Song of the summer 2025: writers pick their tracks of the season | Music

Addison Rae – Headphones OnSummer is for out-of-office e mail bouncebacks, smashing your laptop computer shut at 4pm and placing it off till tomorrow. This 12 months, no tune represents the easy thrill of shrugging it off higher than Addison Rae’s Headphones On. With a indifferent, lobotomy-chic supply that’s drawn comparisons to Y2K-era Madonna, the TikTok star turned critical pop scholar breezes by means of an inventory of anxieties, from her dad and mom’ relationship to the ever-present thrill of being bumped down a notch by “the brand new it lady”. In the end, our laconic heroine swaps a panic assault for slipping these headphones on and driving all of it out with a tune. Clocking in at precisely 4 minutes, there’s a straightforwardness to all of it that I can’t assist however admire. Rae will make you dance with out working too laborious. And that’s all I would like proper now. Alaina DemopoulosKatseye – GnarlyThis tune, sung by a six-woman worldwide Ok-pop group, begins with an evaluation of how malleable English slang is. “They may describe every part with one single phrase, ? / Boba tea, gnarly / Tesla, gnarly / Fried hen, gnarly,” one member of Katseye sings, the bass thumping each time she says essentially the most versatile descriptive phrase within the language, signifying depth, each constructive and detrimental. It’s the early 2010s, and we’re so again. The tune is as maximalist as could be, much like Skrillex’s 2011 Bangarang or Kesha’s 2010 hit TiK ToK. The music video, through which the group assembles a grotesque sandwich, calls again to 2010’s Phone, when Woman Gaga does the identical. The tune is enjoyable and rowdy. It speeds ahead, apt for TikTok (the app), the place it first gained recognition with a particular, jerky dance. In case you like Gnarly, I’d counsel going in the hunt for different songs by one of many tune’s writers, Alice Longyu Gao. Wealthy Bitch Juice and 100 Boyfriends characteristic the identical mixture of heavy bass and saccharine, electrified vocals and instrumentation. Blake MontgomeryJade – Plastic BoxSince squishing a NOW! compilation’s value of concepts into three minutes on her solo single Angel of My Goals, Jade has backed up what Little Mixologists all the time suspected – that she is aware of pop as if she has an MA in Bangers. Forward of the discharge of her debut album That’s Showbiz, Child!, there’s one thing invitingly scrappy to the best way she’s dovetailed from brash EDM to orgasmic disco, discarding low cost wigs and Jade-branded buttplugs in her wake. (To my thoughts, the one different pop act exploring style this boldly is Sabrina Carpenter, who’s one thing like a non secular sibling to Jade in addition to her stylistic reverse.) Plastic Field bottles a sure Scandinavian pressure of candy melancholy, with Jade enjoying the jilted lover over seductive electro-pop. Co-producers Grades and Oscar Görres, the latter of whom helmed most of Troye Sivan’s slick One thing to Give Every Different, hug her voice with rosy synths and a refrain that explodes in a cloud of confetti. It’s an finish of summer season celebration that’s chicer than SSENSE – and regardless of Jade’s antics that made her a lot enjoyable to comply with, Plastic Field proves that she’s simply as magnetic when she strips them away. Owen MyersPinkPantheress – IllegalTo me, summer season looks like going at terminal velocity down a waterslide: an unstoppable blur that earlier than it has spat you out within the run-out pool of autumn, dazed and blinking. PinkPantheress’s new 20-minute, 30-second mixtape Fancy That feels the identical means, a rush of UK dance music historical past – heavy with samples of Basement Jaxx and Underworld and nods to Fatboy Slim and Groove Armada – guided by a flirt laying down the legislation in girlish RP. Unlawful is the one time Pink’s grip loosens, because of a hero dose of THC that leaves her tangled in lust, paranoia and disgrace. Between the reality-obliterating synth strobes, her sensory manufacturing makes you’re feeling all the liberty and frustration of being excessive, shut breaths and screams flickering by means of the slipstream. Laura Snapesforty winks – commie bfThere are loads of songs of the summer season about falling in love or partying or breaking apart or going for a protracted, beautiful drive, however there are hardly sufficient songs for summer season lethargy. When the mercury hits 90 levels, all my mates go insane, my expertise stops working, and I begin napping for a minimum of one hour a day. Enter commie bf, a blunt buzzsaw of a tune on which forty winks singer Cilia Catello yells