LONDON, U.K. / TORONTO, ON. – (3 April, 2024) – In response to explosive fan demand on TikTok, platinum-selling and award-winning artist and songwriter Tebey has released a country rendition of The Weeknd’s ‘Blinding Lights’, available now via Jayward Artist Group / The Orchard on all streaming platforms here. Released worldwide on March 9, the track has already had over 1.8 million global streams and 18 million impressions on Instagram; airplay in 9 countries; charted on Apple Music in 86 Countries; and last week hit Top 3 on the Spotify Viral Chart in Sweden and Norway, and the Viral Top 15 in his native Canada.
Tebey first recorded a short snippet of the song and posted it to social media (March 3rd), which generated such an immediate, positive response that his team encouraged him to promptly record a full studio version of the cover. The resulting TikTok clip of Tebey’s take on ‘Blinding Lights’ had over 12 million views in one week, and Tebey’s clips featuring the song have now surpassed 21 million total views. The official lyric video is available to view here.
His unique country twist on the acclaimed, record-breaking pop song rapidly captured the attention of users worldwide. It was even noticed by The Weeknd himself, who posted about the song on Instagram and reposted Tebey’s video on his own page; now his 5th most viewed TikTok video ever.
Fans immediately started asking for the full version to be released while Tebey and his producer were able to finish and deliver the track in a matter of days and his label was able to get it out to DSP’s by Saturday, March 9th.
“It was never my intention to release a fully produced country version of ‘Blinding Lights’. This whole thing has been driven solely by the fans, and their reaction to a performance video I made to foster more connection with them on social media,” said Tebey. “I thought that doing a countrified version of a pop song might be a fun piece of content for fans and gain me some new followers on TikTok and Instagram, but I’m just as shocked as everyone how viral this has gone. Once I saw the reaction my version was getting online, my producer and I literally raced to finish the song and get it out to the streaming platforms within days.”
The fan-driven cover was produced by Danick Dupelle (Tyler Joe Miller, Matt Lang) and Tebey, and views across the artist’s socials continue to build at a rapid rate, with an increase of over 200% on all platforms.
After key country radio programmers expressed interest in receiving the track to keep up with the high demand from the public, the track has now been officially serviced to radio in Canada and multiple other countries worldwide, alongside his current single ‘Hold Your Horses’, which is currently in the Top 25 of the Canadian country radio chart.
