Does the song of the summer still exist? Each year the debate returns over what the season’s true soundtrack is, and historically there has been a clear frontrunner, whether 2009’s I Gotta Feeling, 2017’s Despacito, or 2019’s Old Town Road. Only a couple of summers ago, it was impossible to go anywhere without hearing someone humming about their espresso.
But as the musical landscape evolves, it is also fragmenting. Listeners who get their recommendations from bite-size clips on TikTok and Instagram Reels are hearing very different hits from those who still turn to radio, and each streaming platform’s algorithm nudges its users toward its own set of songs. Our collective attention is being pulled in a million directions, and often different ones.
That splintering may be the point. Tastes can now be shaped by a whole slew of platforms, but listeners ultimately hold the power to curate what they hear, which is why, asked to name the song of the summer, a room of editors returns a genuinely diverse set of answers rather than a single consensus pick.
Among the front-runners is Olivia Rodrigo’s Stupid Song, which finds the singer several years and several breakups wiser than her driver’s-license debut, likening herself to a car speeding downhill with no way to stop. From another corner comes Aya Nakamura’s Sexy Nana, a track sung entirely in French that has become a most-played favorite off the back of a catchy beat and Nakamura’s unapologetic confidence, proof that a language barrier is no obstacle to virality.
Rising talent rounds out the field. Chxrry, the first woman signed to the Weeknd’s label XO, broke through on TikTok with Main Character last year and cemented her status this summer with Call Security, the kind of algorithm-native hit that defines the current moment. Taken together, the picks suggest that the 2026 song of the summer is not one song at all but a handful of them, each huge within its own slice of the internet, which may be the most honest answer the format can offer anymore.
