Dean Lewis clocks half a billion streams

As triple platinum single Be Alright marks its eighth consecutive week at the top of the TMN Hot 100 Airplay Chart (the first Australian artist this decade to do so), Dean Lewis has surpassed half a billion global streams of his music, his record company Island has announced.

Lewis took to social media to announce that Be Alright is also the eleventh most Shazamed song in the world right now.

The global smash hit is now gold in Norway, Sweden, Canada and New Zealand with Ireland approaching platinum.

The singer-songwriter revealed to Genius that the song was almost lost forever.

“I was on the phone to my ex-girlfriend at the time, on the bed and pretending to be a rapper.

“She said to me, ‘that sounds really good, you should record that’.

“I recorded a voice memo of this song’s melody and went to bed because it was late.

“When I woke up, my phone over that night had fallen on the ground and smashed on the floor.

“I was in the middle of this…I was at a farm recording studio, and I couldn’t actually open my phone.

“It was completely broken and I couldn’t go and get it fixed.

“But then I realised that the night before I emailed her the voice memo I’d recorded … or, like a snippet of it.

“So I opened up the snippet and here was the start of Be Alright.

So the song almost didn’t exist.”

He just completed his UK and European shows (eight sold-out shows in seven countries) before heading to the US for dates.

He posted: “Honestly can’t believe I’m a teenage heartthrob (even better cause I’m not a teenager).”

Lewis returns to Australia to kick off his close to sold-out national tour on November 30 in Melbourne.

He’s doing five dates at the Metro in his hometown Sydney, the fifth one on Sunday, December 23, setting a record at the venue for the number of shows for 2018.