When I was “Handicapping the Summer Song of 2021” in May, looking at a suddenly promising field of contenders, I wrote that “the real question is whether there will be depth.” I was hoping for “enough Summer Song candidates for a photo finish on Labor Day.” Beyond that battle, I was looking for a steady stream of radio records that didn’t have to be the summer song; they just had to sound like “the summer we all need this year.”
In that regard, the second half of summer 2021 was gratifying in Friday morning’s new-release e-mails and on the radio in a way it was not in real life. Whatever their ultimate chart disposition, having Camila Cabello, “Don’t Go Yet”; Silk Sonic, “Skate”; the Weeknd, “Take My Breath”; Lizzo, “Rumors”; and Shawn Mendes, “Summer of Love” dropping on successive weeks was, in the aggregate, exactly what I had been hoping for. Having a left-field entrant in Elton John & Dua Lipa’s “Cold Heart” or an organic, even-more-left-field hit in Måneskin’s “Beggin’” was a bonus.
As for that photo finish, I asked Facebook friends for their Songs of Summer. Not surprisingly, “Levitating” by Dua Lipa and “Good 4 U” by Olivia Rodrigo were the top two contenders and the only songs with double-digit votes. At least four people voted for both, with another “too close to call” or two. Nobody wrote “I didn’t really think there was one this year.” In the late ‘10s, I could have just cut-and-pasted those “it was a weak field” quotes from year to year.
At this writing, “Levitating” has a slight edge in reader votes. “It is all the joy we need right now, and the spins back me up,” wrote Jeanne Ashley. “’Levitating’ seems to be the song that will never die and is the No. 1 summer song,” added another South Florida radio veteran, Cedric Hollywood. Justin Bryant cites “its story, dominance, mainstream appeal, staying power, etc.”
Rodrigo’s hit was “our most-requested song for 34 nights in a row,” before finally being displaced by The Kid Laroi/Justin Bieber’s “Stay,” says PartyLiveline host Mason Kelter. “It gave us the alt-variety we desperately needed and filled the ‘heartbroken teen bop’ void that Taylor Swift left behind,” Kelter adds. Similarly, Matt DelSignore asks, “When was the last time a leading contender for song of the summer was so guitar-driven?”
WWST (Star 93) Knoxville, Tenn., PD Rick Thomas, and WJFX (Hot 107.9) Fort Wayne, Ind., PD Robbie Mack both vote for “Kiss Me More” by Doja Cat. “It hung around all summer and just seems to have that summer vibe,” says Mack, before adding that it was a “good summer of music this year.” Doja began the summer looking for a second real pop hit. She ended it with two songs in the top 10 and a third just cracking the top 40 at this writing. There were also multiple votes for Ed Sheeran’s “Bad Habits,” which provided the first of summer’s “but wait, there’s more” moments on its release in mid-June.
“Summer’s not over, and the ‘Fancy Like’ [by Walker Hayes] phenomenon is growing. Let’s just wait,” says Kevin Robinson. “I’m firmly in the ‘Fancy Like’ camp, I find it mystifying how a song can be the No. 1-selling Country song for 40 days running and it’s [No. 25] at Country radio,” says Marc Nathan. There’s encouragement in a decidedly Country song now being worked to multiple formats (and in the stylistic variety among all the songs we’ve mentioned so far).
Summer is expected to end with Billboard declaring “Butter” by BTS to be its Song of Summer 2021. Reader Joe Persek agrees with that “based more on streams and sales than on airplay.” Julie Pilat, who made the move to streaming at Beats Music, then Apple, eight years ago, named “Butter” instantly.
“Butter” got BTS their warmest initial welcome at radio so far. By peaking at No. 6, it ended up in a place familiar to One Direction fans of a decade ago — supported, but not powered. It is still my instinct that the Summer Song should have had radio ubiquity, but if we’re having the “what is a hit now anyway” discussion for “Fancy Like,” which will probably achieve consensus at Country radio, but not for months, we need to have it for both songs.
And I am willing to now declare “Fancy Like” to be the Country Song of Summer 2021. I did hear it plenty on the radio, although it was a mix of Country, Top 40, and even SiriusXM’s new TikTok Radio. “Fancy Like” came on to my radar thanks to Country Insider’s Brian Mansfield a few days after the “Handicapping” article, the only song that existed at the time of “Handicapping the Summer Song” but wasn’t included.
For the Ross on Radio Song of Summer 2021, I’m going with “Good 4 U,” in part because of timing. Unlike “Blinding Lights” last year, I consider “Levitating” a legit Summer Song contender, rather than a holdover, because of its late-spring resurgence. But “Good 4 U” coincided perfectly with summer. When it played next to “Levitating” in June, I felt pretty good for Top 40. Same when I encountered it next to Dua Lipa’s “Love Again” in the second half of summer. And summer is ending with Sour atop the Billboard 200 album chart again.
