Wizkid, Rema, and Tyla Make Spotify’s 100 Greatest Pop Songs of the Streaming Era

Spotify just made it official. The platform'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.

Rema's ‘Calm Down’ was already a certified hit before Selena Gomez joined it, however, with her on the track, it became something else entirely. The track is warm and infectious, the remix pairing Rema's mischievous energy with Gomez's confidence. 

The result crossed every boundary a song can cross. It became the most successful Afrobeats single in Billboard chart history and the first African artist-led track to reach one billion streams on Spotify. More than a commercial milestone, ‘Calm Down’ rewrote the playbook on what a global remix can accomplish without watering down, but instead, amplifying the sound.

Tyla's inclusion at number 50 marks something equally significant, just from a different direction.

‘Water’ introduced Amapiano, the South African genre defined by its log drum and hypnotic groove, to listeners who had never encountered it before. It did so without sacrificing any of what makes the sound distinctive. The song won the inaugural Grammy for Best African Music Performance and made Tyla the first South African solo artist to appear on the Billboard Hot 100 in 55 years. Its placement on this list confirms what the chart history suggested, that Amapiano is no longer a regional sound. It's pop.

The fact that these are staff picks matters. Spotify's editors aren't rewarding streams alone, but also making a curatorial argument about what has genuinely shaped pop music in this era. Their argument includes Afrobeats and Amapiano sitting comfortably alongside Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo, and The Weeknd. African artists are no longer appearing on these lists as novelties or outliers and that is worthy of note.

Read Next: Wizkid’s ‘Joro’ Certified Platinum in France