Andrew Listens to...Song of the Summer
Going back the last ten years, I try to pull out the songs that dominated, the songs that defined, and the songs that captured the ear of the country during the summer.
Sometimes the hipster-in-my-head tells me I shouldn’t listen to Top 40 hits because it’s “too mainstream”. But I love being a part of the zeitgeist, so I keep tuning my radio to WTMX - The Mix 101.9 FM. I used to listen to a lot more radio, before I had a car with a Bluetooth connection. And one of the reasons I miss those days is that I used to really follow what songs I thought might be the “Song of the Summer”. It’s a bit of a nebulous term, influenced by social media trends, studio money, and sheer dumb luck as much as musical bopability. But for this first review of the summer, I thought I’d walk down memory lane and highlight my pick for song of the summer for each year. Obviously there has to be some mainstream success, so I picked from the top 5 songs from Billboard for each summer. Some of them are personal favorites. Others are undeniable cultural juggernauts. What were your picks from each year?
Andrew Listens to… Song of the Summer (Linked to Spotify)
Not Like Us by Kendrick Lamar (2024)
Kill Bill (feat. Doja Cat) by SZA (2023)
Heat Waves by Glass Animals (2022)
good 4 u by Olivia Rodrigo (2021)
WAP (feat Megan Thee Stallion) by Cardi B (2020)
bad guy by Billie Eilish (2019)
Girls like you (feat. Cardi B) (2018)
Despacito by Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee (2017)
Cheap Thrills (feat. Sean Paul) by Sia (2016)
Shut Up and Dance by WALK THE MOON (2015)
The List
I remember when I started paying attention to the beef between Drake and Kendrick Lamar; sitting on the blue line on my commute home and listening to each attack and counterattack with a growing sense that this was going to be big. For the weeks after I watched and read dozens of reviews and think pieces about how each song fit into the greater narrative of the feud. For the first time I understood why someone might follow sports religiously. But nothing prepared me for the absolute precision of Kendrick’s killing blow “Not Like Us”. Better writers than I have done the lord’s work of dissecting the dense tangle of references, double ententres, and barbs, so I won’t attempt that here. Instead, I want to talk about why this diss track became the song of the summer. Obviously the beef attracted a lot of attention, but the song itself is a lot more than just a collection of personal attacks. First of all, DJ Mustard’s production is masterful, alternating between the absolutely insidious riff that underscores most of Kendrick’s flow and these triumphant brass flourishes that reminds you that this is entertainment. Second, Kendrick has a true talent for perfectly crystallized meme lyrics. The obvious stand out is, “tryina strike a chord, but it’s probably a minor”- a line that the whole Super Bowl stadium screamed. The song is full of memes and vocal stims that are intensely satisfying to listen to. And finally, and most importantly to this discussion, in Kendrick’s music video for the song, he made the case that this was a song to celebrate and honor the community of Los Angeles, with whole crowds of Angelinos singing and dancing together. That image of a beautiful California summer cemented for me that this was not just a diss song, but a definitive song of summer.
The summer of 2023 didn’t have such cultural behemoths, but my choice for the song of the summer was the one that I most looked forward to on the radio, “Kill Bill” by SZA and Doja Cat. First of all, I love both of these artists separately, but together they are so iconic. In “Kill Bill” Doja’s scratchy flow details a fantasy narrative where she stalks her ex, laments his moving on, and kills both the ex and the new lover. It’s a dark dark song, but then SZA’s chorus comes in, dreamily crooning about doing it “all for us”. I think this is a song of the summer for the reason that this was a tent pole superhero popcorn flick. Two of the biggest names in the business team up for a high drama and high violence fantasia that sells both as an escapist fantasy wrapped in one liners and pathos? I’d make a joke about it being a Marvel movie, but the song is literally a reference to the massive summer blockbuster by Quentin Tarantino. Winters are for Oscar bait and indie darlings. Summers are for explosions and triumphs. And “Kill Bill” does that. What’s more, I think it’s grounded in a very real emotion, “I’d rather be in hell than alone”. Sometimes a song doesn’t need to be ubiquitous to be a song of the summer.