“Good 4 U” was the cultural moment that you’d want from the song of the summer. When mother/daughter records began to magically reappear, it was the song where daughters took the lead. Also, because starting with “Driver’s License,” the Olivia Rodrigo phenomenon could have happened without radio’s final signoff as well. But radio mattered to the Rodrigo story to the point of Interscope working “Good 4 U” and “Déjà Vu” simultaneously to No. 1 and 2.
As for “Levitating,” I am prepared to now declare it Song of the Year, because any song that upstages it in the next four months is going to be one hell of a record. I’ve written at length about how Lipa’s hits have proven the continued worth of the “radio record.” In May, the song’s resurgence prompted its own “what is a hit?” discussion, along with the question of whether radio can still make its own songs familiar in research. At this moment, “Love Again” has slowed since its initial boom weeks and is hovering outside the top 10. After “Levitating,” I feel I know how this story ends.
There’s more music out there than Top 40 has been able to get to. I know that because I’ve got three radio station playlists’ worth of songs on my Summer Energy 2021 Playlist. Most of the dance music that has made U.K. and European Top 40 radio sound great for a while is still waiting to be found by U.S. radio. In the U.K., the song of summer contenders include Calvin Harris and Galantis.
As for the songs that are in our consideration set, I hope programmers will get maximum value out of them. Uptempo pop has been the hardest thing for radio to read, as “Levitating” shows. Competing with TikTok throws the familiarity question in front of a funhouse mirror. For years, hooks were an acceptable avatar for an entire song, but now we’re gauging the impact of a video channel that plays only hooks.
Justin Bieber’s “Peaches” was as telling for radio as “Levitating” in a different way. “Peaches” went quickly into power. It didn’t linger there (especially since “Stay” was next in line). “Peaches” was probably handled the exact right way by radio. Down the road, it will probably test strongly again for some people exactly because it got six weeks there, not sixteen and not 60 weeks. Songs by artists who are not Justin Bieber, especially uptempo songs, don’t always get that same consideration. Perhaps more should.
What was your song of the summer? Please leave a comment.
Hm. Admittedly, I heard more inebriated women sing-yelling along to “Levitating” this summer than at any point in its lifecycle previously, so in that sense it’s certainly a defensible pick for the summer’s top title. But let’s be real, it was initially breaking last year and it’s beyond sad that it’s even in contention for this status. For me it’s obviously “Good 4 U” in a landslide (though I prefer “Deja Vu” and wish it had been the megasmash).
In all honesty, there were few real contenders for the crown. “Montero” was played too late in its life to actually feel world-conquering and soul-affirming in the way that a summer smash should, and “Kiss Me More,” while fun, was also unoriginal and safe, what would be sort of a B-tier followup hit in a healthier climate. There were others that could have been contenders, but that y’all apparently decided shouldn’t be kicked into full gear until fall or at all, like “Arcade” and “Heartbreak Anniversary,” presumably because of y’all’s obsession with ‘tempo’ or whatever.
I remain unconvinced that that nebulous concept is anywhere near as influential as its cheerleaders insist, or that they even have a consistent concept of what they mean by it. “Levitating” for instance is very much objectively mid- in this department, and yet here we are identifying it as “uptempo.” When watching videos on the social media platforms that radio people have recently started paying attention to, one will notice that the folks dancing in them tend to understand the pulse of these tracks (which they actually enjoy) to move twice as fast as what radio PDs (who often don’t enjoy these tracks, or nearly any current music) assume. And even when artists deliver in this department, radio folk are more than willing to look the other way when it suits their preconceived notion of what a hit ‘should’ be. You glowingly noted “Up’s” ascent into the Pop top 20 in one of your prior summer updates, perhaps unaware that it was fated to go essentially no further. It fired on essentially all cylinders and divided the beat up enough to satisfy hesitant radio folks, but I guess that still wasn’t enough. Streams, check. iTunes sales (LOL), check. Callout, check. Tempo, check. But by the time those all had fallen into place, Top 40 still couldn’t identify a hit as a hit. Sure, streaming enthusiasm from young’ns on the ground had dried up somewhat by the time things got to that point, but that was purely radio’s fault, not the song’s. Their loss, I guess!
“Butter” was absolutely no one’s song of the summer beyond the few thousand people who were buying the same collection of digital files week after week, often multiple times per week, brainwashed by the label and your industry’s most prominent public-facing bean-counters to believe that purchasing the illusion that more people care for an act than actually do would somehow sway the general public into actually becoming enthusiastic about a patently mediocre and dated song.
All in all, it’s safe to say we didn’t really have the summer we were hoping for several months back. Radio didn’t provide the soundtrack of mood-lifting innocent/childlike frivolity so much as, like, a theme park with “Thank you healthcare heroes!!” posters plastered on select walls but apparently zero interest in preventing more ‘gifts’ from being delivered to the nearest ERs and ICUs. Maybe next year! In the meantime, I look forward to October, when 2022’s official Song of the Summer is likely to be released.
PS, the Laroi song with Bieber on it isn’t “Without You.”