Are you a fan of hit songs? They can sometimes be hard to listen to because they can be overplayed and many of them don’t always sound the greatest. You can tell some hit songs were made to make sales and to do that, some artists will take the safe road and not take any risks.

However, there are some great hit songs that go viral every here and there. Some of them can even shape the way music sounds going forward. This is an idea that YouTuber Mic The Snare has done a ton of work on as he has some fantastic videos talking about music that defined the 2010s and the 2000s. So I thought it would be interesting to examine some songs that may be defining the 2020s thus far, in my opinion. I’ll look over some songs and some artists and how they have had an influence on how music sounds currently and how they are creating trends in music.

Before I go on with this list, I should clarify that this isn’t a list of songs I think are the best of the 2020s so far, but more so it’s a list of songs that I think are defining and influencing the music industry. The songs I choose aren’t necessarily songs I listen to or think are the greatest, however, most of these songs I do enjoy. I should also mention that these songs are in no particular order, they are just songs in general that I think have shaped the way music sounds so far in this decade.

Blinding Lights – The Weeknd

I think we have to start by talking about Blinding Lights by The Weeknd. This song was released in 2020 and took the world by store. This song was massive and very universally loved. The funny thing about this song is it seems like a song that’s been done before, but it hasn’t. The way this song sounds seems like a song we’ve heard in the past but I can’t seem to find a song that would fit that description.

But when it comes to the song itself, The Weeknd started this trend of using an 80s synth style of music and many artists are starting to use this style. The Weeknd has always been a music artist who isn’t afraid to try new things, or in this case, bring back an old style with a modern twist. He mixes the synth style with a bit of R&B and this has resulted in many artists going back to older styles of music and incorporating them into their music. I do feel like The Weeknd has done it the best as he adds something unique to his music.

His album called After Hours, which is the album Blinding Lights comes from, has a lot of the same sounds and it definitely seems like The Weeknd started a trend with this one. Not only are a lot of music artists starting to use the sounds of 80s synth in their music, but they are also going back in time and try different sounds from different time periods and I think that that could be attributed to The Weeknd.

Good 4 U – Olivia Rodrigo

I feel like I have to put Olivia Rodrigo on this list because she has blown up in popularity in the past few years and there is good reason for that. Her two albums titles SOUR and GUTS have done incredibly well and many music critics have really good things to say about her music.

But something that Rodrigo has done that is similar to what The Weeknd did is bring back a style of music. Rodrigo does have a lot of songs that fit more of a pop style of music and those kinds of songs have been pretty good. However, the thing that many people have found interesting about her is her songs where they have more of a pop punk kind of sound to it. A perfect example of that could be her song Good 4 U. This song is one of her biggest songs and it’s quite the earworm.

Although Rodrigo wasn’t necessarily the first one to bring this kind of sound back into the mainstream, she was the one who was able to popularize it the most. With how well she has done with her music as of late, it’s not difficult to see why some many artists have tried to copy her. There seems to even be many Olivia Rodrigo clones appearing trying to replicate her success. She has also done a great job adding to these sounds on her new album GUTS and is seeing much success from it.

We will likely continue to see more people try to replicate the style of music Rodrigo does but that just goes to show you how good her music is. She has made that pop punk style more mainstream and it seems like a lot of people are starting to latch onto it. You should definitely check out Rodrigo’s stuff if you haven’t because she has some songs that are undeniably good.

Anti-Hero – Taylor Swift

We have to also bring up Taylor Swift, don’t we? Taylor Swift was a massive music artist in the 2010s and has got even bigger since then. She may even be working her way up the ranks as the biggest music artist of all time if she hasn’t already achieved that milestone. Taylor Swift has always been an interesting artist for me because there’s stuff from her that I love and some stuff from her that I think is pretty meh. Her albums Reputation and Lover were two albums that I didn’t find all that interesting in comparison to her other work.

But the one thing I’ve always loved about Taylor Swift is her writing. She has written some phenomenal albums such as Red, Folklore, Evermore and a few others as well. Her latest album called Midnights was a bit of a mixed bag for me but one of the biggest songs on that album is a song called Anti-Hero and that song is fantastic. As the chorus to the song suggests, Swift is realizing that she may be the problem to some of her issues and I think singing about these kinds of topics made it more normalized to sing about struggling with yourself and realizing you have some problems.

Taylor Swift is for sure not the first person to do this, but seeing a big artist like her talk about these things can normalize it more than most music artists can. You see a lot more bigger artist being more vulnerable in their songs and I think Taylor Swift could’ve played a big hand in this.

Bad Habits – Steve Lacey

Another song I want to briefly mention is Bad Habit by Steve Lacey. While the song is great, I mostly want to mention this one because of the influence of TikTok. This song blew up on Tik Tok and made Steve Lacey a much more well-known name. This song shows how TikTok can influence the music industry and make new stars and I think Steve Lacey is the best example of that.

The 2020s have been an interesting time for music thus far and it seems like we’re only scratching the surface. I’m excited to see where things will go from here and make sure you keep an eye out for what’s trending in music because it just might change the face of the music industry.