A few weekends ago, I had the distinct pleasure of introducing my friends’ parents to Chapelle Rhone.
It started when I had a few bars of “Good luck, baby” stuck in my head and couldn’t stop buzzing. The next thing I knew, we were all learning.”hot to go“Dance. And by the end of the weekend, we were sitting on their deck in New York listening to songs about a “sexually explicit love affair,” like it’s the most common dinner music in the world.
Now that I’m back home in Brooklyn, I’ve got a new favorite reference: You can’t walk a block without hearing somebody bumpin’. One of charli xcx’s instant club classics (from his album throw away) — even more so now that Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign has taken internet-delightful steps by tying her to brats. summer
And now is a good time to mention that during the early weeks of this year, I was working on LAAAA forever (because I’m a singer). That’s me, “Espresso.”
These artists – Chappelle Rhone, Charli XCX, Sabrina Carpenter of “Espresso” – ruled my playlists this summer. My friends play their music at parties. My social media feeds are flooded with news and memes about them. They are inevitable.
So they all have to be contenders for Song of the Summer 2024, right? … right?!
Wrong. Look up Billboard Song of the Summer Chart Right now and you’ll see that the top 10 is a mess. Post Malone and Morgan Wallen took the top spot with their song “I Had Some Help,” a song I really don’t think I could hum for you if I was pressed. Someone I’ve literally never heard of, Tommy Richman, came in fourth.
So what gives? How are these no-names beating the biggest pop girlies for the song of the summer? And if I barely recognize the most popular song in America right now, is there anything else called a summer song?
What is the song of summer?
In the absence of an agreed definition, it is helpful to look at the history of the summer song. The concept goes back much further than you might expect — all the way to the 19th century, when tunes were mostly circulated through sheet music.
As Phil Edwards wrote for Vox a few years ago, sales were slow. Early bops like 1826 may take decadesOld oaken bucket“Spread across the country.
As we entered the next century, new technologies like radio helped popularize songs more widely and quickly But while songs became popular during the summer, there was no official song of the summer.
“It’s not like in 1925 people were walking around and saying, ‘You think that’s the song of the summer this year?'” music critic and author David Hajdu told CNN. “But things started to happen.”
When the billboard is down Its first Hot 100 chart 1958 with Domenico Modugno’s Italian Ballad “Pinto de bleu nile (Volare)” At the top, it gave us a metric to define the song of the summer, but it certainly didn’t invent the concept. For a while, the Hot 100 seemed like that Identify correctly Most ubiquitous anthem of the season: 1964, The Supremes’ “Where Has Our Love Gone?”; 1976, “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” by Elton John and Kiki Dee; 1982, Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger.”
But that changed as we entered the 2000s. The songs are so recognizable that we feel we don’t need to play them Our latest episode of Today, explained: “Beloved.” “Umbrella.” “Call me if you can.” “Despacito.” By the 2020s, things started to get uncomfortable: I don’t know about you, but DaBaby’s “Rockstar” definitely didn’t define 2020 for me. Last year, I didn’t even listen n-word user Morgan Wallen’s “Last Night” So How Can It Be the Song of the Summer?
So do we have another summer song, or what?
You might be shocked to learn how music listening has changed since Billboard first started naming summer hits. We’re now in what scientists are tentatively calling the “streaming age,” where a Great part of listening In addition to radio, it is featured on platforms such as YouTube, Spotify and Apple Music.
The change reduced the power of radio DJs and music executives to name hits and shifted power to listeners, many of whom are influenced by Spotify’s personalized Recommendation AlgorithmWhich the company has prioritized since at least 2020.
As Billboard’s Hot 100 chart considers streaming, musicologists and Pop is launched Co-host Charlie Harding argues that the charts are now more accurate.
“In the era of mass media monoculture, we weren’t as talented at capturing the collective hearing of the public,” Harding says. Today, explained. “Sure, maybe they’re broadcasting more of the same stuff, but you never know what people are playing in the back of their boombox. Now we can actually count what people are listening to on streaming services.”
There is the streaming era allowed New and diverse artists to enter the charts organically by building fandom through unconventional routes. Right now, Harding points out, the top of the chart reflects all sorts of different communities of listening: Shabooji, a black country artist, pop princess Sabrina Carpenter, Big Three rapper Kendrick Lamar, alternative indie slow-burn Hozier…
But listening to music is, to some extent, a zero-sum game. As we stream our way down the rabbit hole of niche listening, very big artists are starting to see their streams decline as well. All of this creates a world where you won’t recognize the Billboard-defining song of the summer.
But maybe it doesn’t matter.
“Whatever your community is listening to, it’s going to be your song of the summer,” Harding told us. “I think you shouldn’t stress about what everyone is hearing. I think you should pay attention to what your friends and community are connecting with.”
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