The Two Summer Songs Of 2020

It was easy to pick a Song of Summer for the summer of 2020 we wanted to have:

“Watermelon Sugar” was perfectly timed — lying in wait on Harry Styles’ second album for nearly six months and already ratified elsewhere in the world. In the U.K., it became a hit a second time this summer. In the U.S., it finally reached the sort of “didn’t we just hear this?” radio ubiquity in late July/early August that one would want from the big summer hit.

“Watermelon Sugar” was one of only a few new songs that achieved that radio ubiquity this summer. One of the current tests of a summer song has become whether it can ever compete with the lingering winter/spring hits — particularly as “Blinding Lights” enters its seventh month in power rotation. To some extent, Styles won because “Watermelon Sugar” was able to eclipse his “Adore You” before Dua Lipa’s “Break My Heart” overtook long-running megahit sister “Don’t Start Now.”

Styles and Lipa were really the only new consensus power rotation songs at pop radio all summer, with Saint JHN’s “Roses,” Dababy’s “Rockstar” (with its “BLM Remix” verse, the most topical of the summer’s hits), and Lewis Capaldi’s “Before You Go” hovering just below. This year, with Top 40 already moving glacially on music, playing more throwbacks as a salve, and more hurt by changed listening patterns than other formats, the Song of the Summer came too close to being the song of the summer.

“Watermelon Sugar” was a pure pop hit that sounded like nothing else on a pop landscape where “sounding like something else” has been a problem for years. Its “dedicated to touching” video, filmed in January, became the last footage of crowds frolicking on the beach that you could feel good about. Even in May, it was an avatar for summer itself. But in a summer short on mass gatherings and other opportunities for a song to take hold, and because of pop radio’s reduced influence, I can’t yet read its impact on “people-who-barely-even-follow-pop-music.”

There were phenomena. Taylor Swift, who unsuccessfully ventured into the Summer Song derby for the first time last year, instead had a moment that went beyond it with Folklore. The most mentioned song in my Facebook summer song discussion, after “Watermelon Sugar” and “Blinding Lights” was Cardi B & Megan Thee Stallion’s “WAP,” the current No. 1 single to Swift’s No. 1 album. However disparate, both got the attention of people-who-barely-follow-pop. (I probably don’t need to mention that the “WAP” video is NSFW, for instance.) At summer’s end, there was “Dynamite,” finally giving BTS its U.S. radio hit (with its nod to a summer hit of a decade ago).

Country radio did have a consensus summer song. Recently, as the all-‘90s pop format picked up steam, I was in a Twitter debate on whether anybody wants to hear “Macarena” now. But Luke Bryan was successfully channeling that song in “One Margarita,” with its own beach-party video. Country’s 40-week chart cycles have meant “All Summer Long” becoming a fall hit in the past, but Bryan became No. 1 in mid-July and is still No. 6 most-played. In part that’s because Country has held up the best among current-driven formats, and still has the ability to put a new song on the agenda quickly. CHR should have played “One Margarita”; now we’ll see what they do with Morgan Wallen’s “7 Summers,” already propelled by streaming to Spotify’s Today’s Top Hits playlist.

Then there’s the summer we’ve actually had. Facebook has no trouble coming up with appropriate songs from years past. Pundits have been riffing about “It’s the End of the World as We Know It” and “Don’t Stand So Close to Me” since March, but the list has turned more sober: “Gimme Shelter,” “I’d Love to Change the World,” “Eve Of Destruction,” “Virtual Insanity,” “For What It’s Worth.” It’s been an ongoing trope for years that music doesn’t acknowledge our times anymore. We need topicality, and it’s there now in every current-based radio format.

It’s hard to say now that any one song has taken hold. Some have come and gone quickly — Ariana Grande & Justin Bieber’s “Stuck With You,” Twenty One Pilots’ “Level of Concern” (at CHR anyway; at Alternative, it probably was the song of the summer). The summer songs I found most cathartic, “Zen” by X Ambassadors, K FLAY, and Grandson, and “A Little Bit Off” by Five Finger Death Punch, became No. 1 at Alternative in Canada and at Active Rock here respectively. For about 10 days in June, radio in multiple formats put Childish Gambino’s  “This Is America” back in current rotation: a comment in itself in 2018 and again on whether there was any place for music as anything but a call to action.

I thought the song for the summer we’ve actually had could be Avenuebeat’s “F2020,” (represented here, like Cardi/Megan, by its unedited version). It began virally, as we knew Summer Song 2020 might; it had big-name call letters instantly. It was certainly the sentiment that even a divided America could agree on. But at summer’s end, it is building gradually–currently bulleted but off 32-34 at CHR, another instance of pop radio not quite knowing what to do with novelty/reaction records. I suppose you could give it four months of night spins to see if it tests eventually; I would have played it 47x a week and found out right away.

The song of the summer we really had is yet to emerge. It may not have been written yet. During the Twitter dialogue about “Macarena” this year, I commented that although I usually edge away from the dance floor when the line dancing begins, I can’t wait for “Macarena” to come on at a wedding when the coast is clear; “Celebration” even. The best song of the real summer of 2020 will be the one that can look back at it from a healthier, happier, more harmonious place.