“Teenage Dream” is still racking up the streams. The title track from Katy Perry’s world-conquering 2010 sophomore album has surpassed one billion streams on Spotify, joining the platform’s vaunted Billions Club.
This is Perry’s 10th song to tally more than a billion streams on the platform. Previously, she reached the milestone with “Dark Horse,” the Calvin Harris collab “Feels,” “Roar,” “Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.),” “Firework,” “The One That Got Away,” “Hot N Cold,” “I Kissed A Girl,” and the Snoop Dogg-featuring “California Gurls.”
Teenage Dream was one of the most successful albums in popular music history. It spun off five No. 1 hits on the Billboard Hot 100, then added a sixth with “Part Of Me” upon the release of the deluxe edition. Two more singles, “The One That Got Away” and “Wide Awake,” reached the Top 3. The album itself debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with 192,000 in first-week sales and went on to Diamond certification from the Recording Industry Association of America, signifying 10 million units shipped in the United States—and that’s not including its multi-Platinum status in many other countries around the world.
Of the many hits from the album, “Teenage Dream” was arguably the most acclaimed. At the time, the sparkling specimen of a song—written by Perry with Bonnie McKee, Dr. Luke, Max Martin, and Benny Blanco—was received as a mature update to the playful pop Perry made her name on. Years later, in a Stereogum retrospective, critic Tom Breihan graded “Teenage Dream” a 10/10, praising it as “a magical lightning bolt of a track” and “the absolute pinnacle of that moment of gleaming, hyper-processed big-money pop music.” And in a look back on the track for its 10th anniversary in 2020, the UK outlet Metro declared that “Teenage Dream” is “still the perfect pop song.”
