Tame Impala's 'Loser' Reached 49 Shazam Top 50s After Spider-Man Went Digital

Spider-Man: Brand New Day, which plays Tame Impala's 'Loser' over a housewarming party, made the song a hit in August, and its Shazam numbers jumped in the week the film went digital. The song plays as Peter Parker follows Ned, once his best friend, to the party Ned and MJ are throwing. Neither of them remembers him. The film opened in North American cinemas on 31 July 2026, a day or two after markets such as the UK, South Korea and India, and on 6 October Sony put it on sale and for rent at US digital stores. Within a week 'Loser' was in Shazam's top 50 in 49 countries. Our readings had it in 25 to 28 countries from 2 October, and in 26 early on 6 October (UTC).

Shazam is the app you open for a song whose name escapes you. Spotify counts plays, and many of them come from people who already know the song. In the same week, Spotify's daily global plays of 'Loser' barely moved, from 2,467,522 on 5 October to 2,583,012 on 12 October, its best October day in the figures we read on 16 October. That points to new listeners who still had to ask what they were hearing. We saw the same split with Fontaines D.C.'s 'Starburster', the MobLand theme: each Friday's new episode sends a fresh wave of readers to its Wikipedia page, while its plays have grown far less.

When does 'Loser' play in Spider-Man: Brand New Day?

The song starts on the street and carries Peter into the party. In this film his old friends from school no longer remember him, and it is their party, not his.

Who is the loser in Tame Impala's 'Loser'?

The loser is the man singing it. The lyric is his account of how he blew it with someone he fell for, and made it worse each time he tried to fix it.

In the first verse he has to tell her something, now or never, and loses his composure doing it. He gets the message, he says, but trying to fix it only makes it worse, and this is not like him. The hook is the title line, “I'm a loser, babe”. In the chorus he calls himself a tragedy, asks whether she wants to tear his heart out and admits he is still trying to work out the mess.

The second verse offers no excuses. Out of favour and at his worst, he reaches for desperate measures: he fell for her, tried again to put it right and wrecked it again. By the second chorus the mess has grown into his whole life.

Of the whole lyric, the bridge fits Peter's night in the film best. He leaves alone, walks dark streets, breathes the night air and says the stars are what he believes in; he does not know why he did not fight it, and he feels defeated. The bridge closes on her being badly needed and badly wanted.

Was 'Loser' made for Spider-Man?

No. Tame Impala is the studio project of the Australian musician Kevin Parker, who wrote 'Loser' and produced it, with additional production by Loren Humphrey. It came out on 3 September 2025, eleven months before the film, as the second single ahead of the album Deadbeat (17 October 2025). It is not a cover of Beck's 1993 song of the same name, although Beck makes a brief appearance in the video. Sam Kristofski directed the video, and the actor Joe Keery, who also makes music as Djo, stars in it.

Which countries found 'Loser' in October

Our radar reads Shazam's top 100 for about 70 countries about once a day, and has done since 2 October. Between 9 and 13 October (UTC readings), 'Loser' joined the top 50 in seven Latin American countries (Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela), in India, Indonesia and the Philippines, in Egypt and Tunisia, and in Austria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Spain. Our first reading of Türkiye's chart, late on 13 October, already had it at No. 3. In our reading late on 16 October it ranked third in Ireland and the United States, fourth in Brazil and fifth in Canada, Greece and Türkiye.

'Loser' did not rise alone. 'oh yeah?' by Steve Lacy plays over the closing montage of the same film. It was in Shazam's top 50 in three or four countries in every complete reading from 2 to 9 October, and in 14 by late on 13 October; in the 16 October reading it was No. 27 in the United States. Two songs from one film rising in the same few days fits the film's arrival on digital stores.

We cannot see rental numbers or every country's digital release date, so this is a reading of the timing. 'Loser' has been on American hit radio since August, which can also send people to Shazam in North America. On YouTube the official video sat at the foot of the US daily music video chart: No. 95 on 6 October, outside the top 100 from 7 to 12 October, then No. 96, 94 and 88 from 13 to 15 October, with 58,744 to 67,280 views on the days it charted.

'Loser' by Tame Impala before and after the film

Before Spider-Man, 'Loser' was a modest single. On Spotify's weekly chart for the United States it peaked at No. 109, in the week to 23 October 2025. It never made Spotify's weekly global chart, and the daily global chart saw it on just two days: No. 154 on 5 September 2025 and No. 182 on 17 October 2025, the day Deadbeat came out. It entered the weekly global chart at No. 56 in the week to 6 August 2026, climbed to No. 6 a week later and reached No. 2 in the week to 20 August with 25,488,597 plays. It reached No. 1 on the daily global chart in August and passed 3.7 million plays in a day. On the Billboard Global 200 it peaked at No. 3, on the chart dated 29 August 2026.

By 15 October the song had about 330 million plays on Spotify, and 221,706,701 of them, a little over two-thirds, came in its 11 weeks on the weekly global chart, all since the film opened.

Our reading of the timing is that the film found 'Loser' a second audience in October: people who heard it at home and wanted its name. Our forecast: when the radar next reads Shazam on or after 6 November (UTC), 'Loser' will be in the top 50 in fewer than 45 countries but at least 35, and on Spotify's daily global chart it will stay under 3 million plays on every day from 16 October to 6 November.