Dean Lewis’ ‘Be Alright’ earns place in APRA AMCOS’ one billion streams club
Dean Lewis has joined the billionaire club.
The globetrotting Aussie singer and songwriter is now a fully signed-up member of APRA AMCOS’ The 1,000,000,000 List, for his chart-topping hit ‘Be Alright,’ co-written by Jon Hume.
The Sydney singer has had the world at his feet since ‘Be Alright’ dropped in June 2018. The track spent five weeks at No. 1 on the ARIA Singles Chart and eight weeks as the most played song on Australian radio. In the United States, the track led the Billboard Adult Pop Songs radio airplay chart and got Lewis his first top 40 on the Billboard Hot 100.
The ballad just missed out on cracking the top 10 in the United Kingdom, hitting a best of No. 11.
In March, his full-length album A Place We Knew (Island/Universal) opened at No. 1 on the ARIA Albums Chart, and the following month, Lewis scooped a brace of trophies at the APRA Awards in Melbourne, for breakthrough songwriter of the year and the outstanding international achievement award for ‘Be Alright.’
Dean Lewis, ‘Be Alright’:
You can’t just apply for membership to this exclusive club. The List is awarded to APRA AMCOS members who have accumulated more than one billion global streams for an original song.
The 1,000,000,000 List counts streaming data from all major services including Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, Vevo, Amazon, Google Play and more. It’s said to be the first award of its kind to acknowledge a songwriter’s nine-figure achievement, and it comes at a time when digital platforms are surging. Thanks to those services and others, APRA AMCOS’ digital-related income for 2017-18 came to $420 million, nearly a third of all revenue.
Credit: Belinda Dipalo
Lewis performed ‘Be Alright’ and other songs off his LP at Splendour in the Grass on the weekend, a warm up for a full-scale tour of North America that’ll include sets at Lollapalooza in Chicago and Outside Lands Festival in San Francisco.
Lewis has a following stateside, where he performed on The Ellen Show, Jimmy Kimmel Live! and the U.S. Today Show. At one stage, ‘Be Alright’ was the most Shazamed in the U.S., powering Lewis to No. 1 on Billboard’s Emerging Artist Chart, knocking off Ava Max in the process.
“I’m spending a lot of time all over,” he told Tone Deaf ahead of his album release. “I’m still spending a lot of time in Sydney, though (my team) want me to move to Los Angeles. I won’t be spending much time here the next year.”
Lewis Joins fellow inductee Nat Dunn, the Australian songwriter, producer and artist who was recently honoured with the milestone for her co-writing work on Marshmello & Anne-Marie’s hit ‘Friends.’
This article originally appeared on The Industry Observer, which is now part of The Music Network.