Rosalía nabs her second top 10 on Billboard’s Tropical Airplay chart, as her latest single “Despechá” rallies 18-6 in its second week to lead the Aug. 20-dated survey.
“Despechá” becomes the greatest gainer of the week with a robust 83% boost in audience impressions, to 3.12 million earned in the U.S. in the week ending Aug. 14, according to Luminate.
“Despechá” is Rosalia’s second Tropical Airplay top 10 and first as a soloist, unaccompanied by any other artist. Her maiden top 10 entry, “La Fama,” featuring The Weeknd, led the ranking for two weeks (the May 14 and May 21-dated lists). However, “Despechá” is off to a faster start than “La Fama,” which didn’t hit that 3.12 million audience threshold until its sixth week on the chart (Feb. 26, when it reached No. 8).
Praised as “a quintessential summer jam” and a fan favorite on tour, the mambo-permeated “Despechá” was released July 28 as a single through Columbia. Its music video dropped a week ago, on Aug. 10, just three days before the track debuted at No. 18 on Tropical Airplay (Aug. 13-dated survey).
The buzz for “Despechá,” however, began three weeks prior to its official release, after listeners previewed the song at Rosalía’s show in Almeria, Spain on July 3, the launch date of her Motomami world tour. Performed without a name to an audience of 12,000, “Despechá,” including three other unreleased tunes of her first recital, blew up on TikTok the next day. Rosalía finally revealed the name of the tune as “Despechá” (temporarily previously named “Lao a Lao”) on social media on July 12. As expected, TikTok became the main firing pin of the song as fans, influencers and Spanish celebrities rendered their own videos of the song immediately after the Spaniard dropped a 35-second clip on the platform on July 13.
“Despechá” generated 3.9 million U.S. streams after its first full tracking week ending Aug. 11 — a day following its video release — which yielded a No. 18 debut on the all-metric Hot Latin Songs chart and No. 22 on Latin Streaming Songs, both for the week dated Aug. 13. On the former’s current chart, it takes the Greatest Gainer/Sales, Airplay & Streaming honors and pushes to No. 13. In total, the song has earned 9.4 million on-demand streams to date.
Back to radio, the song concurrently debuts at No. 34 on the Latin Airplay chart, Rosalía’s highest debut since her maiden entry in 2019.
As “Despechá” continues its worldwide frenzy, it also is making big waves on both global charts: it holds steady at No. 8 on the Global 200 and peaks at No. 5 on the Global Excl. U.S. ranking.
Rosalía’s “Despechá” is her first offering since the No. 1 album Motomami, the 16-track set which ruled Latin Pop Albums for six weeks starting the April 2-dated ranking.
