An awful lot is an informal way to say a very large amount or number, adding extra emphasis. It often appears as an awful lot of before nouns, or to stress frequency or extent.
An awful lot of gay pop stars pretend to be straight. I'm going to start a movement of straight pop stars pretending to be gay. Robbie Williams
There's an awful lot of inactive kindness which is nothing but laziness, not wanting any trouble, confusion, or effort. John Steinbeck
After realizing that we would eventually be able to build molecular machines that could arrange atoms to form virtually any pattern that we wanted, I saw that an awful lot of consequences followed from that. K. Eric Drexler
You have to think an awful lot about your motivations or people's behavioral intentions or what their body language can indicate or what's really going on or what makes people sometimes do, sometimes, the irrational things they do. Ron Silver
When I came up, it was all about originality and collective research. There is an awful lot of imitation going on now. Steve Lacy
I've got many close friends, but there's an awful lot about friendship that is not demonstrative in my case. Warren Christopher