a mid-year report from Luminate<\/a>, the company that produces data for the Billboard charts, listeners are clinging to the past and choosing older tunes.<\/p>\nStreaming on new tracks declined by 3.3% in the first half of 2025, compared to 2024. Only three of the report’s 10 top songs \u2014 based on on-demand audio streams in the U.S. \u2014 were released in 2025. Most of the songs on Billboard’s charts have been there for dozens of weeks, like Chappell Roan\u2019s \u201cPink Pony Club,\u201d which currently sits at No. 8 on the summer chart, and has been on the Hot 100 for 63 weeks.<\/p>\n
Jaime Marconette, Luminate’s vice president of music insights and industry relations, says the disinterest in new music, combined with our wistful listening habits, is also leading to the resurgence of \u201crecession pop.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cRecession pop\u201d refers to music that was originally released leading up to and following the 2008 financial crisis. \u201cWe\u2019re actually seeing pop music from those years outpace the growth of the industry at large. It highlights a sense of nostalgia and potentially bigger themes of escapism,\u201d Marconette explained.<\/p>\n
In addition to the pop hits of the late aughts, the shelf life of last year\u2019s songs has proved long, crowding the space and leaving little room for new music to break through. Last summer was \u201can absolute tsunami, surplus, exuberance of pop,\u201d says Paula Harper, a musicologist and assistant professor at the University of Chicago.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I\u2019ve talked to folks about the 2025 song of the summer, it\u2019s not uncommon for them to cite a song from one of the 2024 releases \u2014 and then they sometimes get jumpscared when they realize how long ago those songs actually originally came out,\u201d Harper said, pointing to TikTok as one engine that kept their popularity going.<\/p>\n
What does the popularity of \u2018Ordinary\u2019 say about listeners?<\/p>\n
Ballads aren’t unusual songs of the summer \u2014 think Olivia Rodrigo’s \u201cDriver’s License.\u201d But they’re not designed to rule the season.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not going to keep the mood of the barbecue lively, it\u2019s not going to pep up the pool party,\u201d Harper says of \u201cOrdinary.\u201d \u201cUltimately, it\u2019s engineered for something other than song of the summer status.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ethan Hein, an adjunct professor of music at New York University and the New School, says listeners’ gravitation toward a song like \u201cOrdinary\u201d reveals something about their well-being.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I teach songwriting, I always assign a fun pop banger as one of the projects, and this year no one felt much enthusiasm for it, or turned in somber tracks like \u2018Ordinary,’\u201d he said. Hein thinks the disinterest in typical upbeat pop signals a contempt for both the present and the future.<\/p>\n
\u201cUsually, pop music is aimed at young people. I remember being a kid in the \u201980s and \u201990s and thinking how futuristic all the synth pop, hip-hop and techno sounded,\u201d Hein said. \u201cBut now, I don\u2019t know a lot of young people who are excited about the future.\u201d<\/p>\n
Music psychologist Ray Leone, who studies the intersectionality of music and health, says people may be favoring \u201cOrdinary\u201d because it is the antithesis of a seemingly extraordinary state of the world.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere seems to be chaos every day, no matter where you look,\u201d Leone said. \u201cI think to counter that, people are looking more inward. Looking for something personal to connect to. It\u2019s almost as if a song like this speaks to us on a personal level as opposed to a collective level.\u201d<\/p>\n
Warren’s love song, written about his wife, seems to be acting as a beacon of light in dark times.<\/p>\n
\u201cSongs of love and devotion are a constant in our world,\u201d said Bennett. \u201cWhatever else is happening in our lives, someone somewhere will always be singing a timeless love song.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 Every year, summer arrives with a buzzing energy. School\u2019s out, the sun is shining, music is blaring out of car windows and speakers are blasting on the beach. But this summer, the beaches seem quieter. The playlists feel aimless. The radio waves aren\u2019t being dominated by the usual upbeat, sing-along tune. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1999955,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[333913,363249,27664,347341],"class_list":["post-1999954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-alex-warren","tag-joe-bennett","tag-sabrina-carpenter","tag-song-of-the-summer"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/This-years-song-of-the-summer-is-a-ballad-not.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1999954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1999954"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1999954\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1999955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1999954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1999954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1999954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}