Harry Styles' "As It Was" was 2022’s most streamed Spotify song

By Dominic Punt
Published
Harry Styles in As It Was video

Catchy pop hit "As It Was" by global superstar Harry Styles has been confirmed as the most streamed track on Spotify (2022) with a massive 1.5 billion plays throughout the year.

Released on 1 April 2022, the song spent ten weeks at number one on the UK charts and 15 atop the Billboard Top 100 in the United States.

Harry’s House, the third solo album by the former One Direction member, came second on the list of 2022's most streamed albums on Spotify, only behind Bad Bunny’s Un Verano Sin Ti.

And this isn’t the single's first record either, as the song had already smashed the record for most streamed track on Spotify in 24 hours (male) with 16,103,849 plays on its release date of 1 April.

It also set the weekly streams record with 78,460,903 plays by 8 April.

The song itself is a blend of retro '80s echoes and contemporary upbeat sounds - definitely a tune to lift your mood!

It opens with a young voice saying: "Come on, Harry, we want to say goodnight to you!"

For this section, as confirmed by EW, the voiceover was done by Styles' five-year-old god-daughter Ruby, and kicks off a '70s inspired video featuring some iconic London landmarks.

Behind "As It Was" at number one for the yearly streams, "Heat Waves" by Glass Animals was the second-most played track of 2022, ahead of "STAY" by The Kid LAROI and Justin Bieber in third.

The aforementioned Bad Bunny had the fourth and fifth most streamed songs of the year with "Me Porto Benito" and "Tití Me Preguntó".

Harry Styles from above

As one fifth of One Direction, Styles has also received multiple other Guinness World Records titles, including being the first UK group to debut at number one in the USA with a debut album and winning the most Teen Choice Awards by a music group with 28.

Styles, with other members Liam Payne, Louis Tomlinson, and Niall Horan, announced they were going on an ‘indefinite hiatus’ in 2016. Zayn Malik previously left the band in 2015.

The Weeknd's "Blinding Lights" is the most streamed track on Spotify overall, with 3.39 billion streams as of 6 January 2023.