--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I got a theory. I think the song of the summer is dead.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Let's wind it back to 2003. This song was inescapable. Sometimes it still is. A few years later, another banger with Beyonce's husband, then Black Eyed Peas, Carly Rae, Blurred Lines, One Dance, Despacito, Beasts, all of them. And then in 2019, we get what I think was our last song of the summer, the series finale. The biggest songs on the charts in subsequent summers just haven't been as big IMHO.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Did you hear Rockstar everywhere you went? Or Morgan Wallen, that guy who loves the N-word? You know you love to fight. Please. The song of the summer is dead.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You're usually right, but I think you're wrong. We'll see about that on Today Explained. Woo-hoo. Stop. Support for this show comes from ServiceNow. AI is only as powerful as the platform it's built into, don't you know? That's why it's no surprise that more than 85% of the Fortune 500 use the ServiceNow AI platform.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Today Explained, Sean Rameswaram from here once again with NYU professor Charlie Harding, co-host of the Switched On Pop podcast. He's got some thoughts on why last year's supposed song of the summer and I just don't connect.
--:-- Charlie Harding: I'd say that there's three reasons for why you don't feel connected to Morgan Wallen's Last Night.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The first reason is that you got old. The neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin has a study that shows that our musical tastes really peak ages 14 to 24. And so you're simply outside of that range.
--:-- Charlie Harding: I'm sorry, Sean. But there are other reasons why Morgan Wallen might not connect with you. I think part of it is that maybe country isn't your thing. And country is having a meteoric rise.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Like, from 2017 to 2022, only 2% of the songs on the Hot 100 Billboard's major chart were country. Last year, 25% of songs on the Hot 100 were country.
--:-- Charlie Harding: Last summer, third reason why you might not have connected last summer country also became political in fact I think the charts became political like everything that is polarized in our country not only did we have morgan wallen who was making a comeback after saying the n-word publicly but we also had songs like try that in a small town by jason l dean We had all of our Anthony music, Rich Men North of Richmond.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Cause your dollar ain't shit And it's taxed to no end Cause the Redsmen North the Redsmen
--:-- Charlie Harding: These hyper-politicized songs and so maybe you were just feeling like I'm not feeling the country right now.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So these are why I think you might have not connected last year. Listen, Charlie, I like Bud Light and Pick Up Trucks as much as the next guy. But I think these songs are popular. Yes. But they're not, the song of the summer needs to be universal. Isn't that the thing?
--:-- Charlie Harding: I mean, Old Town Road was technically a country song, but the difference there was like kids were dancing to it. They were playing at clubs and everyone heard it. There was a video that was hilarious. It was in commercials. That was a song of the summer.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: When I teach Old Town Road to my students at NYU, they're like, oh, that old song? Just saying, we may be outside of peak culture, Sean.
--:-- Charlie Harding: Let's go back. Let's go back. I went back to 2003, but how old is the Song of the Summer, Charlie?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The Song of the Summer is an ancient institution. Every season needs a song. In my digging, I could find newspapers from the 1800s where people were writing songs of summer, poems, lyrics, and so on.
--:-- Charlie Harding: There's a really good Vox explainer by our former colleague Phil Edwards from 2016. Love Phil. He found a New York Tribune story from 1910 asking, about this time, look out for the Song of Summer. What will it be this season? Will it be humorous? Will it be sentimental? Will it be unmitigated trash?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They named the 1909 Song of Summer, My Wife's Gone to the Country. Hooray, hooray. Classic. My wife's gone to the country. Hooray, hooray.
--:-- Charlie Harding: But I feel like it really solidifies as a thing when Billboard launches its Hot 100 chart in 1958, and there is an official bean counter, and we can chart who is the biggest song of each season.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What was the first song of the summer in 1958 once we had the beans counting? It wasn't Elvis. It wasn't the Everly Brothers. It was Domenico Madugno's Volare.
--:-- Charlie Harding: Ah, of course it was. Italian ballad with some R&B piano vibes.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I don't know that I remember this from 1958, to tell you the truth. You're not that old, Sean. Pretty old, but not that old.
--:-- Charlie Harding: I mean you could say in 1965 Sonny and Cher had I Got You Babe Oh now we talking I got you babe
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: How about 1977 Best of My Love by The Emotions. Oh yeah, for sure.
