[Image description: a collage of photos of the 10 musicians and musical groups featured in this poll. In order from left to right, top to bottom: The Weeknd, Post Malone, Roddy Ricch, Dua Lipa, DaBaby and Roddy Ricch, Harry Styles, Future and Drake, Maroon 5, Maren Morris, Lewis Capaldi. End description]
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This is when the polls start to put me in a weird position. Because since we're currently in the current decade, it's hard for me to make assumptions about what this decade is going to sound like. But I'll try my best.
To address the elephant in the room first, this was the start of the Covid 19 pandemic (if you forgot). Are we able to see the impact of the pandemic on the charts? Maybe not in lyrical content (sadly, PlagePop didn't become a thing 😔), but we can see its influence when it comes to chart performance. With the lockdown making it impossible to (safely) tour and promote their music, many musicians had to find other methods. With social media now being the main way people listen to and discover new music and the rise of bedroom pop, this wasn't impossible. But still, many artists either postponed or shelved their releases this year. Which is odd, because the charts were moving incredibly fast in 2020. A song could make it onto the charts one week, and disappear shortly after. So not everything got to stick around, but the stuff that stuck really stuck. The Weeknd's Blinding Lights, for example, was the most-streamed song on Spotify in 2020, and to this day it still holds the record of the most-streamed song of all time. But that might seem odd to some people, since Blinding Lights was not released in 2020.
This isn't unusual. Due to how trends work and the way Billboard releases their charts in December, songs released later in the year often don't chart high until the following year. But I'm bringing this up because the chart of 2020 doesn't look like 2020. Like I said, Blinding Lights was released in November 2019, which isn't that unheard of. But then we have songs like Post Malone's Circles (2019) and Lewis Capaldi's Someone You Loved (2018). Rockstar and Life Is Good are the only songs featured on this poll that were released in 2020.
And as far as the sound of the 2020's goes, it's too early to say but from what I can see so far, the pop sound of the year 2020 centers more around homages to previous decades. We can see this with the synth wave influences in Blinding Lights, the nu-disco in Don't Start Now, the light funk of Adore You, and the interpolation of Pachelbel's Canon in Memories.
A few weeks ago, dvsn dropped their first single for their upcoming album called If I Get Caught. A song that had a chorus start off with “If I get caught cheating, that don’t mean I don’t love you.” That set social media in an uproar. Calling the song trash, wasting a Jay-Z sample, and basically getting tired of the toxic R&B shtick. Some people went on to say they wanted R&B to go back to the singing in the rain vibe.
So what does dvsn do? Release their second single What’s Up with Jagged Edge, a legendary R&B group who’s known for love songs, and put out a music video with Daniel of dvsn singing in the rain. Elite level of trolling.