What was this year’s song of summer?
Everyone's divided on this year's song of summer; is it a reflection of our uncertain times, or a product of the super-fast micro-trend cycle?
Kendrick Lamar’s ‘Not Like Us’, Byron Messia’s ‘Talibans’, Burna Boy’s ‘Last, Last’... What do these songs have in common? They all soundtracked a summer in London. How do I know this? Because each year at carnival (respectively to when they came out) you could hear them being blasted out of stacked sound systems from Ladbroke Grove to Westbourne Park, and then after out of portable speakers. Kendrick in 2024, Byron in 2023 and Burna Boy in 2022. Carnival (the unofficial end of summer) cements London’s song of summer.
But this year was a little different. I was expecting to hear Shallipopi’s ‘Laho’ (a definite contender for the season’s standout), but I don’t think I heard it once. And the critics aren’t anymore aligned. While we may not have traditionally agreed on what the song of summer was (they’d have Lizzo's ‘About Damn Time’ as 2022’s), there was at least a general consensus amongst them, just as there was amongst us.
Yet looking through media platforms, I’m seeing very little consensus on the song of summer for 2025. Billboard would have it as Alex Warren's ‘Ordinary’ (call me out of touch, but I’m not actually sure who that is). The Guardian’s critics toss in Addison Rae’s ‘Headphones On’, PinkPantheress’ ‘Illegal’ and MK's ‘Dior (featuring Chrystal)’. So I went to TikTok – perhaps the most up-to-date purveyor of what’s hot and what’s not these days – only to find myself even more confused as ‘Pink Pony Club’ by Chappell Roan and ‘Anxiety’ by Doechi (banger) join the mix.
If we’re really thinking about songs that sum up the sound of summer, then maybe we should talk about Jess Glynne’s ‘Hold My Hand’. Originally released in 2015, the song has been resurrected this summer by the viral Jet2holiday trend. ‘Nothing beats a Jet2holiday!’ says voice actor Zoe Lister as Glynne comes in with the chorus, over videos of people’s disaster vacations. The pair actually linked up in July for a live rendition of the advert on Capital FM.
So why are we all so divided on the song of this summer? Why is there not a unanimous choice for Londoners, critics, or TikTokers alike?
There’s definitely a lot at play here. There’s the demise of radio and music journalism – their authority over what we are listening to no longer holding the same weight it once did – and the proliferation of streaming apps allowing people to hear music from any point in history, anywhere in the world (within reason). But both these things have been the case for a while now, and yet I can still trace my most recent summers based on the songs that soundtracked them.
A stronger case for 2025’s summer songlessness, I would argue, relates to something that is happening across culture as a whole, a phenomenon that has been termed ‘micro-trends’, where something will become immensely popular for a short period of time and then disappear into the depths of the algorithm. This can be anything from fashion to hobbies, language, memes, products or… music.
Sometimes it feels like we’re on an ever-quickening treadmill, our legs pounding the belt faster and faster to keep up. The so-called ‘20-year rule’, a concept in fashion that described the 20-year cycle of pop culture trends, is now obsolete, as pop culture churns out more than it can withhold and nothing sticks.
But maybe nothing is sticking because nothing is worth sticking. While this is an entirely Western perspective on the state of the music industry, and there is much incredible music coming out of other places around the world (such as the aforementioned Shallipopi from Nigeria), it wouldn’t be entirely unfair to say that the mainstream UK and US music scenes are at a bit of a standstill.
Chart analysts say that 2025 has produced the fewest new hit songs in US history. The mid-year report from Luminate, the company that produces the data for the Billboard charts, shows that of the top 10 most listened to songs so far this year in the US, only one was released in 2025: ‘Ordinary’ by Alex Warren. All the others are tracks from 2024 and 2023.
People are listening backwards, digging into the archives to find their summer anthems. While last year’s charts were filled with new songs, from Charli XCX to Sabrina Carpenter to Shaboozey’s ‘A Bar Song (Tipsy)’, this year is seeing those same tunes regurgitated.
Jaime Marconette, the vice-president of music insights and industry relations at Luminate, tells The Guardian that this is not the first time this has happened. In the pandemic, there were also fewer new songs in the charts:
“In the Covid period, there were a lot of dramatic things happening in our world,” he says. "So, it is interesting that now in a period where there’s uncertainty out there, we’re seeing it again. Perhaps it’s just a coincidence, but we’re also starting to notice a jump in people streaming recession pop [music released around 2008 with escapist themes from artists such as Taio Cruz and Nicki Minaj], and it does point to a sort of communal yearning for things that bring comfort from the past.”
Once again, nostalgia takes the blame for our collective inability to innovate (within mainstream Western culture at least). In these rocky, turbulent times, filled with angst about climate change, genocide and house prices, people are looking back to simpler times, and that is being reflected in the music we choose.
But it’s not all doom and gloom. Just because there wasn’t a unified song of summer this year, doesn’t mean there haven’t been any at all. Without one main media platform dictating what we all listen to, songs circulate within the distinct echo chambers of their own communities, creating even stronger bonds between them. Across the UK, fans of hard house, grime, UKG and folk will have had their own summer hits, ones completely unknown to each other, but played over and over by those they are dear to.
I asked the ON ROAD office to give me a breakdown of their own personal songs of summer:
Jesse: Clipse - ‘The Birds Don't Sing’
Jamie: Interplanetary Criminal - ‘Feel like Slow Burner’
Seetal: Black Sherif - ‘Top of the Morning’
Jackie: Vanco - ‘Ma Tnsani’
Marlon: Blood Orange - ‘The Field’
Anya: Bad Bunny - ‘Voy A Llevarte Pa PR’