The Neighbourhood's Sweater Weather nears 5 billion Spotify streams, 13 years after a two-star review
The Neighbourhood's "Sweater Weather" stood at 4,999,095,711 Spotify streams on November 2, 2026, about to become the third song ever to pass 5 billion after "Blinding Lights" and "Shape of You". In 2013 the Los Angeles Times gave its album, I Love You., two stars and said the songs "lack any kind of urgency."
By Riffiter
The Neighbourhood's "Sweater Weather" is about to become the third song in Spotify history to pass 5 billion streams. On November 2, 2026, Spotify's own counter and kworb both showed 4,999,095,711 plays, under a million short of the mark, with the song adding about 2.47 million a day. Only The Weeknd's "Blinding Lights" (5.66 billion) and Ed Sheeran's "Shape of You" (5.17 billion) have got there.
The album it came from did not get that kind of welcome.
Two stars in 2013
The Neighbourhood released their debut album, I Love You., in April 2013. Mikael Wood reviewed it for the Los Angeles Times on April 24 and gave it two stars out of four. He wrote that the band had the textures of modern alt-rock down, but that the songs "lack any kind of urgency."
His review opened on a detail from that spring. In a memo to journalists covering Coachella, the band asked that its set be photographed only in black and white. OC Weekly reported the same request at their show at the Fonda Theatre that August. Wood closed on it: "The band does black and white, but nothing in between."
The Guardian was kinder. Caroline Sullivan gave the album three stars out of five, found the lyrics aimed squarely at teenagers, and singled out one track: "Sweater Weather" could be "this year's Moves Like Jagger," she wrote, a song that "will become their signature." On Metacritic the album sits at 48 out of 100 from eight reviews.
| Outlet | Score |
|---|---|
| Los Angeles Times | 2/4 |
| The Guardian | 3/5 |
| Metacritic | 48/100 |
The second life
In mid to late 2020, seven years after the review, "Sweater Weather" took off again on TikTok. By that December, Metro Weekly counted more than 310,000 videos using the sound, many of them young users coming out to it. The streams have not slowed since.
Singer Jesse Rutherford still talks about where it began. Asked about the song on ALT 98.7 in Los Angeles in December 2025, he said he can still picture the start: "I'm still in Zach's mom's living room, making the beat on Logic 9." Zach Abels is the band's guitarist.
What the critics got right
Wood allowed in his review that the lack of urgency might be exactly the band's point. Sullivan picked the right song. Thirteen years later, it is a few hours of listening away from becoming the third song ever to pass 5 billion streams on Spotify.
On Riffiter the album holds a 3.3 out of 5.