From “Old Town Road” to “Despacito,”, the summer used to produce one song that would completely captivate the world. Love it or hate it, “The song of the summer” seems unavoidable. Walmart? Playing it as you shop for tomatoes. Night out? The DJ plays it 10 times over. My point here is that the song of the summer completely takes over daily life during its 15 minutes of fame. Unfortunately, in the summer of 2025, not a single song has truly stood out. Without a shared song repeating in our heads like an earworm, summer felt… empty. As a pop connoisseur, I must ask, “Where is the song of the summer?”
Perhaps the reason why this summer felt like such a letdown was because last year was such an incredible year for music! Ariana Grande made her long awaited return to pop with Eternal Sunshine. Many other artists, like Sabrina Carpenter, Chappell Roan, Kendrick Lamar, and Charli XCX, just to name a few, had an excellent year for their music careers. The summer airwaves were full of “ Not Like Us” and “Espresso.” Everyone and everything was Brat, from presidential candidates to TikTok dances. So, like so many music fans, I expected this summer to be even better than the last. Maybe 2024 was an anomaly, an unusually good year for music.? The summer was so full of new music that we got spoiled; we came to expect something that simply never arrived.
With many people having individualized playlists catered to their specific tastes, the song of the summer may now be a relic of the past. No one is listening to the radio anymore, and that coupled with the fact that most people listen to music through streaming has created a world where there simply are too many differing music tastes for one song to rise above it all. Still, this didn’t feel like a good answer. Songs like Doja Cat’s “Say So” or BTS’s “Butter” were able to climb the charts and worm their way into our ears despite being released in the streaming age. It does not matter that people personalize their music listening; one song always manages to rise above the rest, so why not this summer?
Maybe the song of the summer was just bad. From Benson Boone’s “Moonbeam Ice Cream” to Alex Warren’s “Ordinary,” our ears were plagued with bland, uninspired “coworker music,”, a TikTok term used to describe a diluted and uninspired genre of songs so bad that only people you casually see during the work day, people who we assume have no real taste for music, could possibly enjoy. The songs themselves sounded like they were written by executives trying to perfectly curate a pop song. Maybe the song of the summer did happen, but it was just so boring that no one cared.
So yes, 2025 is the year without a summer song, but perhaps that’s ok. The summer could not be condensed to one cultural moment, but multiple tiny moments. Movies like Kpop Demon Hunters and Superman had their own mini musical moments. Sabrina came back with a new summer hit, “Manchild,” and new contenders like Lola Young and KATSEYE came ready for the title. So while this year was quiet, pop music is safe! No need to worry about the missing song of the summer; it seems everyone has simply found their own song that works for them.