Pop Culture Happy Hour - Song Of The Summer

Episode Date: July 28, 2025

Last year was Brat summer and saw the rise of Chappell Roan, Shaboozey, and Sabrina Carpenter. But is there a song of the summer for 2025? Today we're talking about the competing songs of this summer from Justin Bieber, Morgan Wallen, KPop Demon Hunters, PinkPantheress, and more.We'd love to know what you think about Pop Culture Happy Hour. Please help us out by telling us what you like and how we could improve by completing a short, anonymous survey at npr.org/pchhsurvey.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Hey there. Thanks so much for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour. We would love to know what you think about this podcast. So help us out by telling us what you like and how we could improve by completing a short anonymous survey at npr.org slash pCHH survey. We'll also have a link in our episode description. Thanks so much. Every year, a handful of songs vibe for an unofficial honorific song of the summer. They're the songs we hear out of car windows, on TikTok, on the radio. and at parties over and over and over again. Last year was Brat Summer and saw the rise of Chaparone, Shibuzi, and Sabrina Carpenter. But is there a song of the summer for 2025? I'm Stephen Thompson. And I'm Aisha Harris. Today we're talking about the songs of the summer on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. It is just the two of us today, so let's get right into it.

Stephen, so last year we had basically an embarrassment of riches when it came to trying to decide what the song of the summer was going to be, you know, Charlie X-C-X, Chapel Roan, Kendrick Lamar, Sabrina Carpenter. They were all competing for Song of the Summer last year. And you closely follow the billboard charts for NPR, which is just, you know, one of the factors in determining this very specific category. But I'm curious, like, what is different about the Song of the Summer competition, if there is a competition, this year? Yeah, and it's worth noting up front that this is entirely theoretical. This is 100% unofficial. There is not a trophy. given out. Chart-wise, there is absolutely no argument that the song of the summer is

ordinary by Alex Warren. The song feels so much. Listeners could not see Stephen, but he was giving the most pained yet expressive, emotive, lip-sync of this song. Aisha, I was lip-sinking from the heart. Oh, okay. This song, when you break it down, now first of all, I mean, chart-wise, It's been number one now for weeks and weeks.

Certain songs that top the billboard charts just don't go away. There are songs still in the top 10 that were number one on the charts all last summer. Shibuzi's A Bar Song, Tipsy, is still in the top 10 a year later. So this song is never going to go away. Yeah. Just want to prepare people for that fact. This song is just, if it had been engineered in a lab to appeal to a gigantic, cross section of radio listeners.

You can kind of listen to the song and break down the boxes that it checks, right? It has the uplift of a cold play. It has the hooks of an Imagine Dragons. And it has the choir just getting bigger and bigger and bigger in ways that reflect generations of praise music. This song is really hitting a broad cross section of demographics. in a completely inoffensive way with a very, very sweet video. It's Alex Warren and his real life wife, and it's sweet, but it is like, holy cow, you really feel how hard the choir is working when you watch that video.

Oh, my goodness. I think I'm impervious to this kind of earnestness. It gives me the ick to use, never has a word been more perfect to describe how I feel. Like you said, inoffensive. And inoffensive is also just maybe a nicer way of. saying bland. This is kind of where the charts have been trending lately. It's like trad wife, Christian pop adjacent core aesthetic and sound. And Alex Warren fits that perfectly. Same with Benson Boone, who, you know, beautiful things last year was also kind of in the conversation

about Song of the Summer. And still in the top 20. Yeah, yeah. And now, like, now Benson Boone has another song that I don't think is quite broken through in the same way Beautiful Things did. but mystical magical. Oh boy. Taking off your blue jeans, dancing at the movies. You know, Stephen, I had to listen to this song for the first time. Moonbeam ice cream. Moonbeam ice cream.

I feel like Benson Boone has been flirting with like a winking kind of deliberately giving you the ick. Yeah. For a while now. And this song really leans into that. And I'm not dumping on Benson Boone. Like there's a try hard quality to Benson Boone that I actually. find kind of sweet. Benson Boone feels in many ways like a throwback to American Idol. He auditioned for American Idol and basically like dropped out of American Idol as part of his trajectory. Mystical

Magical, it has charted along with a song called Sorry I'm Here for Someone else from Benson Boone's new album American Heart, which came out just a few weeks ago. And you're right that it hasn't taken off the way that Beautiful Things has in part because it's still competing with beautiful things for radio play and streams. And, you know, he's kind of run into some of the same problems that Shibuzi has run into trying to follow up a bar song tipsy. But Benson Boone is definitely part of the conversation. And, like, I appreciate that Benson Boone is trying really hard.

