Happy new year once again!
We're excited to bring you the year's round-up. We don't need to spend too long discussing the real-life Christmas and New Year Top of the Pops editions - it was good to see them as usual, but the line-up was as bizarre as ever. Celeste, for example, had no hits last year (again!) and seems to have been featured (again!) as part of ongoing BBC/industry attempts to crown her as a next big thing - the opposite of what Top of the Pops is meant to be about.
Back in fantasy land, where it's much sunnier even though Covid is still a thing, here are the top eleven TOTP artists for the year:
In joint eighth place with ten appearances is DaBaby. The highest-placed TOTP debutant for this year, DaBaby was all over the show in the first half of the year, mainly thanks to collaborations with Camila Cabello and Roddy Ricch, plus one performance of his own hit Find My Way.
Also in joint eighth place with ten appearances is Mabel. Two hits of her own plus collaborations with Clean Bandit and AJ Tracey gave Mabel her strongest year so far.
And also in joint eighth place with ten appearances is Drake. Drake appeared on nine different tracks this year, with Toosie Slide being the biggest, but even short-lived songs of his (or features) often charted highly at least for a week or two. That's good enough for the chart legend's third best TOTP year.
And also in joint eighth place with ten appearances is Ariana Grande. Queen Ariana took until the end of the year to really get going, but once she let the big guns loose she was all but impossible to shift from the top of the chart.
In joint sixth place with eleven appearances is Roddy Ricch. After only one previous appearance on the show, Ricch was ever-present on the chart in the first half of the year thanks to his two huge hits, The Box and Rockstar.
Also in joint sixth place with eleven appearances is Joel Corry. He appeared a few times in 2019, but 2020 was the breakout year for Corry. Lonely and then the megahit Head and Heart made him a mainstay right through the year.
In joint third place with twelve appearances is Harry Styles. Styles impressed a lot of people with his classy pop this year, and twelve appearances with three very solid hits gives him a better year than One Direction ever achieved.
Also in joint third place with twelve appearances is AJ Tracey. Arguably britrap's hottest MC at the moment, Tracey followed up a very strong 2019 with an even better 2020. His own West Ten was a big hit, and he also collaborated with Stormzy, Aitch, Mostack and Headie One, rarely leaving the top ten for months at a time.
In second place with fifteen appearances is Dua Lipa. No one can deny the year Dua has had, and that's been reflected in the charts and TOTP appearances. She brought five different songs from the Future Nostalgia album into the TOTP studio, and even more impressively, just about every appearance was as lead artist.
And in first place with nineteen appearances is The Weeknd. Another artist who had a huge album this year, The Weeknd had his best ever TOTP year (even beating 2015) with notably long-running hits Blinding Lights and In Your Eyes, as well as a collaboration with Calvin Harris. He doesn't quite match the 21 appearances Lewis Capaldi managed last year, but he has been a constant presence on the TOTP screen (via Zoom) and richly deserves his place at the top of this list.
Finally, here's the updated all-time Fantasy TOTP list:
1 Ed Sheeran (80)
2 Ariana Grande (57)
= Little Mix (57)
4 Dua Lipa (55)
5 Drake (49)
6 The Weeknd (43)
= Sam Smith (43)
= Clean Bandit (43)
9 Justin Bieber (43)
= Calvin Harris (42)
11 Camila Cabello (37)
12 Stormzy (35)
== Jess Glynne (35)
== Rita Ora (35)
15 Ellie Goulding (33)
== George Ezra (33)
17 Jason Derulo (32)
18 Khalid (29)
== Zara Larsson (29)
20 Jax Jones (28)
== Shawn Mendes (28)
Ed Sheeran only appeared once this year, but he looks safe at the top for a while to come. Ariana jumps up to tie Little Mix for second place, and The Weeknd's big year makes him the highest new entrant to the top 20. Rita Ora, Ellie Goulding and George Ezra are the highest-places artistes who didn't appear on the show at all (except maybe as part of the lockdown charity record).
That's all. Let's hope 2021 is a better year!
