
But it is conspicuous how the past year has seen the pop world really gravitate towards its most reliable stars, more than it has in recent years - leaning on them not just for one smash at a time, but sometimes as many as three or four simultaneously, while they keep finding new ways to breathe life into their most recent blockbuster LPs. OK, that’s a little reductive: Plenty of other artists and albums have also done their part to keep the charts interesting in recent months. Now it’s a year later, the world is opening back up, and the charts (and radio in particular) are currently being dominated by… yep, still After Hours and Future Nostalgia. When we checked in on the best songs of 2020 last June, the charts (and radio in particular) were dominated by The Weeknd’s After Hours and Dua Lipa’s Future Nostalgia - the two big pop albums that weren’t afraid to go large with their ambitions, even at the lowest, scariest point of the COVID-19 pandemic.
