Some songs are built for the charts. Others are built for forever. Excuses by AP Dhillon and Gurinder Gill was never supposed to be a global phenomenon. It was a bedroom release dropped in the middle of a pandemic with no major label backing, no Western radio push, and no industry machine behind it. And yet here we are. 600 million streams on Spotify. A number no Punjabi song has ever reached before.
The milestone is historic in every sense of the word. Excuses was already the first Punjabi track to cross 500 million streams, and now it has pushed even further into territory that most mainstream artists from any genre never reach. Produced by Intense and released in 2020, the song quietly became one of the most streamed tracks in Spotify’s entire library without anyone in the Western music industry seeing it coming.
What makes the story even more remarkable is how close the song came to never existing at all. In a 2023 interview, AP Dhillon revealed he nearly scrapped Excuses entirely. He felt something was off with the lyrical structure and was ready to move on. It was his collaborators who pushed back and recognised what the track could become. That single decision changed Punjabi music history.
The growth of Excuses was never manufactured. Released during the height of COVID-19, the song spread organically through the diaspora. People were locked in their homes, searching for music that felt real, and Excuses delivered exactly that. It moved from playlist to playlist, from living room to living room, from one side of the world to the other without a single press cycle driving it.
AP Dhillon and Gurinder Gill built something that the industry could not manufacture if it tried. A record that connected because it was honest, not because it was promoted. And Intense’s production gave it a sound that felt completely its own while still reaching across every cultural boundary.
600 million streams is not just a number. It is proof that Punjabi music belongs on the global stage and always did.
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