--:-- Charlie Harding: I feel like if you go to 1984, you could fight between Prince's When Doves Cry and Tina Turner's What's Love Got to Do With It.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Oh my gosh, what a year 1984 was. And then the 90s, you got to have like what? Like Spice Girls' Wannabe, maybe the Macarena in there?
--:-- Charlie Harding: I mean, those are great hits, but I feel like 1997 was the year of Mbop by Hanson.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Oh my gosh, yes it was. But is there always a clear song of the summer? I mean, I showcased a couple of years where, in my personal opinion, there was. But I'm sure there's someone out there in the listening audience who's like, I don't remember Umbrella by Rihanna and Jay-Z.
--:-- Charlie Harding: I guess that person probably exists. I tend to think of more songs of summer than necessarily song of summer. Especially to be representative of like what people are listening to in Brooklyn is different than Miami, is different than Houston.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so whatever your community is listening to, that's going to be your song of summer. And probably in the era of like mass media monoculture, we just weren't as talented at capturing people's collective listening.
--:-- Charlie Harding: Now we can actually count exactly what people are listening to on streaming services. We have moved from the broadcast era of mass media to a fractured media landscape based on on-demand and algorithmic media.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We are more fed our niche interests through playlists which are disseminated to us. You can see the trend of people's listening fragment even by looking at things like album sales over the years.
--:-- Charlie Harding: In 2003, the biggest album of the year was 50 Cent's Get Rich or Die Trying, sold 6.5 million copies. Fast forward a decade, Justin Timberlake's 2020 experience, 2.4 million.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Fast forward just the last year, Taylor Swift's Midnight's, 2.8 million. So album sales today actually do also reflect streaming. A certain number of streams actually is the equivalent of an album sale.
--:-- Charlie Harding: So it's not just that people have moved from buying albums to streaming songs. It's also that I think our listening has fragmented into different communities and different genres.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And this is why you see the occasional think piece, reflection, essay, you know, roundtable saying that the song of the summer is dead. I've seen one from our colleagues at Vulture. I think Rolling Stone published one as well.
--:-- Charlie Harding: When you see those, Charlie Harding, are you like, come on, guys, take it easy on Song of the Summer? Because it feels like this is not your opinion.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I think that big cultural moments can still exist. Elections, insurrections, football's doing amazing, Super Bowl, depending on how you count, is at an all-time high in its viewership.
--:-- Charlie Harding: really songs are doing better and lasting longer on the Hot 100 than they are at any other point in history.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so I think whether it's a Taylor Swift album that takes over the entire chart for a moment, or a viral TikTok song that can last for longer than you might expect, it's definitely possible for a song to break through.
--:-- Charlie Harding: I'm glad you brought up the charts, Charlie, because I feel like the charts are part of the problem here. Because the charts, now that they account for streaming, are like no longer fully reflective of the moment like they used to be.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: No, no, no, no. Is that wrong? You're totally wrong. I totally object. The charts right now reflect that we have a very diverse set of listening.
--:-- Charlie Harding: Like, if you go to Billboard's Hot 100, which counts radio airplay, physical album sales, and streaming, it shows that, wow, we are listening to a broad array of things.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The number one song in the country right now is a bar song by Shibuzi. This one I know. Tipsy.
--:-- Charlie Harding: I'm not that old. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Black man leading the country charts and the Hot 100.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We also have legacy Big Three rapper Kendrick Lamar and his diss track, Not Like Us. We made a whole show about it. A great episode.
--:-- Charlie Harding: A great episode. You also made a great episode about pop princess Sabrina Carpenter and her song Espresso.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Thanks for the plug. It's a good episode. We've got alt folk music by Hosier. I take my whiskey in. We've got drag dressing artist Chapel Rhone.
--:-- Charlie Harding: We've got so many different things happening in the top 10. I think it really actually represents all sorts of different communities of listening.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I think you shouldn't stress about what everyone is listening to. I think you should pay attention to what your friends and community are connecting with.
--:-- Charlie Harding: We're going to come back with Charlie Harding and Britney Spanos from Rolling Stone to talk about what songs your friends and community are singing this summer on today explained are they
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for the show today comes from LifeKit, the podcast from NPR. What's in your life kit? I'm asking.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They didn't ask that. Every day you have to make choices that might shape the direction of your life, but you can't flip to the back of the book to find an answer key.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Instead, you can listen to the Life Kit podcast from NPR. Life Kit offers real stories about common issues like relationships, finances, parenting, and your career.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Enough from me. Go listen to the show, Life Kit. It's a podcast from NPR.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Today Explained is back with Charlie Harding and Britney Spanos from Rolling Stone.