He's doing backflips for your amusement. And he's leaning into a certain kind of silliness here. And I think that's one reason a song like Mystical Magical is in the Song of the Summer conversation, even though it is, is lyrically speaking, a pretty objectively terrible song. Yeah. Oh, my goodness. I feel like if Alex Warren's ordinary is, like, going to be at weddings in perpetuity,

you know, this is the song that various people will walk down the aisle to. Mystical, Magical feels like the song that will play at a lot of, like, on the dance floor when everyone's getting down. It's, like, going to become that kind of song. A lot of drunk uncles are going to lip sync to this song. Yes, yes. Not at the weddings that I go to, most likely, but yes. The first time I heard Ordinary by Alex Warren, I saw it rising on the charts.

And I was like, oh, what's this? Listen to it. And I was like, uh-oh. Hope you don't have weddings to go to this summer. Hope you don't have any weddings coming up. Okay. So, yes, we've got Alex Warren. We've got Benson Boone.

But then we can't talk about Song of the Summer without talking about Morgan Wallen. Yeah. Morgan Wallen has been a part of the Song of the Summer conversation for, several summers now. He has had several undisputed songs of the summer. And this year, he has an album called I'm the Problem that has landed several songs in the top ten and that

have been kind of sitting there all summer long so far. There's the title track, I'm the Problem. There's a song called Just In Case that has done really well. And then there's kind of the song of the summer-iest song of the bunch. It's called What I Want, featuring Tate McCray. This album is sorry to broke.

This album, I'm the Problem that's been at number one for much of this summer, you know, it's got 37 songs, and they're just getting streamed over and over and over again. So you certainly couldn't leave him out of this conversation. So we're going to move on now to someone who has sort of been bubbling around for a few years now. And I feel like she's finally had her breakout hit. And that is Raven Linnae. And her song, Love Me Not. So this is our throwback song. Yeah, it sure is.

Honestly, the first time I heard this, it kind of reminded me of Duffy a little bit. Oh, yeah. I was going to say Amy Winehouse, but I think Duffy's a good poll. Yeah, Duffy, Amy Winehouse, you know, throwback to the Outs, but then also that was a throwback to the 60s. And certainly 90s and Oats R&B as well. Oh, yeah, for sure. It sounds so different from a lot of the other songs that are in contention here. Like, what about it is bubbling? Like, why is it this song?

I mean, nostalgia is a big part of this conversation. a lot of songs that have hit as Song of the Summer, you know, including like Dochi's anxiety. Yeah. You know, where it's not just that the song is compelling, the song is interpolating Gautier's somebody that I used to know. It's a piece of Gen Z nostalgia. This song is kind of tapping into that same thing.

It's tapping into multiple retro cycles at once. It's nostalgia for Duffy and Amy Winehouse, who in turn were nostalgia for girl groups. For me, the fact that it is tapping into many veins of nostalgia, while also just being a really timeless, summery, bubbly song. I mean, this song has had a very slow rise and a pretty authentic rise. This song came out in May of 2024. It's only been on the charts for about four months, which, you know, compared to your Teddy Swimzes and your Shibuzis makes it a spring chicken. But it has had this kind of organic word of mouth rise.

Raven Leney was not a household name. You know, she's been in the industry for about a decade. You know, she played a tiny desk concert in 2022. She didn't just come out of nowhere. But all that were kind of like Chapel Rones rise, where she had years and years of struggling before she became an overnight success. It does feel like this song has been around forever

because I do remember, like, adding it to my, like, songs. You were a first wave fan of this song, so now you're like this old thing? Yeah, I'm like, oh, I didn't realize we're still talking about this. I like it. I really, it's a really fun song. I think if you like this song, you should definitely go back and listen to her earlier stuff. I especially love Sticky, which is also very retro. Raven Lanay.

