What happened to THE song of the summer?

It seems like most of our current top 40's songs have either been on the charts for months at a time, or aren't really for summer.

Take a look at this list of songs of the summer by Rolling Stone. These songs all remind me of these exact summers. They sound like what was happening, and they articulated some of the political and cultural climate at the time.

2024: "Espresso" by Sabrina Carpenter and "A Bar Song (Tipsy)" by Shaboozey
2023: "Cruel Summer" by Taylor Swift
2022: "As It Was" by Harry Styles
2021: "Good 4 U" by Olivia Rodrigo
2020: "Watermelon Sugar" by Harry Styles
2019: "Old Town Road" by Lil Nas X ft. Billy Ray Cyrus

Billboard's Official Songs of the Summer Survey Announcement states that "Choosin’ Texas" by Ella Langley and "Janice STFU" by Drake are the top 2 songs right now. Both representing different parts of American culture, these two songs mean a lot to a lot of people, but they seldom follow the recipe for the song of the summer since 2019.

Olivia Rodrigo just released an entire album, and the track “Expectations” certainly has a dancey beat to it, but the album lacks a positive summer song. Olivia’s new album is much slower and ballad-focused than her previous album, so her change in style might be affecting listening stats.

Billboard's data for the summer song comes from the cumulative popularity of songs from Memorial Day through Labor Day. I see how this makes sense from a literal and corporate point of view, but it does not make sense in reference to how music trends work.

The songs we see on the list right now were largely dropped around May 15th. So these songs have been in the charts for a month, and they have had time to build momentum already.

But if we’ve all already heard them and enjoyed them, shouldn't we have a new song to replace them?

In the past few months, we have seen the rise of alternative country artist Ella Langley. Her singles "Choosin' Texas" and "Be Her" were both released before June, which allowed them to instantly challenge for the Number 2 and 3 spots.

These tracks are fresh and more alternative than our typical top country songs nowadays, and clearly it resonated as her song "Choosin’ Texas" spent 10 whole weeks at the top of the all-genre charts.

The fact that Drake’s album is doing this well after him being practically crucified by Kendrick Lamar for an entire pop culture calendar year is also pretty incredible. Although very corny in my opinion, Drake's music has stayed at the very top of the charts through most of this with “Nokia” and now “Janice STFU”.

The summer charts are looking a little different so far this year, but that does not have to be a bad thing. It means that either we are still searching for our uniting summer pop song, or it just has not had the opportunity to push through the charts yet.

My current songs of the summer are “Midnight Sun Girls Trip” by Zara Larsson and PinkPantheress and "Dance" by Slayyyter.

Comment down below what song is your Song of the Summer.