Handicapping the Song of Summer 2024

“What’s the Song of Summer” is always the fun question for Ross on Radio readers in May, when we handicap the field, and again in August when we’re choosing a winner. It comes with a more serious question this year. How will radio get the most out of its contenders?

The official Song of Summer 2023 was an outlier. “Cruel Summer” was a four-year-old album cut benefiting from Taylor Swift’s Eras tour excitement and a few enterprising PDs when we wrote this story last year. But it did go on to be an inescapable radio record for most of the next year. At KMCK (Power 105.7) Fayetteville, Ark., “Cruel Summer” was still in power last week.

This year, it’s been gratifying to see so many clear candidates popping up at regular intervals — every week or two since mid-March. Some are streaming surprises, some are regular hitmakers, one is from an act you wouldn’t expect at CHR. For many, the leading candidate is the song that further propelled Sabrina Carpenter toward the top tier of CHR hitmakers. 

It’s no longer guaranteed that the Song of Summer will be on the radar by Memorial Day, although it usually has been so far — even when it’s a surprise. Streaming-driven outliers are certainly possible and part of the game now. There are other major artists rumored to have songs coming. Even in the time before fragmentation, radio could never entirely control the Song of Summer dialogue. The whole point was that the public took over at some point and made one song more than just a radio hit.

Last summer, Taylor Swift was the shared experience, and a reminder of how much most of us enjoyed having a monoculture again. A few weeks ago, the Kendrick Lamar vs. Drake battle was a reminder of how pop-culture moments find plenty of oxygen without radio now. I don’t know quite how universal Lamar’s “Not Like Us” really became, but the story was hard to avoid for 10 days. (As for radio coming aboard — Rhythmic CHR and Hip-Hop have. Top 40 hasn’t, so far. The song has literally just been serviced as I write this. Next, I’d love to see both rappers release great singles this summer that aren’t about each other.)

Swift, Drake, and Lamar are superstar artists with 10-15+ years of hitmaking equity. Their unicorn moments are hard to match deliberately. But we are starting out with the best field of music in several years — the only question is whether its depth will maintain through the summer or beyond.  We have new albums from Beyoncé, Swift, and Billie Eilish a few weeks apart, and all have been major consumer-press events. 

We have also seen Country’s relative resurgence over the past few years driven by an overarching perception that the music is different and better. So shouldn’t Top 40 and Adult CHR be trying to generate the same sort of excitement? Should radio be marketing itself around Song of the Summer — even if that’s only feasible virally? Should it play into our contesting in some way? What are the little ways in which we can reinforce it — whether that’s making the discussion a Friday-morning benchmark or building it into our new-music stagers? (KMVQ San Francisco’s Big Bay Mornings has already been on the air with the discussion.)

These are the songs that ROR readers identified as the major contenders:

• Sabrina Carpenter, “Espresso” – The leader among ROR readers so far. It’s “in the driver’s seat,” says Entercom Austin MD Sean MacKenna. “I [moved it to power] last week and thought on my bike ride this evening that it’s going to be there all summer,” says Shaun Andrews, PD of WSKS Utica, N.Y.  “Espresso” also helped give an extra shot of energy to “Feather,” already at the top of the CHR chart when it came out.
• Post Malone & Morgan Wallen, “I Had Some Help” – “The front-runner” for WXLK (K92) Roanoke, Va., PD Chris Anderson. “Seems like a slam-dunk,” says Danny Ocean, PD of the Poconos’ WSBG. “Help” arrived amidst a new round of some PDs grumbling about Country-to-CHR crossover. But as Kane Brown & Marshmello’s “Miles on It” shows, we’re going to have harder-to-categorize songs that are engineered to scale both charts simultaneously for a while. Then there’s …
• Shaboozey, “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” – It’s tied with “I Had Some Help” for mentions. “A wedding standard for decades to come,” predicts Josh Hosler. Three months ago, “Texas Hold ’Em” was part of a genre-bending category to which songs were added every few years. Then Dasha’s “Austin” came along. Now Country/Dance is a sound code. (Look for more about that in future weeks.)
• Hozier, “Too Sweet” – Some Top 40 PDs are also grappling with the recent infusion of Triple-A product. I feel it might be a 1995-style reset of the format, and ultimately positive. But I also like it better when it’s uptempo. As with the Country crossovers discussion, Triple-A and singer/songwriter hits are less of an issue if there’s a steady, varied flow of hit music, and if radio finds 25 currents worth playing, rather than 12.
• Tommy Richman, “Million Dollar Baby” – “Just too cool of a vibe not to root for,” says Adam Rivers of KC101 New Haven/Kiss 95.7 Hartford, Conn. (and now Classic Hits B101 Providence, R.I.). Belongs to that category of intense midtempo streaming hits that has been hardest for CHR to parse, although K92’s Anderson throws in that DJO’s “End of Beginning,” another recent entrant, “is huge in my callout.” 
• Billie Eilish, “Lunch” – “The best thing Billie’s done,” says Jamie Turner, station manager of KFLW (The Mix) Springfield, Mo. It’s certainly the most song-of-summery record Eilish has made. Some PDs say they’re still grappling with the song’s suggestiveness, but it’s No. 19 CHR after six days at this writing. 

Those are the songs that readers cited as the Summer Song candidates. As always, there’s already a good supply of uptempo songs that are already established hits, chart-climbers, or left-field entries worth at least checking out. A lot of those songs can be found on my my Big Hits Energy playlist. They include: 

Ariana Grande’s “We Can’t Be Friends” is growing into its No. 1 status the same way that “Feather” did, and there’s her “The Boy is Mine” in the wings. Besides Country, neo-disco has been CHR’s defining sound of the last six months, and there’s also Dua Lipa’s “Illusion” in sub-power, with Bibi & Jackson Wang’s “Feeling Lucky” and David Guetta & Onerepublic’s “I Don’t Wanna Wait” scaling the charts. An ROR reader tips Charli XCX’s “360.”

One PD I spoke to expressed surprise that this summer isn’t starting out with more Rhythmic and Hip-Hop product, beyond Camila Cabello f/Lil Nas X’s “He Knows” and Ice Spice’s “Gimme a Light.” After the success of “Calm Down” last year, I had expected more Afrobeats crossovers — Tyla’s “Jump” and Tems’ “Love Me JeJe” are just starting to happen at Rhythmic and Hip-Hop radio respectively. This year’s field isn’t as top-heavy with “flipped” reworkings of songs, making the field less crowded for Black Eyed Peas x En Alfa f/Becky G’s “Tonight (Bad Boys).”

I like Chappel Roan’s “Good Luck, Babe” for its tempo and coolness. WVAQ Morgantown, W.Va., PD Matt Kelly was early to tip me to that song, and has now identified Remi Wolf’s “Cinderella” as next to bubble up from the pop underground. I’d like to see Taylor Swift’s “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart” and Beyoncé’s “Bodyguard” emerge from their albums this summer. I like hearing tempo again from Lukas Graham on “Cheat Code” and Train’s “Long Yellow Dress.”

Some left-field Rock radio candidates include the posthumous Five Finger Death Punch/DMX collaboration, “This is the Way”; the similar Sublime & Stick Figure f/Bradley Nowell’s “Feel Like That” and Highly Suspect’s “Summertime Voodoo.” Former Alternative chart artist Upsahl is teasing “Summer So Hot,” which will be targeted to pop.