Nigel Teles­ford

Six months af­ter earn­ing song­writ­ing cred­its on BTS’ chart-top­ping ARI­RANG al­bum, Trinidad and To­ba­go pro­duc­er, song­writer and artiste Kur­tis Wells has reached an­oth­er Bill­board sum­mit, this time as a record­ing artist in his own right.

Lovers On The Dance­floor, by Cana­di­an DJ/pro­duc­er BLOND:ISH fea­tur­ing Wells, has climbed from No 2 to No 1 on Bill­board’s Dance Air­play chart dat­ed Sep­tem­ber 26, giv­ing Wells his first Bill­board chart en­try as an artist and his first No 1.

Re­leased on June 12 via Mai­son Arts, the song record­ed a 33 per cent in­crease in ra­dio plays dur­ing the Sep­tem­ber 11-17 track­ing pe­ri­od, ac­cord­ing to Lu­mi­nate.

The achieve­ment marks Wells’ first ap­pear­ance on a Bill­board chart as an artist and his first No 1, with the Trinidad and To­ba­go singer fea­tured promi­nent­ly on the record. It is al­so the first Bill­board chart-top­per for BLOND:ISH and the first No 1 for Los An­ge­les-based la­bel and pub­lish­ing com­pa­ny Mai­son Arts.

“It was a sur­re­al mo­ment,” Wells told Guardian Me­dia this week. “You spend so much time mak­ing mu­sic in rooms where no­body knows what the out­come is go­ing to be, so see­ing some­thing we cre­at­ed even­tu­al­ly reach No. 1 on Bill­board is in­cred­i­bly re­ward­ing.”

For Wells, how­ev­er, the achieve­ment car­ries sig­nif­i­cance be­yond an­oth­er en­try on his grow­ing in­ter­na­tion­al ré­sumé.

“I’m from Trinidad and To­ba­go, a small is­land with an enor­mous mu­si­cal cul­ture,” he said. “I grew up sur­round­ed by rhythm, Car­ni­val and peo­ple who have an in­stinc­tive re­la­tion­ship with mu­sic.

“To take that foun­da­tion in­to the world and have my name at­tached to a Bill­board No 1 feels like an­oth­er re­minder that there re­al­ly isn’t a ceil­ing on where Caribbean cre­atives can go.”

The achieve­ment fol­lows Wells’ in­volve­ment in an­oth­er mas­sive in­ter­na­tion­al project ear­li­er this year.

He co-wrote FYA and They Don’t Know ‘Bout Us on K-pop su­per­group BTS’ ARI­RANG, which de­buted at No 1 on the Bill­board 200 in March. The al­bum moved more than four mil­lion phys­i­cal copies glob­al­ly dur­ing its open­ing week, ac­cord­ing to South Ko­rea’s Hanteo Chart.

Al­though mil­lions of peo­ple around the world may on­ly now be hear­ing his name, Wells is re­luc­tant to de­scribe his re­cent suc­cess as an overnight break­through.

“I think 2026 is one of those years where a lot of work that was hap­pen­ing qui­et­ly is be­com­ing vis­i­ble,” he said. “Work­ing on the BTS project and then be­ing part of a No 1 record with BLOND:ISH are very dif­fer­ent worlds mu­si­cal­ly, and I’m proud of that. I nev­er want­ed to be de­fined by one genre or one mar­ket.” He added:

“There were years of writ­ing, pro­duc­ing, trav­el­ling, meet­ing peo­ple, be­ing in ses­sions that went nowhere and con­stant­ly de­vel­op­ing my craft be­fore these records hap­pened...

“So ‘break­through’ is prob­a­bly what it looks like from the out­side. From my per­spec­tive, it feels more like mo­men­tum fi­nal­ly catch­ing up with the work.”

Re­mark­ably, Wells ad­mits that Lovers On The Dance­floor took just three hours to cre­ate. The ver­sa­tile tal­ent said the record emerged dur­ing a BLOND:ISH song­writ­ing re­treat held at Dip­lo’s place in Pom­peii, Italy, where ap­prox­i­mate­ly 20 songs were cre­at­ed.

“This was one of those records where every­thing just clicked,” said Wells, who was in­volved in both writ­ing and pro­duc­tion.

“At the time, we were just cre­at­ing and fol­low­ing the en­er­gy in the room. To see one of those ideas go from a three-hour ses­sion in Pom­peii to a Bill­board No. 1 is pret­ty sur­re­al.”

De­spite in­creas­ing­ly mov­ing be­tween in­ter­na­tion­al pop, elec­tron­ic mu­sic and K-pop, Wells’ foun­da­tion re­mains firm­ly root­ed in Trinidad and To­ba­go. His cat­a­logue stretch­es back through some of mod­ern so­ca’s most recog­nis­able record­ings, in­clud­ing work with Machel Mon­tano, Ker­win Du Bois, Swap­pi, Lyrikal and Nes­sa Prep­py. Fear not, be­cause af­ter his in­ter­na­tion­al suc­cess­es in 2026, Wells con­firmed that he is once again turn­ing some of his at­ten­tion to­ward home, with new records al­ready de­vel­op­ing for Car­ni­val 2027.

“There are con­ver­sa­tions and records de­vel­op­ing for Car­ni­val 2027, but I don’t want to an­nounce the artistes be­fore every­thing is ready,” he re­vealed. “What I can say is that I’m in­ter­est­ed in mak­ing so­ca that re­spects what makes the genre spe­cial while al­so ask­ing how far we can push it son­i­cal­ly.”

His am­bi­tion is con­sid­er­able.

“I want to hear Caribbean records that can de­stroy the road on Car­ni­val Tues­day and still make sense when some­body hears them in Lon­don, Berlin, New York, La­gos or Seoul.”

For Wells, the in­creas­ing­ly blurred lines be­tween his work in so­ca, in­ter­na­tion­al song­writ­ing and his own ca­reer as an artiste are de­lib­er­ate. “I don’t re­al­ly see them as sep­a­rate ca­reers. They all come from the same cre­ative in­stinct,” he ex­plained. “The big­ger goal is to build a body of work that con­nects Trinidad and To­ba­go to the wider mu­si­cal world in a way that feels au­then­tic.”

Not sur­pris­ing­ly for some­one so pa­tri­ot­ic, Wells ad­mits that per­haps the most im­por­tant au­di­ence for that jour­ney is still at home.

“I want a young pro­duc­er or song­writer sit­ting in Trinidad to see these records and un­der­stand that they don’t have to choose be­tween be­ing Caribbean and be­ing glob­al.

“You can be both.”