“BbY WOW” was finished remotely. Karol G wrote the song in January with the Spanish singer-songwriter Judeline and her team, left it off her album because it did not feel complete, and only added it once Judeline and the producer-artist rusowsky had recorded their verses remotely, from different places in Spain, and sent them back. The moment the verses arrived, she told LOS40, she published the official tracklist, Consequence reported.
That late addition is now the biggest song in the world by Billboard’s count. “BbY WOW” has spent three weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Global 200, most recently on the chart dated 26 September, with 53.3 million streams and 2,000 downloads worldwide in the week of 11 to 17 September, according to Billboard. For Karol G it is a second Global 200 No. 1. For Judeline and rusowsky it is the first.
A Track That Was Not Finished in January
The album had already been delivered when Karol G decided the song still needed something. She had spent the making of No Me Arrepiento de Sentir Tanto listening widely, through alternative, indie, ambient and pop-rock, and kept returning to rusowsky, whose music she described as a balance between alternative and urban sounds. “I kept thinking, ‘It needs rusowsky,'” she said. She also felt that Judeline could bring something to the track that it did not yet have.
The fix was to add voices rather than start again. Two new voices were recorded away from the main sessions and placed into a song that already existed, and Karol G singled out rusowsky’s verse as the finishing touch. Judeline told Billboard in late August that the song had been recorded only the month before, which puts the final build of a global No. 1 in July.
That timeline matters for how the song reached people. It was one track on an album, added at the last moment, and it built its audience after release, climbing the charts week by week rather than arriving at the top.
Who Built It: A Songwriter and a Producer From Madrid
Judeline was already inside the project. Rolling Stone reports that she was one of Karol G’s most trusted collaborators on the album, helped write “BbY WOW” and has credits on three other tracks: “Matadora”, “Te Llevas To” and “Final Feliz”. She told the magazine that the sessions were organic, that she had not written for other artists in a long time, and that Karol G was preparing for Coachella while they worked.
rusowsky, whom Billboard’s Leila Cobo describes as a producer-keyboardist, is a long-standing friend of Judeline. The two met when she had just moved to Madrid, and she describes their careers as growing up side by side, alongside Ralphie Choo. Rolling Stone calls the finished record a smooth club track, and the credits explain why it sounds like a meeting point: a Colombian headliner, a Spanish songwriter and a Spanish producer whose own work sits between two scenes.
Judeline has said that she did not see the song’s success coming, and that nobody can predict which track on an album will be the one that connects.
How It Sits on a Heartbreak Album
No Me Arrepiento de Sentir Tanto, which translates as I’m Not Sorry for Feeling So Much, is not built around the hardcore perreo that made Karol G’s name. In a critic’s take for Billboard, Cobo writes that the album moves into “a universal pop/dance/alt mood”, and that its two Hot Latin Songs No. 1s “offer glimmers of mid-tempo rhythm on an album where melancholy dominates”. Consequence, reviewing her stadium show, called “BbY WOW” a “sad perreo song”.
That texture is the point. The rhythm carries the song on a dancefloor while the album around it deals in loss, and Cobo argues that listeners have shown they will follow Karol G from heavy reggaeton to more understated material. The album debuted at No. 1 on Top Latin Albums on the chart dated 22 August, ending the run of Bad Bunny’s Debí Tirar Más Fotos, which had spent a record 77 nonconsecutive weeks on top.
On the US-focused Hot Latin Songs chart, “BbY WOW” jumped from No. 5 to No. 1 on the chart dated 29 August, off 6.1 million official US streams. It replaced Karol G’s own “Ahí”, featuring Drake, making her the first artist in nearly two years to replace herself at the top. It was her 11th No. 1 on that chart.
The Climb to the Top of the World
The global build was gradual. On the chart dated 29 August, the song jumped from No. 171 to No. 37 on the Global 200 and entered the Global Excl. U.S. chart at No. 41. Two weeks later, on the chart dated 12 September, it rose 5-1 in its fourth week, with 42.3 million streams worldwide, up 62 per cent on the week, Billboard reported.
It took the top spot from Shakira and Burna Boy’s “Dai Dai (FIFA World Cup Official Song 2026)”, which had led the Global 200 for seven weeks and the Global Excl. U.S. chart for 10, a run that began with a debut at No. 166 that topmusic.news traced earlier this month. Billboard noted that “BbY WOW” was the first No. 1 on the global charts performed predominantly in Spanish since Bad Bunny’s “DtMF” ended its reign in March.
The second week brought 52.9 million streams and Karol G’s first multi-week No. 1 on the global lists; her only previous leader, “TQG” with Shakira, topped them for a single week in March 2023. The same week, the song climbed from No. 16 to No. 10 on the Billboard Hot 100, her second top 10 there and the first for Judeline and rusowsky.
Where the Streams Come From
The split in Billboard’s data shows how international the song is. In the week of its first No. 1, 30.7 million of its 42.3 million streams came from outside the United States. In its third week, 39.5 million of 53.3 million did. In both weeks, roughly three quarters of the song’s streams came from outside the US.
The growth has also flattened. Outside the US, third-week streams dipped 1 per cent, to 39.5 million. Worldwide, streams rose 62 per cent in the week it reached No. 1, 25 per cent the week after and 1 per cent in the third week, while downloads rose from 1,000 to 2,000. By mid-September, Rolling Stone counted 78 million Spotify listens and 37 million YouTube views.
The First Time All Three Shared a Stage
The song had not been performed by all of its credited artists until Thursday 17 September, when Judeline and rusowsky joined Karol G at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey on her Viajando Por El Mundo Tropitour. Consequence’s review describes the producer Tainy at a makeshift DJ table decorated with the flags of Colombia, Spain and Puerto Rico, bringing a new beat to the song while fireworks went off above the stadium.
That live rebuild fits the song’s history. It was assembled from parts recorded in different places, finished late, and then reworked again for a stadium. The tour continues with two nights at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami on 2 and 3 October, and the next Global 200, dated 3 October, will show whether “BbY WOW” holds on for a fourth week.
About Author
