2021’s Top Songs So Far

A breakout ballad from a Disney star is just one of many songs from new artists to lead the pack from January through May

Up in the Air

While “Don’t Start Now” saw success first on the RS 100, “Levitating” has been the slow-and-steady winner from Dua Lipa’s sophomore album, Future Nostalgia: It took more than six months to hit its peak. While “Levitating” was released as a single back in October 2020, remixed with a new feature verse from DaBaby, it didn’t start to make the Top 10 until January. And it wasn’t until May that “Levitating” finally soared to Number Three on the chart, the same spot where “Don’t Start Now” peaked more than a year before. To date, “Levitating” has won more than 400 million on-demand audio streams.

This Year’s TikTok Smash?

Songs known primarily for being popular on TikTok don’t reach the Top 10 on the RS 100 often, and it’s even less common for one to stay there, since many of the songs that see their biggest success on the video platform end up falling as quickly as they rise. But “Astronaut in the Ocean,” by Australian rapper Masked Wolf, has stuck around on the RS 100. The song entered the Top 10 in mid-April, and was still there at the end of May. While it’s been a consistently strong streamer, it did even better with sales, becoming the number-one song by digital sales in late April.

Pooh Shiesty Seizes His Moment

It was just a year ago that Memphis rapper Pooh Shiesty debuted on the Rolling Stone Breakthrough 25 chart, which highlights the biggest upand-coming artists. Now, he’s one of hip-hop’s biggest success stories, and “Back in Blood” is a bona fide hit. The standout single from his debut mixtape, Shiesty Season, was the second-biggest rap song of the first half of 2021. Overall, “Back in Blood” has seen more than

260 million audio streams to date.

The Rolling Stone Top 100 Songs chart ranks songs by a combination of on-demand audio streams and digital song sales. This list includes streams and sales from January through May 2021.