In a remarkable achievement, the collaboration between Nigerian artist Rema and international sensation Selena Gomez, “Calm Down,” has achieved a historic milestone by becoming the longest-running song on Billboard’s Pop Airplay chart. The track has now secured its 64th week on the chart, an unparalleled feat in the industry as of the survey dated January 20, 2024.
“Calm Down” first graced the Pop Airplay chart on November 5, 2022, and during its tenure, it spent an impressive five weeks at the coveted No. 1 spot, marking Rema’s inaugural chart-topper and Gomez’s fourth. Currently, the song holds the 12th position on the chart.
This accomplishment has propelled “Calm Down” ahead of the previous record holder, Harry Styles’ “As It Was,” which spent 63 weeks on the Pop Airplay chart from 2022 to 2023.
In addition to this milestone, “Calm Down” also claims the distinction of spending the most weeks within the Pop Airplay top 10. It held this coveted position for 45 consecutive weeks, commencing from March 11, 2023, through January 13.
The song’s journey began in February 2022 when Rema, originating from Nigeria, released the original version of “Calm Down” as a single from his debut solo album, “Rave & Roses.” Subsequently, in August of the same year, the song received a boost with the release of a remix featuring Selena Gomez, accompanied by an official music video premiere in September.
Notably, “Calm Down” dominated Billboard’s U.S. Afrobeats Songs chart for a staggering 58 weeks, maintaining its dominance from September 2022 to October 2023. This achievement marks the lengthiest reign on the Afrobeats chart since its inception in 2022.
Furthermore, the song made its mark on the all-genre, multimetric Billboard Hot 100, ascending to an impressive No. 3 position in June. This accomplishment marked Rema’s first entry on the Hot 100 and Gomez’s ninth top 10 hit. It stands as Gomez’s second-highest-charting song, following her one-week chart-topper, “Lose You to Love Me,” in November 2019.
In a candid interview with Billboard in 2023, Rema shared the inspiration behind “Calm Down,” recalling, “I was at a party, and a couple of girls walked in, and I saw a girl in yellow. I wanted to talk to her, and her friends were being really stuck up. They didn’t really want to chat. And I was like, ‘Yo, just calm down. Let’s have a chat.’ And then she actually calmed down, and we started talking and dancing. When she left the party, she was on my mind, and I wanted to see her again. That was it. I walked in the studio fresh out of that emotion.”
Rema expressed his immense happiness and gratitude for the song’s incredible success, emphasizing the cultural impact and the collaboration with Selena Gomez. He noted, “I’m so happy. I’m happy for me, my team, the culture and for Selena. She embraced the sound, and she did her own thing. It was the right timing [with] the right person, and the impact has been so huge. Seeing people who don’t speak my language sing my song word-for-word really shows that people are impacted by the sound, and I’m grateful for it.”