The previous summer had a song that had actually been released months before to little fanfare and gradually grew until you couldn’t go 30 minutes without hearing it on the radio. I’m talking about Glass Animals “Heat Waves”. I’ve loved Glass Animals since Hannah Verdon recommended How to be a Human Being for my first album project, so I was pretty onboard with a radio friendly smash hit from the start. It’s a deeply groovy song, with this thick drum machine and bass line, paired with Dave Bayley’s liquid voice. At first glance, it feels like a song about summer, full of heat waves and thoughts about someone who isn’t there. But then I listened to Song Exploder’s episode on the song (linked) and I learned that the song was actually about grief, loss, and learning how to forgive yourself for not being able to save someone from suicide. It’s an odd song to be a song of summer based on that, which is perhaps confirmed by the record breaking 59 week climb to number one (dethroning “We Don’t Talk About Bruno”). But I guess a song doesn’t have to have a traditional narrative to be the song of the summer.
Four years ago, 2021 shows us the breakout of a bona fide 2020s pop star Olivia Rodrigo with her debut album Sour and one of her biggest hits “Good 4 U”. I think I first came across this song the same way a lot of young (and young-ish) people did: as a five second audio on countless TikTok videos. This was the first time I heard a meme-moment so catchy in a TikTok that I followed it back to the original track (“Like a damn sociopath” is so iconic) This song was utterly inescapable in the summer of 2021. I attribute this success to the fusing of two opposing musical factions, Gen Z and the Millennials. For the former group, they knew Rodrigo from her time on the Disney Channel, her messy love triangle with Joshua Bassett and Sabrina Carpenter, and her absolutely massive hit “Driver’s License”. The Millennials flocked towards this song out of nostalgia for Paramore, of whom Hayley Williams and Josh Farro were retrospectively given co-writing credits due to influence from Paramore's "Misery Business" (2007), with the pair to receive a combined royalty share of 50%. Why this song works for me is that it’s just so bold and unapologetic and damn catchy. While “Driver’s License” was the bigger hit and a Grammy contender for song of the year, “Good 4 U” is better suited to hotter temperatures, hotter tempers, and for this reason, I think this was the more successful song of the summer.
2020. Arguably the most impactful year of the twenty-first century. Obviously it’s impossible to separate this year from the trauma of COVID-19. But amidst the tragedy and the tumult, there arose a song so culturally dominant that it broke through the news cycle and became a story in itself. I’m of course talking about Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s “WAP”. It was immediately massive; the first female rap collaboration to debut atop the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 and had the largest opening streaming week for a song in U.S. history. I think that by 2025, we’ve had other artists that write empowering sex positive music (Chappelle Roan, Sabrina Carpenter and Doechii are my three favorite Grammy winners of 2025). But in 2020, “WAP” or “Wet Ass P*ssy” was incredibly scandalous for the unapologetic boasts about their sexual prowess and their own erotic needs, often framed in graphic and evocative terms (I haven’t been able to eat mac and cheese since then without thinking of this song). It's a song that knows exactly what it wants to be and refuses to equivocate on that point. And like a several songs on this list, it features some truly iconic meme moments, including the “big mac truck in this little garage *train honk*”. It sticks in the brain. Ben Shapiro may have hated it, but it is undeniable that “WAP” was the song of the summer.
2019 definitely feels like the Before Times. Anything before the pandemic feels impossibly long ago. That feeling is even more exaggerated when you realize that 2019 was the debut of the Grammy and Oscar winning super star Billie Eilish, “Bad Guy”. The song broke the dominant stranglehold that Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” had on the chart (and kept it from being itself the song of the summer). Obviously a huge credit for the song’s success sits on Eilish’s charismatic menace and tongue in cheek lyrics. But equally deserving of credit is her brother Finneas O'Connell, whose production gives the song its iconic bass line and fun house mirror version of dance hall music. I think the unapologetic nature of the song, epitomized by Eilish’s “Duh” make this song deeply appealing, as is the sexual power reversal of a teenage girl, specifically during the Me Too era and first Trump presidency. While she has released bigger hits since 2019, a part of me will always think of “Bad Guy” first when thinking of Billie Eilish’s cultural footprint. While it’s dark and moody, it is undeniable that this bop was the song of the summer.
