes, Welch and Bob Weston toss lines at her, to which she responds with clusters of tentative notes. 

By the time Nicks and Buckingham impressed Fleetwood with a harmonically adult but a larval stage of an eponymous album, McVie had found the ideal partners. Nicks’ erratic melodic sense needed McVie’s harmonies; Buckingham’s flights of fancy soared when they realized someone on Earth looked up to them. In a band where Nicks’ fantastical narratives and Buckingham’s verbal tags for the sake of production gewgaws dominated critical responses, McVie quietly wrote piano-based songs whose consistency honored Tin Alley craft while channeling the fervor of her blues roots. With the obliging rhythm section of Fleetwood and now ex-husband John, McVie could depend on a granitic foundation for her reveries. 

As crisp as new money, 1975’s Fleetwood Mac at last gave McVie’s material a sheen, hence a new, impressive urgency; no one in the Ford administration purred with such feline complacency as McVie did on “Over My Head” or, in the case of the Buckingham collab “World Turning,” suggested that life could change after a night of spooning. Greater even than these showhorse moments is “Warm Ways,” where her electric piano and Buckingham’s high, plaintive sustained notes evoke a tangle of sheets, a warmth of mattress. Christine McVie was the poet laureate of the Morning After.

Like that other singles-heavy blockbuster Thriller, Rumours (1977) finds new listeners every day. Blame the psychodrama, sure — or credit the impeccable craft of McVie songs like “You Make Loving Fun.” Her Clavinet clomps along and the way her choral vocal seems to dangle in the air, secure in the knowledge that Nicks and Buckingham will catch her. Stripped of its rueful innards by the Clinton-Gore campaign, “Don’t Stop” nevertheless remains less an anthem than a prayer, a last attempt to cheer herself up.

Preceded by stories about its extravagance – every band in the late ‘70s should’ve decorated studios with shrunken heads and leis – Tusk (1979) on first listen sounds as if it would beach a writer with McVie’s superficially superficial chipperness. Yet, instead of isolating her, Buckingham’s manipulation of echo and delay, functioned as the equivalent of a spotlight. The band opened their follow-up to the biggest-selling album in history with… a McVie ballad called “Over and Over.” That Fleetwood drum roll in the last 30 seconds is an instinct that bands spend thousands paying for. 

Later, McVie would balk, like a mother embarrassingly coughing into a handkerchief about a profligate son, over Tusk’s indulgences, but Buckingham coaxed several career-best performances out of her. Keyed to his liquidy guitar lines, Fleetwood’s metronomic tapping, and among the saddest sha-la-la’s in pop, “Brown Eyes” paints a groggy hopelessness over an object of desire more fucked up than her. If “Eyes” is the intro, then the echo-laden “Never Make Me Cry” completes this tear-stained diptych; when McVie sings the title refrain she fools nobody. Finally, as if to spite listeners who thought she specialized in red wine ballads, Fleetwood Mac released the trebly wonder “Think About Me” as the third single, on which McVie and Buckingham meshed into a bilious soulsonic force, a sardonic mode she tended to avoid: “I don’t hold you down/ Maybe that’s why you’re around” could’ve come from Nicks’ lyrics notebook. 

An underperformer compared to Rumours’ chart dominance, Tusk pleased none of Buckingham’s bandmates. The chastened new wave fellow traveler joined the group in France in 1981 to record Mirage, the most soft rock of the five Buckingham-Nicks albums, but one with strange, often dangerous eddies. The lead single “Hold Me” held the No. 4 position for weeks in the late summer of 1982, a rebuke to the Kleenex softness of its chart brethren. Dueting with Buckingham, McVie is barely in sync, like being on the phone with a boyfriend who talks past her. Buckingham woos her with sundry twinkling guitar parts that adduce his intuition about what love songs require: crosstalk, tension, release. 

Broken into their constituent parts, as they were in the early ‘80s, Fleetwood Mac’s songwriters retreated into their corners: Buckingham into studio-bound hermeticism, Nicks into AOR with gothic overtones, and, as on her 1984 solo album, McVie into head-nodding pop with not a hint of subversion. Although she scored a hit with the uptempo “Got a Hold on Me,” Christine McVie’s most sublime moment is “The Smile I Live For,” a ballad graced with a rare piano solo and her rather frightening concentration; she rhapsodizes about that smile as if it were as necessary as Lipitor. 

The Fleetwood Mac that recorded Tango in the Night depended on Buckingham’s mixing board sorcery more than ever – only XTC’s Skylarking in 1987 sported more whirrs and electronic chimes – but McVie contributed two of her best pure pop hits. Keyed to a hook that could be a guitar or synth, “Little Lies” brings the three singers together for a chorus in which Buckingham’s boyish yawp and Nicks’ punkish nasality rally around McVie’s full-throated commitment to useful fictions. And only she could’ve written the album’s fourth Hot 100 top 20 hit with a hook like “I wanna be with you everywhere” and not sound like a simp. Thanks to a Chevrolet EV commercial, “Everywhere” is everywhere again, and still a charmer.

Having given Fleetwood Mac its biggest-selling album since Rumours, Buckingham skedaddled; he would return a decade later to a band closer to an Ltd. than a coven. Eventually McVie left too, coaxed back in 2014 after a period of patrician ease. “Being busy walking my dogs — actually not doing anything very constructive,” she told The L.A. Times in 2017 about her sabbatical. She had a detachment from her own achievements; being The Sane One in Fleetwood Mac was like a cabaret act. The person who wrote and sang “Remember Me,” “Say You Love Me,” “Songbird,” and “Love in Store” ignored the plaudits, treating her legacy as casually as a roadside f–k. 

She could still write a great song. On the quasi-Mac reunion album with Buckingham (and without Nicks) released in 2017, she contributed “Carnival Begin,” her organ murmuring with portent. “I want it all, the colors and swings,” she pleads, the decades falling like scales. For five minutes she’s the art school girl in Chicken Shack, entranced by Etta James. 

If there’s a track of hers to play — to inhabit — try “Mystified,” buried on Tango in the Night. Was there a better title for a Christine McVie song? It’s a study in stasis. Few singer-songwriters appreciated the minutiae of rapture—about meeting a guy’s gaze and realizing, oh dear. In a way, Christine was the youngest Fleetwood Mac member. She stood up for adult euphoria.