--:-- Brittany Spanos: Friends, community, when you guys look at the songs of the summer, do the songs tell a story?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I think there are a couple of really great narratives going on right now in especially the top 10 of the charts in a way that I feel like has been more entertaining than the past few summers.
--:-- Brittany Spanos: I think we're seeing a lot of artists who have really strong fandoms who have existed for a really long time.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, Shabuzzi's been making music for years now. Sabrina Carpenter, this is like about to be her sixth album.
--:-- Brittany Spanos: Please, please, please don't prove I'm right. Chapel Roan was signed to a major label, dropped from a major label, re-signed to a new one, and released her debut album.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: H-O-T-T-R-T-R You can take me hard to go H-O-T-T-R-T-R
--:-- Brittany Spanos: Hozier has his first number one, and we all remember Take Me to Church. That song is from over a decade ago.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's a lot of really great sort of narratives happening of artists who have been hustling for a really long time, who, you know, either had peaks before and are coming back.
--:-- Brittany Spanos: I mean, we're seeing this with Charli XCX and Tinashe as well, who aren't necessarily in the top 10 because charts aren't the only metric, but are having really great sort of viral successes and moments.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We're seeing a lot of artists who just kind of have curated a great fandom and have cultivated that over years, toured, hustled, released music, and just happened to have these incredible breaks simultaneously at once.
--:-- Brittany Spanos: Yeah, I feel like we have moved past the moment where every biggest song is a sudden breakout on TikTok, overnight success.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The reality is, if you want to have a big pop career, you need a community which is backing you.
--:-- Brittany Spanos: I think Brittany's totally right on. This is the summer where we are seeing and realizing the gains of a lot of hard work.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That wee espresso. I feel like the industry has adjusted poorly to the streaming age.
--:-- Brittany Spanos: I mean, we all know that. Like, every artist knows that. And I feel like there's been a big lack of artist development in a lot of ways.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, we've seen a lot of artists who have a viral hit, who have that one moment. And then the industry and labels don't really know how to keep that going or how to process that sort of like, we found this artist on TikTok, on YouTube, on Instagram, on, you know, whatever.
--:-- Brittany Spanos: And like, we turn this into this big moment. Where does the album go from there? Where does the next song go from there?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So I feel like it's kind of a big case for artist development and kind of putting resources into that because these artists have done it on their own.
--:-- Brittany Spanos: You know, a lot of them have been working towards this for a really long time without getting the same sort of like marketing or kind of promotion or support from the major label system that other kind of flash in the pan artists have had over the last decade.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: and they've created those fandoms from scratch. They built them from the ground up just by touring a lot and from releasing music that made sense to them.
--:-- Brittany Spanos: There is something else going on this summer that I want to talk about. Britney mentioned it briefly. It's lime green. It's slightly out of focus. It's Brat.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I feel like the popularity of the new Charlie XCX album only backs up my theory that Song This Summer is a thing of the past because if you're terminally online, this is brat summer.
--:-- Brittany Spanos: And if you're in Los Angeles, this summer belongs to Kendrick. If you're into country, maybe it's Shibuzi. If you're into Disney, maybe it's Sabrina Carpenter or something.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Sean, I think you've completely passed over Post Malone. Like, I feel like this is actually the summer of Post Malone.
--:-- Brittany Spanos: This is the season of Post Malone. Not only has he had a number one hit with Morgan Wallen, the song I Had Some Help.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He's also had hits as a featured artist with Beyonce on Levi's Jeans. And Taylor Swift on Fortnite.
--:-- Brittany Spanos: He is inescapable. I'm glad y'all brought up Post Malone and in doing so also brought up Beyonce and Taylor Swift.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Because Beyonce Taylor and even like Dua Lipa some of the biggest artists on streaming some of the biggest artists touring right now performing right now releasing music right now they all released albums but their names haven really come up much
--:-- Brittany Spanos: Is there something going on with like the old faves where they're just not charting the same way as the Youngblood?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I think these albums all did phenomenally well and were simply released earlier in the year.
--:-- Brittany Spanos: Beyonce's album, Cowboy Carter, dominated the conversation for weeks. It broke Billboard Hot 100 records. It was definitely the album of the spring.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The song Texas Hold'em was number one for two weeks and was on the charts for 20 weeks.