Cannot say enough good things about her. She's, and it's great to see her having this moment here. The next song I want to talk about very briefly is one that I already gushed about as a happy. But it is Molly, Silent Addie, Skillibang, and Chancia, the remix to Shake It to the Max Fly. This, to me, feels like the most song. of the summer, if you're the type of person who likes to go out and shake your body in the summer. Not that, you know, international music hasn't been rising for a while, but it's great to see this is like a very much international co-production, Molly, who is Ghanaian-American,

Skillebang, Shinsia, their Jamaican. It's just fun to hear these. It's just fun to hear these types of songs sort of getting some love. And it's peaked relatively high considering at number 44 on the Billboard Hot 100, which is pretty good. And I don't know, it's a very fun song. I love it. And it feels like summer. There are songs that feel sweaty in like a high effort kind of way. And there are songs that feel sweaty because they're just dripping. And this, you can just feel a mass of sweaty bodies swarming around this song at all. times. And I think that's something I'm looking for from a song of the summer is the sense that the song is rooted in some sort of human interaction is like a box that I want to see checked

in my summer songs. Absolutely. Well, after the break, we're going to talk about the return of Sabrina Carpenter, the rise of K-pop demon hunters and the songs that are starting to blow up on TikTok. So stick around. Welcome back. Okay, so we have another return from last summer, maybe perhaps not as omnipresent as she was last summer in the same way, but Sabrina Carpenter does have Manchild, which did peak at number one on the Billboard Hot 100. I love this song. It's fun.

And I really, really like Sabrina Carpenter. You know, Sabrina Carpenter had, you know, certainly one of the songs of the summer last year with espresso, but also please, please, please, and taste. You know, all of those were huge top ten hits kind of simultaneously. You know, I think it was a surprise that she, She came back with like a new cycle just a year later. The album Man's Best Friend drops at the end of August. This is kind of the first single from it.

And when you say it's not as omnipresent as her songs were last year, I do think that's true. It debuted at number one and has kind of been sliding down the chart ever since. That decline can be a little bit of a mirage with the way that the charts work. Because the song debuted at number one because of massive interest. Like, oh my gosh, there's a new Sabrina Carpenter song. Also, the video for this song is here. hilarious.

Hilarious chaos. And extremely, extremely well-made video. It is going to win, like, probably the Grammy for Best Music Video and stuff like that. You have to keep in mind that, like, the charts are kind of a cocktail of streaming, airplay, and sales. And so often, like, a song by a major artist will, like, post these huge streaming numbers in its first week and then kind of tail off as that curiosity wanes. And it takes a little while for radio station. to kind of add the song to their rotations. So I wouldn't give up on Manchild just yet as a part of the song of the summer conversation in 2025,

just because it's slid out of the top 10. Also, as we get closer to this album coming out, she's likely to release more singles. I think she is going to continue to be a part of the pop music conversation for quite a while. Yeah. And even the song itself is like an extension of the brand that she kind of established last year of like, these men, they're so dumb. It's like slim pickings 2.0. And I don't mean that in a bad way.

It's just she's building on that. And so, you know, a little bit of deja vu from last year. And I don't mind it. I'm here for Sabrina Carpenter. She's very fun. Absolutely. So, Stephen, you recently did an episode on the sort of Netflix juggernaut of the summer, K-pop demon hunters.

And you really can't talk about that movie without talking about the fact that it is in this conversation about song of the summer. So what are the songs from that movie that have popped the most? Well, a bunch of songs from this soundtrack have kind of crashed the Billboard Hot 100. Coming from both of the fictional groups that are in K-pop Demon Hunters, there's a group called Huntrix, and there's a group called the Saja Boys. And the Saja Boys are like a demon boy band, and Huntricks are like a heroic girl group who fight demons. And both of them have landed songs kind of in the top 40 of the Billboard charts that are part of this conversation. Saja Boys have a song called Your Idol, a song called Soda Pop that is so catchy.

The Huntricks song that has broken through the most, it's not even my personal favorite Huntricks song, is called Golden. The song is such an earworm. Yeah. What I wrote in my nose was it sounds like a song that like Katie Perry or Pink would have recorded maybe a decade plus ago. It's like a Katie Perry K-pop song, you're right. Yeah, it feels very early 2010s to me.

There are their pluses and minuses to that. that. I was a little less enamored with this, but the Saja Boy is your idol song. Oh my, my goodness. I love that song. That song, it's dirty. Oh, my goodness.

Some of the lyrics include, you're down on your knees. I'm going to be your idol. Like, what? I think one thing that works so well about these songs, and part of what I enjoy about them as part of song of the summer conversation is they work really well as freestanding pop songs, but they work even better in the context of the movie. And it's like a musical where the songs are actually telling you something about the characters, telling you something about the story, moving things

along instead of kind of stopping the story dead to just like play a pop song. And I think that's part of why this soundtrack, and, you know, it's certainly not the only movie where that happens, But I think that's one reason that this soundtrack has taken off so much. You see how often the charts are just constantly manipulated by competing fan hives. There's this process where it's like, we're going to put out 25 different variant editions of the CD with a piece of ephemera in it and a bonus track and all these different ways that artists will activate their fan hives, basically saying buy multiple copies of our album on week one.

