Rolling Stone have ranked the 250 greatest songs of the 21st century so far and, at number 94, is Dua Lipa‘s “Levitating.”

There’s no rulebook for how to write a pop smash, but Dua Lipa’s method sounds close: Get your best friends in a room (helpful if they’re ace songwriters Clarence Coffee Jr., Sarah Hudson, and Stephen Kozmeniuk), scarf doughnuts, pull tarot cards, and aim for Prince. “We were literally levitating from the sugar rush,” said Lipa. “This is about me exploring happy songs and doing something that’s not ‘dance crying’ … It’s about having fun and meeting someone and falling in love.” Released in the spring of 2020 as lockdowns killed nightlife, “Levitating” couldn’t serve its club destiny — which made it more essential, not less. A disco bliss-bomb for dark times, it ruled charts for 77 weeks. No one knew when normal life would return, but it seemed, as the song goes, we met her at the perfect time. —S.G.

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