“The Lion King” soundtrack is feeling the love tonight, with both the original 1994 and the latest 2019 albums seeing a 50% Spotify streaming spike in the last week.
The Disney remake opened with $191 million last weekend, and the property’s songs new and old are reaping dividends. For the newest iteration, “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” with Beyoncé and Donald Glover tops the streaming count, followed by “Circle of Life” and “Hakuna Matata.” Nostalgic listeners have gone a different direction by crowning “Just Can’t Wait to Be King” as the most-streamed song from the 1994 soundtrack.
The new soundtrack surprisingly has an older demographic. For the 1994 album, 18-24-year-olds constitute the plurality with 28% of the streaming. The 2019 soundtrack’s biggest demographic, on the other hand, is the 25-29 age group with 30% of the streaming.
The top five countries streaming the 2019 soundtrack are, in order, the U.S., the U.K., Australia, Brazil and the Netherlands. And the top U.S. state streaming the new album is New York, followed by Massachusetts, Tennessee, Maryland and Virginia.
Beyoncé dropped the album “The Lion King: The Gift” on the same day as the opening of “The Lion King.” “Mood 4 Eva,” her collaboration with “The Lion King” co-star Glover and her husband Jay-Z, has the most streams on Spotify for “The Gift.” Next is “Brown Skin Girl,” which features Beyoncé’s daughter Blue Ivy. Third is “Spirit,” an original song in the remake.