<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not sure if the Gen X stare<\/a> is a thing, but it certainly was last week when someone asked my thoughts on the song of the summer. I had nothing.<\/p>\n Every summer, you see, has at least one song of the summer, the pop music equivalent of a freshly cracked cold beer: fizzy, refreshing, over in a few minutes, recyclable.<\/p>\n Some years you get a party pack: Last summer, for instance, brought us Sabrina Carpenter\u2019s percolating \u201cEspresso\u201d; Chappell Roan\u2019s supreme kiss-off, \u201cGood Luck, Babe!\u201d; Post Malone\u2019s buddy-jam with Morgan Wallen, \u201cI Had Some Help\u201d; and the entire slab of Charli XCX\u2019s season-defining album, \u201cBrat.\u201d<\/p>\n But, by any available metric, 2025 was no \u201cBrat\u201d summer<\/a>. And the reason we find ourselves sans summer jam in 2025 is simple: We\u2019re just not in the mood.<\/p>\n At the start of this year, a slump in champagne sales<\/a> signaled a gloomy summer party forecast, bolstered by larger trends that charted an antisocial turn in post-pandemic America. We\u2019re spending a lot more time at home<\/a>, and a lot less time together.<\/p>\n These aren\u2019t ideal conditions for summer jams, which rely on infectious dance-floor magnetism to take hold. Take it from someone who attended weddings during the hysteria surrounding both the \u201cLambada\u201d (1989) and the \u201cMacarena\u201d remix (1995).<\/p>\n Not to mention every other condition that might otherwise cultivate consensus around a bop. Gen Z isn\u2019t out there partying as hard as their generational forebears; they\u2019ve pulled back on drinking<\/a> and, thus, clubbing. And nobody is filling that space on the floor. If anything, it\u2019s getting worse: The United States is the only country reported to be facing a tourism decline<\/a> this year. The World Travel & Tourism Council forecasts a $12.5 billion drop<\/a> in international visitor spending this year compared with 2024.<\/p>\n Swirling around this social isolation and algorithmically driven hermitude is a world that, put simply, may not inspire fits of collective celebration. Flip or click to the front of this newspaper for dozens of reminders of why that might be the case.<\/p>\n Despite all of this, I do have a song of the summer candidate, sort of. It\u2019s a melody that has infiltrated our collective consciousness through more insidious avenues than radio or the PA setup at the pool party. We\u2019ve been searching for the beach ball when we should be sifting for the microplastics.<\/p>\n My nominee, when you think about it, is incontestable: British singer Jess Glynne\u2019s high-energy \u201cHold My Hand\u201d \u2014 or, at least, the first few seconds of the chorus.<\/p>\n If seeing the title typed out immediately triggered replay of Glynne\u2019s infectious hook, then you know what I\u2019m talking about, and I needn\u2019t explain myself further. Otherwise, there\u2019s still a high likelihood you know this 2015 song, even if you\u2019ve never heard the whole thing.<\/p>\n In January of this year, Jet2Holidays, a budget-conscious British tour operator, used Glynne\u2019s track as the background for an online promotion campaign, with cheery narration provided by voice-over actor Zo\u00eb Lister.<\/p>\n Nothing beats a Jet2Holiday, and right now you can save 50 pounds per person. That\u2019s 200 pounds off for a family of four!<\/i><\/p>\n Since its first appearance on TikTok, some 3.1 million users have grabbed the audio of Glynne and Lister\u2019s happenstance duet to supply background music for video after video of vacation activities gone horribly, virally wrong.<\/p>\n Hotel rooms with bad views<\/a>. Sea turtles with bad vibes<\/a>. Would-be parasailers getting dragged down the beach<\/a> at high speeds. Riders getting flung from inflatable rafts<\/a> at higher speeds. Zip-line adventures<\/a> with disastrous results. Waterslide encounters with disastrous results. Rope swing attempts \u2014 you get the idea.<\/p>\n Part of the viral power of these clips is that people love watching things go wrong in spectacular ways. Another part is purely Pavlovian: When I hear Glynne\u2019s voice (\u201cDarling, hold my hand!\u201d), I brace for disaster. When Glynne\u2019s fans hear her voice, they shout the ad copy<\/a> right along with the song. Despite the song\u2019s best intentions, Glynne\u2019s effervescent invitation to love now arrives like a harbinger of certain doom. Who wants a hot dog?<\/p>\n If you\u2019ve got a suggestion that beats the song by Glynne, do let me know \u2014 but the available summer jam data makes for a grim read. Since 2010, Billboard has dutifully tracked summer hits with its own dedicated chart<\/a>. And if you believe its rankings, this summer, just like the two before it, has been property of Morgan Wallen.<\/p>\n As of late August, he has three of the top five songs: \u201cWhat I Want\u201d with Tate McRae; \u201cJust in Case\u201d; and the title track to his most recent album, \u201cI\u2019m the Problem<\/a>,\u201d each a thumpy mid-tempo reminder that you might not want to date him. But Wallen\u2019s reliable place on the charts seems more correctly attributable to the ever-widening market for male grievance packaged as anodyne \u201cco-worker music\u201d than any particular knack he has for party-starting.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the purported summer jam that has spent the past 10 weeks blocking Wallen from the No. 1 spot \u2014 the plodding, dragon-imagining praise anthem of Alex Warren\u2019s tear-streaked \u201cOrdinary\u201d \u2014 is a bigger musical drag than all three Wallen tracks combined.<\/p>\n Indeed, the only tracks on Billboard\u2019s Songs of the Summer<\/a> chart that even graze bop territory are old news: Kendrick Lamar and SZA\u2019s \u201cLuther\u201d was released in November; Bruno Mars and Lady Gaga\u2019s \u201cDie With a Smile\u201d came out last August; and Chappell Roan\u2019s \u201cPink Pony Club\u201d was first released in 2020 \u2014 practically an oldie.<\/p>\n As new releases go, only Sabrina Carpenter\u2019s \u201cManchild\u201d and Ravyn Lenae\u2019s buoyant \u201cLove Me Not\u201d make fair showings toward the bottom of the Songs of the Summer Top 10, but, although each is a bop, neither is a banger. The one true contender for the title \u2014 the heat-seeking, Billboard Hot 100-topping<\/a> \u201cGolden\u201d by fictional K-pop girl group Huntr\/x \u2014 comes from a made-up (but very Korean) universe of the wildly popular animated musical fantasy film \u201cKPop Demon Hunters<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n The unique popularity of Huntr\/x \u2014 both global and niche-y \u2014 offers one potential clue to understanding the current shortfall of songs of the summer: As participants in the streaming economy (once known as \u201clisteners\u201d), we are less galvanized by the music we consume than we are entrenched in (and influenced by) our own algorithmically determined habits.<\/p>\n So maybe it makes a sick sort of sense that my song of the summer in 2025 is really just a broken fragment of a song, repurposed for an advertisement and co-opted into a meme highlighting the comedic value of people getting seriously injured on vacation. Nothing brings us together quite like each other\u2019s misfortunes.<\/p>\n But I think the true stickiness of \u201cHold My Hand\u201d is a function of its subtext \u2014 its relentless insistence that summer fun, for the time being, is off the table. Call it drat summer.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n