that “everybody and every part makes my ears ring” proper earlier than she and her bandmates unleash a maelstrom of nasty, dementedly catchy punk-pop. It is a humorous, and enjoyable, and ferocious monitor – loud and unruly, however so intensely catchy that even the guitar-music-averse amongst us must admire its moxie. Catello’s sheer frustration rings by means of each second of the tune, sufficient to shake you from that heatwave-induced stupor and get your ass again into gear, irrespective of how sweaty and malcontent it’s possible you’ll be. Shaad D’SouzaMK – Dior (that includes Chrystal)Whereas pop followers fret about there not being a adequate tune of the summer season this 12 months, the UK has gone forward and anointed its alternative anyway. MK’s Dior is now at No 1 within the UK charts, normal behaviour for a rustic whose inhabitants want solely the faintest trace of a 4/4 pop-dance beat on a temperate day to crack open a tinned cocktail at 11am and go “wheeeeey” with arms stretched broad. US producer MK, AKA Marc Kinchen, has been round because the early 90s (he’s behind the still-ubiquitous Push the Feeling On) and subsequently brings a stage of craft to bear on his productions that places them into a special league to all different mirrored-wall nightclub fodder. 2017’s 17 nonetheless shines just like the white partitions and high-tensile glass of an Ibizan villa; 2023’s Asking is pretty much as good as build-and-drop dance will get. 2025’s providing Dior is extra coiled and sensual than these tracks, with a extremely dramatic delayed drop: silence and Chrystal’s a cappella vocal fill the house the place you anticipate the beat, making a easy however spine-tingling impact. The excessive trend references in the meantime make it a form of sequel to 2023’s equal dance-pop tune of the summer season, Cassö’s Prada. Ben Beaumont-ThomasHaim – RelationshipsBest efforts however, the vibes aren’t nice this summer season. The information is horrible, the AI ominous, the tradition nonetheless in an prolonged hangover from final 12 months’s Espresso buzz and Brat bumps. There is no such thing as a apparent tune of the summer season – the charts are principally tracks from 2024 or Morgan Wallen (although you wouldn’t comprehend it in godless New York); Charli xcx principally headlined Glastonbury; persons are too busy arguing over Sabrina Carpenter’s album cowl to recollect her Espresso follow-up Manchild. On this muggy malaise, I’ve been caught on Haim’s Relationships – the LA trio’s greatest pop tune up to now, a vivid, deceptively ethereal anthem for being fucking over it. Lyrically, this lead single off the sisters’ aspirationally titled fourth album I Stop describes the messy finish of some ill-defined entanglement. However its spare, intoxicating manufacturing – easy piano chords, ambling bass, synths glimmering like barlights at 9pm nightfall – evokes a extra normal, potent summer season ennui. I usually need the bpm up when it’s sizzling, however this summer season, I’ve been circling blocks to Danielle’s dreamy falsetto, ascending together with her rhetorical questions – fucking relationships, don’t they find yourself all the identical? – after which crashing again to earth together with her “when there’s nobody else in charge”. Emotions? On this strung-out summer season? Strive me subsequent 12 months. Adrian HortonThe Beths – No JoyThe most joyous sounding tune of this summer season addresses melancholy, numbness and the futility of all of it. No Pleasure, by the tuneful New Zealand quartet the Beths, gives a super object lesson within the thrill of blended messages in pop. The music couldn’t really feel extra summery or mild, fired by bouncy powerpop chords and chirpy backup vocals. The video, set in a candy-colored little one’s playroom, follows swimsuit, with lead singer/author Elizabeth Stokes deadpanning her means by means of lyrics like: “All my pleasures, responsible / Clear slate wanting filthy” and “I really feel nothing,” all whereas her bandmates smile with satirically exaggerated pleasure. It’s inconceivable to maintain a straight face whereas watching or listening to it, although the numbness Stokes stories in her phrases displays one thing sadly actual. The lyrics chronicle her expertise on the dulling SSRI drug she has used to cope with her melancholy. True as which may be for her, the tune winds up giving the alternative feeling to the listener. When she sings “no pleasure” time and again we really feel nothing however – a twist that would make this essentially the most ironic tune of this summer season, in addition to essentially the most irresistible. Jim Farbersombr – we by no means datedWelcome to sombr