PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — After last year’s COVID-19-restricted summer, we deserve to sing and dance our way through this season down the shore. So, what’s the soundtrack going to be?
Every Memorial Day weekend — and just in time for those first trips to the beach — we get a peek at the contenders for song of the summer, an unofficial title that’s often the subject of fierce debate.
Last year’s Billboard winner was the long-lived chart-topper “Rockstar” by DaBaby and Roddy Ricch, while influential radio industry expert Sean Ross picked “Watermelon Sugar” by Harry Styles. Others insisted it was “WAP” by Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion.
This year, “I went with Jack Harlow’s ‘What’s Poppin’,” said Michael Bennett, on-air personality at Audacy’s 96.5 TDY and B101.1. “It’s a song you would normally listen to in the club, but I listened to it on my way to Costco to pick up toilet paper.”
While you were mouthing the words to last summer’s bops under a mask, strict pandemic rules have given way to more vaccine-fueled freedoms. That means further opportunities to enjoy shared experiences — like the tunes you can’t help but sing along to.
“It’s still a cultural touchstone,” said Ross, who writes the Ross on Radio newsletter. “Especially in a year like this one, when people are trying to have a summer. Even as listening patterns change, it’s still the time that the same song means the most to the most people.”
Ross and Bennett are in consensus on the top candidates, with the caveat that it’s still in the early days.
BTS, Butter
The K-Pop boy band’s follow-up to their first English-language hit, “Dynamite,” has “all the ingredients for song of the summer,” said Bennett. “It’s bright, it’s bubbly, it’s catchy. You start shaking your hips to it — it just happens. It’s infectious.”
Olivia Rodrigo, Good 4 U
The second No. 1 smash from this teen pop phenom is a departure from her first, the heartbreaking “Driver’s License.” This is a guitar-driven post-breakup anthem — a lyrical version of a certain raised finger to an ex.
“Now this song is not bright and bubbly — it’s a little bit angsty,” Bennett said. “It kind of reminds me of early Paramore. Olivia Rodrigo can do no wrong right now, so even though it’s not your stereotypical summer song, it’s going to be huge all summer long wherever you go.”
Doja Cat featuring SZA, Kiss Me More
Ross tips this single, which nods to Olivia Newton-John’s “Physical,” to make it to No. 1 “sometime around July.”
Justin Bieber featuring Daniel Caesar and Giveon, Peaches
So breezily tropical it deserves a cocktail umbrella — or, as Bennett puts it, “If this song was a scratch-and-sniff, it would smell like peach-flavored hard seltzer.”
TBD
No, that’s not the name of a new boy band sensation. There’s a good chance we haven’t yet heard this year’s top single. Ed Sheeran, Jason Derulo and Drake are among the artists expected to release new music soon. TikTok could even deliver a hit “that breaks at the speed of digital,” as Ross puts it.
“A summer song should be fun and up-tempo,” he said. “That’s what the world needs, especially this year.”
Ross has created a playlist featuring dozens of tunes that fit the bill; he promises to update it throughout the season.
Whoever takes the crown in 2021, we’re likely to know it when we hear it.
“It should sound like a big ray of sunshine coming through your speakers,” Bennett said. “It should make you want to crank the AC all the way up and have the windows down — that level of crazy.”