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Hip-Hop Lives Here
Ed Sheeran is closing out 2021 with a major achievement under his belt. On Wednesday (Dec. 22), the singer posted a video to his Instagram announcing that his 2017 hit “Shape of You” has become the first song in Spotify’s history to reach 3 billion streams.
“I’ve just heard ‘Shape of You’ has reached 3 billion streams on Spotify, which is absolutely insane. I remember this song hitting a billion and thinking that that was weird,” Sheeran said. “The first song to hit 3 billion streams and I’m really, really chuffed with it. Thank you, Spotify, for your support over the years. We’ve had a great 10 years together and hopefully, we have a great 10 years more.”
The 30-year-old also took a brief moment to share some backstory on how the track became a single in the first place, revealing that he went back and forth with Ben Cook — former president of Atlantic Records UK who signed Sheeran — about making “Shape of You” the first single from his 2017 album, ÷ (Divide).
“The song wasn’t meant to make the album … the album wasn’t done, and when I finished the song, Ben Cook from my record label was basically saying, ‘You have to put this on the album, it has to be a single.’ I said to him, ‘I want ‘Castle on the Hill’ to be the first single, that’s going to be bigger,'” Sheeran explained. “We agreed to disagree and put both songs out at once, and I have to say that Ben, I was wrong and you were very much right.”
“Shape of You” would go on to spend a total of 59 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 chart; the tracked stayed at the No. 1 spot for 12 weeks. (“Castle on the Hill,” in comparison, peaked at No. 6 on the chart and enjoyed 33 weeks on the Hot 100.) The success of “Shape of You” — alongside “Castle on the Hill” and “Perfect” — helped ÷ become Sheeran’s second longest charting album to date, spending a total of 250 weeks on the Billboard 200.
Watch Sheeran celebrate his Spotify milestone below.
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John Summit is preparing for the biggest tour of his career this fall with the launch of his 20 date CTRL ESCAPE arena tour, beginning Oct. 1. The massive run arrives in support of his latest album CTRL ESCAPE, which was released on April 15.
The tour will officially kick off in Champaign, a meaningful starting point for Summit since it is the same city where he studied accounting at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign before transitioning into music full time. His past life working toward a career in accounting also heavily inspired themes throughout the new album.
Following the opening date, the tour heads into Canada for three performances before returning to the United States for a stretch of East Coast shows and southern stops, including two dates in his adopted home city of Miami. Summit will then return to his hometown of Chicago for two performances before wrapping up the run with stops in Philadelphia, Brooklyn, and a final show in Oakland.
The arena trek adds to what has already been another packed year for the producer. This summer, Summit is scheduled to hold a residency at UNVRS in Ibiza, headline Lollapalooza in late July, and host the second edition of his Experts Only Festival on Randall’s Island in New York on Sept. 19 and 20.
Summit has already started teasing the arena production on social media, recently posting a rendering of the planned stage design. A full scale arena tour of this size remains relatively uncommon within electronic music and follows previous major headline performances at Folsom Field in Boulder and Madison Square Garden in New York.
See the complete tour schedule below.
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