This Is Not the Summer With No Song of Summer

Last year, I toyed with the notion of making “Hot to Go!!” by Chappell Roan the Song of Summer 2024. Both song and artist were clearly phenomenal. Entire stadiums were singing along, sometimes without radio’s help. But in the summer of “Espresso,” “A Bar Song (Tipsy),” and “I Had Some Help,” there wasn’t much need to look beyond radio.

If it weren’t for my pesky and oft-stated belief that the Song of Summer should be up, fun, summery, there wouldn’t be any need for creativity this summer, either. If you believe the Billboard Song of Summer chart to be binding, then we’re all set here. Alex Warren’s “Ordinary” not only ruled the Hot 100 and Mediabase CHR airplay charts all summer, but it was also the winning choice for the largest number of Facebook friends when I asked for their choices last week. It was clearly summer’s biggest hit. For some, it was the only consensus hit.

There are a lot of radio programmers and other ROR readers who love “Ordinary.” It didn’t sit at No. 1 all summer without them. There are also some readers whose vote was a sideways compliment. “This is a doldrum period, no question about it. ‘Ordinary’ truly deserves the song of the summer because it fits with the times. Anything with tempo would not be representative,” writes Jason Steiner. 

There were multiple votes as well for “no song of summer,” following a spate of consumer press articles suggesting as much. KMVQ [99.7 Now] San Francisco’s morning show came to the same conclusion on-air earlier this week. Writer Carl Wilson goes further: “America is too besieged and divided to have a collective summer party song,” he says.

There were certainly major artists — Roan, Justin Bieber — who chose an inopportune moment to turn introspective (although Bieber’s “Daisies” at least felt summery).  And yet, there was a solid slate of uptempo hits this summer, and most of them came with a streaming story. From Ravyn Lenae’s “Love Me Not” to Sombr’s “Undressed,” it was nice to hear indie pop pumping a little harder and meandering a little less.

“Undressed” arrived at the exact right moment and yet was photobombed by “Back to Friends,” which streamed even more but wasn’t a radio priority. “Undressed” didn’t become a power for most stations, even early champion WHTZ (Z100) New York, but I can see it enduring through the fall, similar to Hozier’s “Too Sweet,” which filled a similar place in the musical spectrum last summer. Sombr is at the very least my Artist of Summer 2025, and tempo-starved CHR and Hot ACs really should be playing “12 to 12” now.

The biggest issue for Sabrina Carpenter’s “Manchild” or Morgan Wallen & Tate McRae’s “What I Want” was following in the wake of “Espresso” and “I Had Some Help.” “Manchild” was, nevertheless, the song cited second most by readers. (“A big lovable #1,” says Liveline’s Mason Kelter.)

But by the end of summer, it was clear that pop radio didn’t have the showplace records it needed. I don’t know if a steady stream of negative consumer-press articles can affect radio’s fortunes these days, but they certainly didn’t draw listeners to CHR, and they likely changed how we feel about the music, too.

It didn’t help either that many of last summer’s hits hadn’t really left. There are at least a dozen CHRs now playing “Espresso” in power rotation. There are also still a lot of Top 40 stations playing two or three gold and recurrent titles in a row before you get to a current song. That may seem like a logical response to available product, but it’s not working for the format as a whole. 

Also, any current song that isn’t at an “Espresso” level feels a little anticlimactic when it’s the only new song you hear for 20 minutes. Benson Boone’s “Mystical Magical” was another “solid, but not the song of summer” offering. If it had been followed by another fun current, it would have felt like more was happening. It’s different on a CHR station where Ellie Goulding is next. 

We’ve had the discussion before about whether “personal Song of Summer” is an oxymoron, but really, there was no reason not to have your own this year. A few readers went for Wet Leg’s “Catch These Fists.” There were multiple votes for Miley Cyrus’s “End of the World,” already slowing by Memorial Day because of its initial streaming numbers. The song I heard everywhere this summer was Role Model’s “Sally, When the Wine Runs Out,” spurred (like Cyrus) both by international airplay as well as being a bigger hit at Triple-A and Alternative.

Last summer, Carpenter and Roan sparked my suggestion that Top 40 could benefit from more spiky female pop, especially if some Alternative and Triple-A artists determined to make a hit single. That didn’t materialize. Going into summer, I saw indie pop as an exploitable commodity. Sombr should have made PDs more excited about Role Model or D4VD. Instead, many throttled the category at one song. The potential for the first Hip-Hop summer in recent memory evaporated as Doechii’s “Anxiety” ran its course.

Then there was the genre that was in CHR’s quiver all along. “‘Golden’ by Huntr/X is undoubtedly the Song of the Summer,” says Jamie Hyatt of iHeart’s Asian-pop CHR KUCD (Pop 101.9) Honolulu. “It’s got tempo, an infectious hook, it’s from a megahit movie and soundtrack, it dominated streams all summer long, moms and daughters bond to it. What more do you want?”

In its first weeks, PDs were less inclined to view “Golden” as this year’s “Hot to Go!!” than its “We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” even though this song (while plot-driven) works just fine as a stand-alone hit. Some readers felt like radio didn’t come aboard in time for the song to be Song of Summer. But if it’s a shared experience you want, “Golden” and Kpop Demon Hunters have been that for many listeners over the last two months. And much of radio is deciding to share it.

Radio has wondered what to make of K-pop for more than a decade now. Liveline’s Kelter still feels strongly that “Golden” is not a radio record. For me, the movie and the most successful soundtrack in years makes this a different discussion than anything before. So does the coverage of the movie’s spread to parents. So has the changing nature of the genre’s offerings. ROSE & Bruno Mars’ “APT” became a consensus hit by any measure, even with a hook in Korean. If it sounds different from the hits of 2018, that’s significant.

Years ago, as Top 40 began to slide out of its last golden era and we were faced with the choice of “Rude” or “Fancy,” I instead designated the Ice Bucket Challenge as the Song of Summer 2014. That summer’s viral phenomenon had no particular song attached to it. This one has four in the Billboard top 10. So “Golden” is this column’s 2025 Song of the Summer, the first one not to be released by Memorial Day in recent memory. Like many of the songs above, it is a power for only a few stations this week and only heading into callout, but it’s also already more than just a hit record.

After you read this, you may notice that in its vaguely martial feel, “Golden” is not that different sonically from “Ordinary” — but bouncier, and with the strong female POV that made last summer so interesting. There may be more of that in the next few weeks.  Doja Cat’s “Jealous Type,” already being teased before Memorial Day, is finally out. The Sabrina Carpenter album is here tomorrow. New Taylor Swift is on the way. I’m confident calling the summer for “Golden” now, but, hey, there are three weeks of summer left. What will we make of them?

As always, you can hear summer’s biggest hits (and some for fall) on my Big Hits Energy playlist.