Spotify’s editorial team, a cross-disciplinary group of editors and curators, has released its ranked list of the 100 Greatest Pop Songs of the Streaming Era, covering music from 2015 to the present.
Unlike a pure data play, these are staff picks, selected using qualitative criteria, some of which include: cultural impact, musicality, artist storytelling, and lasting influence. Three of the one hundred are held by African artists.
Landing in the top ten is no small thing on a list this competitive, and Drake, Wizkid, and Kyla’s 2016 collaboration ‘One Dance’ earns its place. Drake had already been paying close attention to Afrobeats; his unofficial remix of Wizkid’s ‘Ojuelegba’ signalled as much, but ‘One Dance’ was the moment that brought the sound to a truly global audience.
Built on Afrobeats and dancehall rhythms, the track gave Drake his first Billboard Hot 100 number one as a lead artist and became the first song in Spotify history to reach one billion streams. But its significance goes well beyond the numbers.
‘One Dance’ was a blueprint and proof that Afrobeats could anchor a mainstream pop record without diluting itself, and became the door swung wide open for the artists who came after.
(Pulse Ng)
