2025’s Song of the Summer Is Missing in Action

For as long as most people can remember, summer has had a soundtrack. From Nelly’s “Hot in Herre” to Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe” to Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso” or Charli XCX's "Brat" each year seemed to bring one inescapable anthem that blared from cars, bars, and backyards. These weren’t official trophies, but they were cultural timestamps, shorthand for entire seasons.

But the summer of 2025 feels different. The charts are full, yes, but they’re stale, and the "song of the summer" crown looks oddly unclaimed.

Alex Warren Tops the Charts, Without the Vibes

Numerically speaking, the honor belongs to Alex Warren’s “Ordinary.” It’s been the year’s longest-running No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and the official top entry on Billboard’s Songs of the Summer chart. The track’s combination of stadium-rock earnestness and praise-pop uplift has delivered undeniable staying power.

The problem is that "Ordinary" is less a windows-down anthem than a mid-tempo ballad fit for a bank commercial. It’s done the numbers but hasn’t sparked the communal joy usually tied to a summer smash.

Old Hits Crowd Out New Ones

The bigger issue is how little new material has taken hold. According to Luminate, the company behind Billboard’s data, 2025 has produced fewer breakout hits than any other year in U.S. chart history. Nine of the top 10 most listened-to songs so far were released in 2023 or 2024.

Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” (April 2024) still sits comfortably in the top 10, as does Teddy Swims’ “Lose Control” (June 2023). Bruno Mars and Lady Gaga’s “Die With a Smile,” Kendrick Lamar and SZA’s “Luther,” and Chappell Roan’s “Pink Pony Club”, all last year’s or older, continue to dominate. Even nostalgia-driven tracks from the late 2000s, like Miley Cyrus’s “Party in the U.S.A.,” are racking up streams thanks to TikTok and playlist culture.

This backlog leaves little space for 2025 releases. A few contenders tried: Sabrina Carpenter’s “Manchild” briefly climbed the charts, Ravyn Lenae’s “Love Me Not” brought breezy charm, and Justin Bieber’s “Daisies” hinted at a late-summer surge. But none have broken through with the universal force of a seasonal anthem.

Why the Stalemate?

Analysts point to a combination of factors. Streaming algorithms and radio playlists now stretch songs’ shelf lives far beyond what was once possible. “Lose Control” has been in the Hot 100 for over 100 weeks, an eternity in chart years. At the same time, many marquee artists either sat out the summer or timed their albums awkwardly, with bigger releases slated for late August and fall.

Big names haven’t helped much. Addison Rae, Lorde and Haim all rolled out heavily hyped projects this year, but their singles never made the leap into mass rotation. According to The Guardian, the music leans more toward building cohesive albums and aesthetics than chasing the kind of shiny, universal hooks that still drive radio.

Even established stars who usually deliver chart power, like Lizzo or Justin Bieber, came back with songs that lacked the obvious choruses and polished pop production that once guaranteed them billion-stream numbers.

And some artists are simply falling short. Sabrina Carpenter, last year’s runaway success, couldn’t replicate the “Espresso” magic with her latest single “Manchild.” It briefly touched No. 1 before sliding down, more blip than anthem. Still, with her new album due later this summer, she may yet land a track with staying power.

There’s also a cultural shift at play. Audiences are diving deeper into back catalogs, indulging in what analysts call “recession pop”; upbeat tracks from the late 2000s and early 2010s that feel like comfort food in uncertain times. The result is fewer opportunities for brand-new songs to break into the collective consciousness.

Industry figures say that aggressively marketing a track as the “Song of the Summer” doesn’t help either. Audiences want to choose for themselves, and this year, they simply haven’t rallied behind one.

So where does that leave us? In 2025, the “Song of the Summer” may not exist in the singular sense. Instead, the season feels like a patchwork of personal playlists, viral trends, and holdovers from summers past.

A Playlist for This Summer, Anyway

Even if no single track has taken over, the music community hasn’t stopped listening. At LALAL.AI, we asked our users to share the songs they've created with LALAL.AI.

So now we have this LALAL.AI Community Playlist, a crowdsourced answer to the missing anthem. Think of it as a reminder that if the culture won’t hand us one song of the summer, we’ll make our own 💛

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