By Anton Dedvukaj
It’s safe to say that COVID-19 has affected almost every aspect of our lives, from the TV shows we watch, to the way we attend school and, of course, the music we listen to. Even as tours continue to get cancelled or postponed, along with music award shows and even a few albums, it seems as though the artists in the industry still had lots of new music ready for us. During this quarantine, albums from the likes of Taylor Swift, The Weeknd, and Lady Gaga were all released, as were countless singles from many more big names. But, how can we gauge how the music we listened to was affected by COVID-19?
An easy thing to do would be to look at the charts, where there is plenty of data to support a few patterns I’ve noticed while following the Billboard Hot 100 chart throughout the quarantine. So, what types of songs stuck around on the charts throughout the pandemic? What songs did the public seem to like to listen to?
Let’s look at the songs that have hit the No. 1 spot since March. One thing I noticed was that TikTok seems to be the driving force behind a lot of these songs’ successes. On the one hand, there were songs like Roddy Ricch’s “The Box”, Drake’s “Toosie Slide”, Doja Cat & Nicki Minaj’s “Say So”, and Megan Thee Stallion & Beyoncé’s “Savage”. All of these songs got their initial attention through dance trends that became popular on the app and went on to become not only chart-toppers, but stable hits that stuck around on the charts.
Other No. 1 singles, such as The Weeknd’s “Blinding Lights”, Travis Scott & Kid Cudi’s “The Scotts”, Ariana Grande & Justin Bieber’s “Stuck With U”, and DaBaby & Roddy Ricch’s “Rockstar”, also had TikTok trends associated with them, even if this wasn’t the main reason behind their popularity. I attribute this to the app’s high popularity, especially given that many, including myself, were bored during the pandemic, and watched videos on the app frequently as a result.
Another thing that seemed to happen was that songs that became big radio hits seemed to have a lot of stability on the charts. Radio rotation has seemed to move somewhat slowly this year, possibly due to the pandemic, and many of the year’s biggest hits were songs that were frequently played by radio stations. “Blinding Lights”, as well as Post Malone’s “Circles”, Dua Lipa’s “Don’t Start Now”, and Harry Styles’ “Adore You”, are all still in frequent radio rotation, and are among the year’s best-performing singles, with all four songs still being in the Hot 100’s top 40 this week.
Of course, there were big hits this year that weren’t especially huge on the radio, such as “The Box” or Future & Drake’s “Life Is Good”, but radio play did play a role in shaping the sound of popular music during the pandemic.
Also worth noting is the age of some of these songs, as “Adore You” and “The Box” were released in December 2019, “Blinding Lights” was released that November, “Don’t Start Now” that October, and “Circles” that August. Many of the biggest hits of 2020 weren’t even released in 2020, and given that this year is widely regarded as an all-around terrible year by a large amount of people, that might be more telling than it seems.
So, what’s there to take away from all this regarding the state of popular music in relation to the pandemic? Well, it appears that TikTok and the radio run the charts nowadays, and the more I think about it, the more that seems to make sense. The majority of time the average listener seemed to hear new songs, chances are it was on TikTok, where a large amount of teens spent a lot of time in the past few months, or on the radio, on the way to buy supplies for the pandemic or trying to get out of the house every once in a while.
Either way, it seems as though, along with many other elements of entertainment nowadays, the pandemic has had an impact on the popular music of 2020.
