what is song of the summer 2025? a prix fixe menu

Summer '25. Weird summer. I think we can all say the vibes have gone awry. I'm in my 'third trimester' and my unborn child has stopped being polite and started getting real. Once upon a time I wrote a thesis about James Joyce's use of metempsychosis in the catechism chapter of Ulysses and now I think things like "damn, watermelon is hella tight, as fruits go." All my brain juice is going to my daughter and I am left unable to even lock into Love Island, but that's okay, everything after that show's terrifying opening dance sequence (set to a 2018 remix of Janelle Monáe's "Make Me Feel") was probably superfluous.

Brooklyn Mirage, normally the summertime oasis of outdoor electronic dance music experiences, was supposed to open on May 1st but never did. They declared bankruptcy, scattering mega-DJs to the four winds. The Chainsmokers were gonna play the Mirage and instead they had to play under a bridge. Like Anthony Kiedis. (I actually kind of like the Chainsmokers's latest single, "White Wine & Adderall," and not just because 10 mg of speed and a chilly glass of Delta Sky Club chardonnay sound tantalizing after 10 months of sobriety.) Still, I saw Captain Sully threw the first pitch at a recent Mets game? That's a real human being and a real hero.

Everyone's, I guess, a little upset that there is no Song Of The Summer 2025. This happens occasionally. At the very least, the absence provides ink for the inkmasters—I searched around for previous songless summers, and the Wall Street Journal has declared several recent summers such, even reusing the same headline to express themselves.

Oh, how the tables turn. Last year you all complained about how often you heard Sabrina Carpenter's "Espresso"—a song that I am still not sick of, a song that is pure sonic coconut sunscreen—and now you crave such irritating ubiquity. Society screams out for monoculture. But I'd take this opportunity to revel in ambiguity while we still can, especially at a time of disturbing millennialmaxxing that threatens to combine the worst tendencies of 2025 and 2015. Girlbosses are trying to claw back their territory! People are mixing up their indie twee music with their stomp clap hey music! FROZEN YOGURT IS COMING BACK! I'm not mad about the frozen yogurt. Moonbeam that ice cream.

There's no song of the summer but there are songs of the summer. Here are a few options depending on your scenario.

If you crave a simpler time: Romy Mars, "A-Lister"
I don't think we used to wring our hands over nepo babies with quite the vehemence we do now. We saved 99% of that kind of energy for Jakob Dylan, because he was literally Bob Dylan's son. If I were Bob Dylan's son, I would have spent my time learning the sacred art of turntablism, but then I wouldn't have written "One Headlight." Anyway, blasé but cheeky synth pop from the daughter of the director of Marie Antoinette and the frontman of Phoenix? About being rich and cute in L.A.? The same year we got a Bonjour Tristesse movie? Crash my Cybertruck into the Rodeo Drive Balenciaga store and call me Ket Easton Ellis bc this is a bop.

If you are sad, oh so very sad: Chappell Roan, "The Subway"
She said the album isn't even close to being done. That's fine, we have this gorgeous Cranberries-y situation that sounds like it was unearthed from a vault in 1995 along with a dusty case of Zima. The melody is eternal, the technique is flawless. The only ding on this as a song of the summer is that it sounds...autumnal. I just saw that the TV show Wednesday is already out, and Wendy's has launched a corresponding Meal of Misfortune—we need to stop season-pushing fall, climate change is extending summer into November as it is, everyone calm down and leave the cauldron in the closet a little while longer.

If you are all fam in the clurb: Disco Lines & Tinashe, "No Broke Boys"
A little two-step and a bit of the frat boy flick and you'll be right as rain. The most cooked of Letterboxers were calling The Materialists "broke boy propaganda"; I had my own thoughts. What are we really doing, proclaiming "no broke boys"? Look at the boys in the news and tell me how you feel about the non-broke ones. They are all horrifying, they are rotting society from the inside out, and they probably all are still secretly broke. What is the point of getting rich if you still find yourself doing horrible mobile game advertisements? By the way, if you think your summer sucked, I just want you to know there's like 5,000 nanoinfluencers who are spending their leisure months in line for something called "Surf Lodge," feet blistering in freshly unboxed cowboy boots while house music blares from a tantalizing distance.

If you spend too much time on the world wide web: Jojo Siwa, "Bette Davis Eyes"
I put this one on in the car on the day it came out, after what felt like weeks of teasing from Ms. Jojo on TikTok. Christmas morning type of shit. Something incredible happens when Jojo's rasp, honed from years of screaming on reality television and self-produced children's entertainment programs, meets the cold circuit of AutoTune: the sleekest, cheapest commerce becomes outsider art. This is the Dubai chocolate of music; this is True Labubu; this is what has been swirling in the bowl of the Skibidi Toilet all along. Jojo I want you to cover "I Hope You Dance" next pleaseee.

If you prefer your bops with a message: RXKNephew, "John Fetterman"
Will from Chapo Trap House (a podcast my husband produces, full disclosure) commissioned RXKNephew to write a diss track about the terrible Zionist senator John Fetterman and boy did RXKNephew deliver. I'm biased but this song did not even need to go as hard as it does. You could cha-cha slide to it like no problem. "Tell Fetterman he could suck my dick/ I take that back, I don’t want him to do that" is an unreal line. Also need to shout out @connecticut_guy who kicked off the initial Fetterman riffing ("I’m the worst member in the democrat party / KILLIN MYSELF AT MY SON BIRTHDAY PARTY). When tweets become dreams that become songs, that's the stuff.

If you like to drive your Toyota Corolla 7 miles over the speed limit: Tate McRae, "Just Keep Watching"
Remember "nevertheless, she persisted"? I believe the "she" in that scenario was Senator Elizabeth Warren but we could also be talking about Tate McRae. Tate's allergy to melodic choruses almost broke me a few months ago and she seems to have taken my notes to heart and given us...one of those songs where the pre-chorus is the chorus, and the chorus is mostly a bunch of chopped-up vocals. Fine!! "John Wayne" by Lady Gaga is another example of this, I don't mind it. CHOP IT UP. "Just Keep Watching" is a song "From F1® The Movie," on F1® the Album, a 17-song soundtrack featuring artists like Don Toliver, Dom Dolla, Doja Cat, and others whose names don't start with D. The Ed Sheeran song on this album is quite odd, it has an Audioslave riff but the guitar is mixed so quiet it's like a mouse played it.

If you would like to bonk yourself over the head with a mallet: KATSEYE, "Gnarly"
My main doctrine for pop music, and for music in general, is that you have to let yourself be as stupid as you want to be. This is a simple axiom but a surprisingly difficult ask. When push comes to shove, no one wants to look stupid—it's why conservatives keep wearing ill-fitting suits and liberals keep posting somber infographics on IG stories. I say, take your private life seriously so you may be stupid in your public creative work. Stupid got us "that's that me espresso," after all.

The beat for this song sounds like a combination of Jock Jams and cartoon violence, and there's a lyric that goes "Oh my God, this song's so lit, congratulations." KATSEYE were created in a lab, or more accurately one of those old school surgery theaters where people stroke their chins and say "hmmm" in a tiered seating arrangement as they watch someone try out a new appendectomy technique (I can't deal with Love Island but I am rewatching The Knick) so we don't have to contend with the false romance of 'authenticity' or 'pulling oneself up from the bootstraps.' The market demands this clanging. And if you like "Gnarly," take extra anti-slop measures, do your homework, listen to co-songwriter Alice Longyu Gao's excellent Assembling Symbols Into My Own Poetry. Summer '25: ride out the vibes, but maintain some agency. TAKE A LOOK, IT'S IN A BOOK.

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