--:-- Brittany Spanos: Taylor Swift's album, The Tortured Poets Department, also broke many records. All the songs were on the chart at the exact same moment.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Because i can do it with a broken heart duolipo might be the one example where her album radical optimism has not been as radically optimistic as she might have hoped but she does have three really solid singles still on radio airplay illusion houdini and Dance the Night from the Barbie soundtrack.
--:-- Brittany Spanos: I think she's one song away from being the most dominant artist again. She just needs the next big single to hit.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah. And Dance the Night was such a big hit last summer too.
--:-- Brittany Spanos: They definitely all cycled the song of the summer conversations repeatedly for the last several years or decades, depending on which artist.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But I think that people were kind of hungry for something new in a lot of ways too.
--:-- Brittany Spanos: I feel like we had a rough few years of new artists breaking through because of the pandemic because of touring and it's been such a big touring boom over the last couple of years where a lot of these artists have gotten boosted by being aligned with someone like Beyonce with Shibuzi being on the Beyonce album and then now having his first number one hit with Sabrina Carpenter going on the Arrows tour with Taylor with Chappell going on the Olivia tour you know all these artists kind of it's almost like um they are the ones now creating a new algorithm.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They are the ones boosting these artists and are as much a reason for these songs of the summer that we're seeing while kind of having their own albums that came out a little bit earlier.
--:-- Brittany Spanos: Is it a bummer to you too that none of these songs that you're clearly deeply invested in will be the song of the summer?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I think we established with Charlie that we are in the era of songs of the summer.
--:-- Brittany Spanos: Do you wish it could be just one one song to rule them all i mean we are our own little fiefdoms we all have our own song of summer so who cares i mean for me it's definitely charlie xcx von dutch no doubt no one can stop that from happening wow the remix of the original charlie i'm an original okay respect britney i mean i'm gonna argue that we've never been just a one song of the summer nation you know?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I think like when you look back on the years, like it's going to be whatever defined your summer, no matter what.
--:-- Brittany Spanos: I mean, we could go by the chart metrics. We can go by the conversation. But I think that's the beauty of like all of it is like, yeah, there is sometimes those defining metrics that we can use.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But no matter what, I think everyone kind of has their own song of the summer.
--:-- Brittany Spanos: And I think that's always what's kind of beautiful about it. Like I always look back at my summers with like, okay, this song just happened to be playing at every party I was at.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Or this is a song that I was like depressed listening to on the beach. You know, like it's like... You can't be depressed at the beach, Brittany.
--:-- Brittany Spanos: Sometimes, listen, I'm a Lana Del Rey girl through and through. And sometimes you are.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So what's your song this year?
--:-- Brittany Spanos: I don't think Lana's got any new bops, but I might have missed them. She does have a new bop. I'm not sure if it's my song of the summer yet.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But I think my song of the summer is probably... Oh God, it's actually like really difficult. I think it's probably 365.
--:-- Brittany Spanos: Wow. Because Brad has really taken over my life in a crazy way, in a way that is kind of sick.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I can relate. Okay, okay. Okay, okay, okay. Here we go. Charlie HCX, hashtag Britney Spanos. It's been an honor. Thank you for joining us.
--:-- Brittany Spanos: Thank you, Sean. Thank you.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Brittany Spanos writes about music for Rolling Stone. Her latest is titled, Welcome to the Hannah Montana Generation of Pop Music.
--:-- Brittany Spanos: You can and should read it at rollingstone.com.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Professor Charlie Harding makes Switched On Pop. You should be listening wherever you listen.
--:-- Brittany Spanos: Shadow Brat, Amanda Llewellyn made our program today.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We were fact-checked by Laura Bullard, who recently asked, wait, what is Brat?
--:-- Brittany Spanos: We were edited by Amina Alsadi, mixed by Patrick Boyd and Andrea Kristinsdottir, and hosted by Brat.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Before we go, have you noticed that this election is the nuttiest one we've ever had? Like, no exaggeration, ever.
--:-- Brittany Spanos: Felon versus oldest president ever who's constantly having to make the case for an even older presidency.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We know you have questions about conventions, about delegates, about donors, about the legality of X or the probability of Y.
--:-- Brittany Spanos: And we want to know what those questions are and we want to help you answer them in this wild and unpredictable moment.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Give us a call. Give us an email. Tweet at us. 844-453-4448. 844-453-4448.
--:-- Brittany Spanos: Today Explained at Vox.com. Today underscore Explained.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Thank you. Thank you.
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