Learn English with "Levitating" by Dua Lipa

"Levitating" was the fifth track on Dua Lipa's second studio album, Future Nostalgia, released by Warner Records on 27 March 2020 — a record built around the same nu-disco, funk-inflected sound the song is best known for. It was written by Dua Lipa with Clarence Coffee Jr., Sarah Hudson and Stephen Kozmeniuk, and produced by Kozmeniuk (credited as Koz) together with Stuart Price, the British producer behind earlier dance-pop records for Madonna and Kylie Minogue.

The song only became a single months later, on 1 October 2020, released alongside a remix featuring the American rapper DaBaby. That remix version is the one that climbed the US charts: it entered the Billboard Hot 100 at number 73 in October 2020 and eventually peaked at number 2, tying "Don't Start Now" as Dua Lipa's highest position on that chart — kept off the top spot only by Silk Sonic's "Leave the Door Open".

What "Levitating" is really remembered for is not a single peak week but sheer staying power. It spent 41 weeks inside the Hot 100's top ten, the longest run there of any song by a female lead artist in the chart's history, overtaking a record LeAnn Rimes had held since "How Do I Live". Across 77 weeks on the chart altogether, it also became the longest-charting non-holiday song by a woman, and Billboard named it the number-one song of its entire 2021 year-end Hot 100 recap.

Awards recognition was more complicated. The track picked up nominations for Song of the Year and Song of the Summer at the 2021 MTV Video Music Awards, but for the 2022 Grammy Awards Dua Lipa chose not to submit it at all: the only version eligible was the DaBaby remix, and she had publicly criticised remarks the rapper made in mid-2021. In November 2023, "Levitating" was certified Diamond by the RIAA, for more than ten million units sold and streamed in the United States alone.

For learners, it makes a useful contrast with the ballads elsewhere in this catalogue: the same clear, British diction, but set against a four-on-the-floor disco pulse, with a vocabulary built almost entirely from space and light — orbit, glow, galaxy — rather than heartbreak.

If you liked this, we recommend:

• Stay With Me — Sam Smith (British English again, but a completely different, soulful mood)
• Flowers — Miley Cyrus (American English, for contrast with Dua Lipa's British diction)
• Chandelier — Sia (Australian English and a third accent for the collection)
• Radioactive — Imagine Dragons (American English, matching energy on the dance floor)