When Benny Blanco released Eastside in 2018 with Halsey and Khalid, nobody could have predicted that a wistful three-minute ode to sneaking around on the “east side of the city where the sun don’t set” would someday compete with your toddler’s favorite Baby Shark video for eternal digital real estate.
And yet, as of September 25, 2025, the song has officially surpassed two billion streams on Spotify. That’s billion with a “B”—the sort of number that makes you wonder if the entire population of Ireland (where the track hit No. 1) has been playing it on repeat every morning since release.
It is the first song for Blanco, a mega-producer who’s built hits for Ed Sheeran, Rihanna, and Katy Perry, to cross the milestone. Halsey and Khalid, meanwhile, get to bask in the glow of their second and third song respectively to reach two billion.
The song’s global chart run was already legendary: a No. 9 peak on the Billboard Hot 100, No. 1 in the U.K., New Zealand, Singapore, and Ireland, and a record-tying 45 weeks on Billboard’s Pop Songs radio chart. Now, its streaming immortality means that in the great family reunion of late-2010s pop hits, Eastside is the cousin who refuses to leave the party.
Of course, every pop juggernaut comes with baggage. In 2021, Blanco and his co-writers (including Ed Sheeran, because of course) were sued over the song’s guitar riff, accused of swiping it from a band called American XO. The case was dropped, though not before giving music lawyers yet another reason to bill their hours.
Still, Eastside’s appeal has always been less about innovation and more about relatability. Forbidden love, coming of age, a slightly moody guitar riff—it’s the IKEA of pop songs: simple, universal, and nearly impossible to escape.
Two billion streams later, Eastside is proof that you don’t need viral TikTok dances, Marvel tie-ins, or AI avatars to make a hit last. Sometimes, all you need is a melancholic melody and a generation willing to romanticize sneaking out at 17.
And for anyone feeling old: remember, the kids who were blasting this song in high school are now getting married. At least one of them probably walked down the aisle to it.