What is kind of interesting to me about K-pop Demon Hunters is that's not happening. They haven't even released physical editions of this soundtrack. This is a true grassroots word-of-mouth phenomenon where people are finding this movie on Netflix, falling in love with it, talking to their friends about it, and streaming the soundtrack over and over again. It feels like a monoculture event instead of a fan activation event. I miss that. I miss that so much. Yeah. I'm a be your idol.

So good. All right. So let's move on to our last few here. I want to hear your take on Pink Panther's illegal, Stephen. It's very fun. My name is Pink and I'm really glad to meet you. You're recommended to me by some people. Is this illegal?

It feels illegal. It is catchy. Yes. And like so much of Pink Panther's music, really extremely well. suited to TikTok. You know, I first heard this mixtape that it came from, Fancy That, back at the beginning of May, and really had the thought, like, oh, this could really catch on. I felt like Pink Panthers was going to have an absolutely gigantic year last year, where she had broken through as this big TikTok star, the song Boys a Liar, Part 2, you know, and then she took 2024 off and kind of

came back in 2025, and I feel like she is in the process of regaining momentum. Like, just that little excerpt we played. Like, that's going to be stuck in my head for the rest of the day. It's good. And she's also the queen of just making songs that are very, very short. Like, they get in, they get out, they do their jobs. Such a gift. That's sometimes all you want. That's sometimes all you want. We can't close this conversation without really talking about someone who, I think out of all the artist we've already discussed here, has been around the longest and is still out there. And that is Justin Bieber, who he's jumped into that conversation maybe a little bit later than these other ones. But he's there. One of the songs from his new album, Swag, is Daisies. Oh, that rumbly, bouncy guitar.

The minute you hear it, you're like, oh, this is summer. Yeah. And that album just dropped a couple weeks ago. There was, like, one day's notice that that record was coming out. He hasn't been rolling out singles all year. If he had put Daisies out in March, it might have knocked ordinary out of the top of this conversation. If only. It's going to be very interesting to see how this song and this album age on the charts, how long it sticks on streaming, how much it's added to radio, because it definitely belongs in this conversation. And I think particularly Daisies is a really catchy, appealing song that adds like a little bit of pop rock to the conversation in ways that most of these songs don't. Yeah. Thus far, it's peak at number two on the Hot 100 as of this taping. I'm not going to be.

I'm not going to lie, I love this album. I think it's really good. I don't need all the interlude skits with Drusky. Keep that at home, please. I didn't need that. But I do think he's just exploring R&B in a very interesting way. And I really like to see Justin Bieber grow. He's got a very good catalog, considering what he came out of and what he could have been. I appreciate the fact that with this record, it does feel like he's a little bit liberated from that pop machine. There's a huge industry surrounding. Justin Bieber. Don't get me wrong. He's not an indie act. But there is a quality here like he's getting to make the music that he wants to make. Yeah, absolutely. Well, that comes to the end of a conversation. But before we go, who is the one artist or what's the one song that we should go out on that we haven't already talked about as a song of a summer contender? Well, I'm sure Drake would disagree.

But I'm going to go with Lola Young. Lola Young has been kind of percolating in the charts, lower regions, hasn't quite broken into that kind of upper echelon top 10, like so many of the songs that we've mentioned. But Loli Young is an extremely charismatic singer. We talked about Amy Winehouse and Duffy and kind of a little bit of throwbacks to the throwbacks. Lola Young falls into that category a little bit, but still feels very modern. And I feel like if the stars align just right, a song like one thing could have the kind of trajectory that we've been talking about for artists like Raven Lennay. Very Rummy Wolf.

I like it. I like it. Into it. Well, that is Lillie Young, one thing. And we want to know what is your song of the summer, because we all have our own. The charts, they only tell us so much. That's right. Find us at Facebook.com slash PCHH to let us know.

And a reminder, we'd love to know what you think about this podcast. So please help us all by telling us what you like and how we could improve by completing a short anonymous survey at npr.org slash pCHH survey. We'll also have a link to that in our episode description. That brings us to the end of our show. Stephen, thanks so much for being here. As always, this was a blast. Thank you, Ayesha. Ordinary! I'm so sorry. All right, that was not a pleasure for me. This episode was produced by Liz Metzger and Mike Katzib and edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reedy and Hello, Come In provides our theme music. Thanks for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Ayesha Harris. I'm Not Ordinary, and we'll see you all next time.