Shawn Mendes earns his 11th Billboard Global Excl. U.S. entry as ‘Treat You Better’ debuts at No. 182, while ‘There’s Nothing Holdin’ Me Back’ climbs
Nearly a decade after it first swept global airwaves, “Treat You Better” is back on the charts. Shawn Mendes, the Canadian pop star who co-wrote the 2016 smash with Teddy Geiger and Scott Harris, earns a fresh entry on the Billboard Global Excl. U.S. this week, as the Illuminate lead single debuts at No. 182. The appearance marks his 11th career entry on the tally and arrives with no promotional push behind it, proof of just how durably the song has been embedded in the global pop consciousness.
The timing is notable. With Mendes having gone largely quiet since the underwhelming reception of his self-titled 2024 album, which opened at a career-low No. 26 on the Billboard 200, renewed interest in his back catalog signals that the audience for his earlier work has not gone anywhere. “Treat You Better” has now surpassed 2.7 billion streams on Spotify, making it his second song to cross that milestone, and its music video has accumulated more than 2.5 billion views on YouTube as of mid-2025, placing it among the platform’s 100 most-watched videos of all time. That kind of sustained engagement does not generate itself.
A Catalog That Keeps Climbing
The Global Excl. U.S. tally, launched by Billboard in 2020, tracks consumption from listeners everywhere outside the United States, pulling data from streams and sales across dozens of international markets. Mendes has now appeared on it 11 times, though “Treat You Better” enters at his weakest position yet. His previous low on the chart was “Teach Me How to Love,” which peaked at No. 128 in the winter of 2020. Whether the new entry builds toward something stronger will depend on whether global streaming momentum continues to accelerate in the coming weeks.
Meanwhile, “There’s Nothing Holdin’ Me Back,” the other Illuminate fan favorite, is surging alongside it. The track climbs from No. 159 to No. 146 on the Billboard Global Excl. U.S. this frame, bringing its total run on that chart to 98 weeks. It stands one appearance away from tying Mendes’s longest-charting song globally, “Señorita,” the collaboration with Camila Cabello that has logged 99 weeks. That duet, as Mendes revealed in his 2020 Netflix documentary Wonder, was also the inspiration behind “Treat You Better” itself, written years before the two artists ever became a couple. The personal and commercial threads of his catalog continue to intertwine.
The ‘Illuminate’ Legacy Reasserts Itself
“There’s Nothing Holdin’ Me Back” is also re-emerging on the Billboard Global 200 this week, the companion tally that includes American streaming and sales data. It has climbed as high as No. 129 on that chart and has now logged 37 appearances there, second only to “Señorita” among all Mendes titles, which has 73 weeks to its name. The appetite for these songs, both from Illuminate, suggests that the album may hold more cultural staying power than its original commercial run ever fully captured.
Mendes has matched his 11 appearances on the Global Excl. U.S. with an equal 11 on the Billboard Global 200, though the two charts feature slightly different collections of his music. “Treat You Better” has not yet appeared on the Global 200, but if its international momentum continues, a second chart debut could follow. For a singer who has been largely absent from the public conversation since wrapping the Shawn album cycle, the quiet resurgence of his oldest material may end up being the most persuasive argument for what comes next.