Long time readers of this blog will know how indebted I am to the work of Toddintheshadows (linked) and he has a longstanding hatred of Adam Levine and Maroon 5. While I can’t deny that Maroon 5 has become a commercially successful band by following trends, I can’t fault them for trying to maintain relevance, which they did much more successfully than any of their peers from 2002. And in 2018 they cut another notch in their belt for the song of the summer with “Girls Like You”, featuring a powerful assist from Cardi B. Unfortunately, the song is terrible. Adam’s vocal performance lacks any authentic emotion, the lyrics are thick with platitudes, and, as Shaad D'Souza of Vice writes, " (it’s) a god awful, horrid, weird, marshmallow-soft song sung by dudes pining after a ‘good girl’ who will finally fix all of their problems through the power of love”. But Cardi B provides much needed charisma, realness, and catchy moments, my favorite three being:
Not too long ago, I was dancing for dollars
Know it's really real if I let you meet my mama
…
I don't really want a white horse and a carriage
I'm thinkin' more of white Porsches and carats
…
I need you right here 'cause every time you're far
I play with this kitty like you play wit' your guitar, ah
Maroon 5 have built a career out of inoffensive, car commercial pop rock. But in pairing themselves with the walking charm factory Cardi B, together they wrote the song of the summer.
Back in 2017, Daddy Yankee and Luis Fonsi wrote a song so catchy that the famously foreign-language-phobic pop charts had to recognize the quality, with “Despacito”. I’ve talked about this song before in my review of Latin Rhythms (feat. Aly Retzlaff) (linked). It’s a big important song in the history of Spanish music globally, with many music journalists crediting the song with the renewed popularity of Spanish-language pop music in the mainstream market. From Luis Fonsi, the song gets its smooth romantic flavor, and from Daddy Yankee it gets its vibrant and pounding sex appeal. (From Justin Bieber it got access to English speaking audiences and not much else). It was the song of the summer because it was ubiquitous, dominating the charts and the airwaves. To me, it was special because I was finally getting past the 10 month relationship deadline I’d been cursed with (it’s a long story, but 5 out of 6 of my previous relationships had imploded at 10 month) and to celebrate I put together a mixed CD for Alex, featuring Kendrick Lamar’s “Love”, Francis and the Light’s “May I have this Dance” and, of course, “Despacito”. It was romantic-it was sexy-it captured that moment in my courtship pretty perfectly. For both personal and global reasons, “Despacito” was definitely the song of the summer.
Do you remember the Era of Sia? I’m not referring to her indie darling period, but instead the handful of years where every song she touched turned to radio gold. One of the last ones to dominate in the way of “Chandelier” was her 2016 collaboration with the late 2010s-star Sean Paul, “Cheap Thrills”. The thing about Sia in this period is that she was often writing primarily for other, bigger artists, in this case Rihanna, who rejected the song for her album Anti, which makes sense given the "reggae-tinged" synthpop and dancehall sound. Clearly this is why Sean Paul was bought in, to lend some authenticity, because Sia does really sell the bouncy party anthem quality, despite being famous for insecurity and shyness. It does make sense as a song of the summer; the song is fun and unconcerned with the irony and sarcasm that was creeping into mainstream success. In this way, it feels like the end of the era of music that included Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, and Kesha; the last of the millennial pop divas. But with “Cheap Thrills”, Sia did definitely capture the title of song of the summer.
The last song of this playlist harkens back to 2015, WALK THE MOON’s “Shut Up and Dance”. This song feels strangely out of time, even back in 2015. For a song that dominated the pop charts in the summer of that year, “Shut up and Dance” has more in common with Portugal. The Man’s “Feel It Still” or Foster the People’s “Pumped Up Kicks”; winners of the fluke indie sweepstakes. But for all of its indie credibility, this was a definitive success story, having been originally released in September of 2014, but lingering at the top of the chart a full year later. What makes the song work so much, for me at least, is that it takes the big synthy dance grooves of the 80s and updates them for the modern era, taking definite inspiration from The Killers or The Bleachers. AllMusic's James Christopher Monger described the song as a "pulsing, closing credits-ready anthem that oozes upbeat millennial enthusiasm,” which is just really designed for someone like me. And besides, I came of age with the manic pixie dream girl and despite all of the flaws of that trope, it will always have a place in my heart. For a song that felt anachronistic even for the time, I have to say that “Shut Up and Dance” is my favorite song from this list and was definitively a song of the summer.
Thank you for going on this journey with me.
Next: Andrew Listens to…. Movie Soundtracks (feat Greer Dubois)
I went to Puerto Rico in May 2017 and we kept a running tally of the number of times we heard Despacito per day. Can confirm it was the song of the summer.