season. Summer time ‘25 appears to have given us a brand new star, and he’s Shane Boose – in any other case identified by his melancholy moniker, sombr. A local of New York’s bustling Decrease East Facet, at simply 19 he has successfully launched his mainstream profession with a sequence of chart-topping singles which flaunts the artist’s emotional, guitar-propelled lyrics. Sure you learn that proper, the brand new technology has formally rediscovered precise devices, with the teenage artist seemingly channelling alt-rock acts like Arctic Monkeys and Radiohead, the latter of whom he’s cited as a significant affect. Songs like We By no means Dated flaunt brutally sincere lyrics accented by guitar-picking led it to grow to be an prompt breakout upon its late June launch, which makes it a no brainer on the subject of Track of the Summer time standing. In the meantime, he’s driving excessive on different explosive singles together with Again to Mates, which lately was anointed because the most-streamed tune on Spotify’s world charts. Rob LeDonneKhamari – Head in a JarWithout a factory-made earworm to invade our each waking second, the ground has opened as much as a wider number of artists this summer season and, as there all the time ought to be in my view, a wider number of vibes to go along with it. Songs of the summer season are usually characterised by the infectious perk and sweaty overwhelm of mid-afternoon solar however there’s one other seasonal feeling everyone knows, because the brightness begins to fade, that additionally deserves its house. Boston-born singer Khamari is aware of it too and in delicate downer Head in a Jar, he captures a model of summery disappointment that’s additionally reasonably seductive, a deliberate dive into darkish emotions that’s as refreshing as an early night breeze. It’s a tune about being pushed away from the centre of somebody’s life, pressured to observe from a distance as a substitute and, with a voice that has rightly earned comparisons to the principally awol Frank Ocean, Khamari pierces proper by means of. He’s quietly been gaining buzz since his equally reflective 2020 EP Eldorado and this one deserves to vault him from the skin in. Benjamin LeeMatías Aguayo – El InternetYou know you’re in the correct celebration if somebody throws down this tune. The Chilean-German firebrand Matías Aguayo returned in Might with a subversive dancefloor heater that has been constructing in notoriety over the next months. It’s sung in Spanish however interprets to, Aguayo says: “strolling by means of the town on sizzling summer season nights on the lookout for the proper dancefloor”. But it surely’s additionally a mission assertion, eager for “revolutions in music and goals in neighborhood” away from homogenisation, social media likes and solely dealing with the DJ sales space. Within the monitor, Aguayo remembers the freewheeling days of YouTube rips the place you may hear “uncooked, primitive and direct music” from, say, a Syrian wedding ceremony or Angolan youngsters dancing on the streets – references for El Web’s personal jittery, stressed rhythm and likewise his stay DJ units, the place he sings and dances inside a circle within the viewers, inviting onlookers to maneuver freely with him and let unfastened. It’s lithe, gonzo techno for sticky evenings in the hunt for catharsis and connection. Kate HutchinsonTom Rasmussen – Homosexual BarTaken from London-based polymath Tom Rasmussen’s Excessive Wire, a remixed and reimagined model of final 12 months’s wonderful Reside Wire album, new tune Homosexual Bar – not a canopy of Electrical Six, apols – showcases two of my favorite summer season past-times; trashy storytelling and gossip. Who doesn’t love a steamy page-turner on the seaside, interrupted solely by the small print of final night time’s escapades wafting over from the gaggle of friends close by? On Homosexual Bar, Rasmussen particulars three makes an attempt at an evening out; the primary is interrupted by a pint to the face, after which fully ruined by the homosexual bar now being a Slug & Lettuce. Night time two, in the meantime, includes going to the place the place “Danielle sucked on that MP’s armpit”, however – shock horror! – it’s now a Crossfit fitness center filled with “muscled up yuppies”. By night time three, with hope dwindling, Rasmussen takes a straight pal giving off “bi vibes” to a busy homosexual bar. Because the tune’s hi-NRG dance pop ratchets up, you end up gripped because the story reaches its climax; will Cassandra get off with anybody? What’s Rasmussen doing within the basement? When will the decimation of queer nightlife finish? It’s an actual page-turner. Michael Cragg