'BbY WOW' Almost Didn't Make Karol G's New Album, and Now It's No. 1 in 12 Countries

Karol G almost left “BbY WOW” off her sixth album. She has said that after listening to the Spanish artist Rusowsky's music all summer, she felt the song was missing something, and asked Rusowsky and fellow Spanish artist Judeline to record verses for it, remotely, before she had even announced the album's tracklist.

The song made the cut. Released on 7 August 2026 on Bichota Records and Interscope, as part of the album “No Me Arrepiento de Sentir Tanto,” “BbY WOW” is now No. 1 on the US Hot Latin Songs chart and the Billboard Global 200, and No. 7 on the Hot 100.

No. 1 in 12 countries, and six of them are on no official list

Billboard's own count has “BbY WOW” topping the national charts of nine countries: Spain, Colombia, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, Mexico, Paraguay and Peru.

We read a different chart. YouTube Music keeps its own weekly Top 100 for 69 countries, and on the copy we read on 28 September 2026, “BbY WOW” is No. 1 in twelve of them: the nine Billboard names, plus Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama and El Salvador. Those six do not appear at No. 1 on any chart we could find reported elsewhere. All six are in Central America.

On the same day's Trending 20, a faster-moving daily chart, the song is in the top 10 in eighteen countries at once, though not at No. 1 in any of them today. Its No. 1s all come from the slower-moving weekly chart, the one that lines up with a region-wide run rather than a single day's spike.

Why the almost-cut song is the one that swept a region

Karol G, Judeline and Rusowsky recorded their parts apart from one another and apart from the rest of the album's sessions, a way of making a song that is closer to how three separate singles get made than how a planned duet does. “BbY WOW” also carries writing and production credits for Tainy, Omer Fedi and Andrés Correa, alongside the three performers.

A song built this way, added late and recorded in pieces, topping the charts of six countries with no other coverage of that fact is not something the official tallies were built to show. Regional charts count by country; nobody was adding up Central America on its own.

It's one of several songs on the move this week; we follow what's rising on global music trends and what's new on mymy's own new-release desk.

That is the answer to the odd part. The song almost missed the album because Karol G wasn't sure it worked. What it turned out to do was travel through an entire region without anyone measuring it that way.