Does 2025 have a song of the summer? The internet has doubts

For friend groups carpooling to the beach this summer, there may not be a consensus on song choice.

While Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso” and Tommy Richman’s “Million Dollar Baby” were among the tunes considered the 2024 song of the summer, there’s no such clarity this time around. Music fans have voiced frustration with the lack of clear contenders for the 2025 title, saying no song has gained the same level of momentum as Carpenter’s caffeinated earworm or Kendrick Lamar’s Grammy-winning diss track “Not Like Us.”

The public has never unanimously agreed an definitive song of the summer, an unofficial honor that drives debate every year over which artist drops the season’s true anthem. Every year, listeners pick a track they feel is emblematic of summer, from The Beach Boy’s 1963 “Surfin’ U.S.A” or The Police’s 1983 “Every Breathe You Take” to Katy Perry’s 2010 “California Gurls” featuring Snoop Dogg.

This year, the internet has been scratching its head trying to figure out which track will reign supreme. The conundrum only became more apparent when Spotify shared 30 predictions for the 2025 Song of the Summer, a list the streaming giant said considered “cultural expertise, editorial instinct and streaming data.”

Social media users not only bashed the list, but the state of this year’s summer anthems as a whole. Some went as far as saying 2025 might not have any songs of the summer.

A song of the summer can’t be forced to emerge

Wyatt Torosian, a 34-year-old marketing professional from Los Angeles, said the issue stems from artists tailoring their releases in the spring, with the hopes of becoming the song of the summer.

In Summer 2005, the success of Mariah Carey’s “We Belong Together” was indisputable, with the R&B soul hit playing at any store you walked to, Torosian said. Yet in this era, where musicians heavily utilize social media to promote their work, he argues music simply being made with the intention of going viral.

“Everyone’s designing music for a TikTok algorithm, and they’re not actually making music that people want to listen to,” Torosian told USA TODAY. “As artists keep designing songs for algorithms, there’s going to be less and less songs that even have the staying capacity to last for an entire summer.”

Leo Pastel, an independent R&B songwriter based in Cincinnati, said record labels are often the ones vying to have the summer anthem more than the artists themselves. He believes musicians generally haven’t been making the “upbeat, bright, happy songs” that epitomize the title yet, and urges labels to just accept that.

“Fans will make something, and then like the companies and the labels will pick up on it a year later and try to force it,” he said. “There’s not really a Song of the Summer this year and I think everyone understands that, but the labels are trying to create it.”

As a musician himself, Pastel said most artists know better than to force their work to be trendy, adding “anytime you try to force something, it just ends up coming off inauthentic. So it really has to come from an authentic place for it to really connect.”

A true song of the summer is undeniable

When a track is a true song of the summer contender, it’s almost irrefutable. Pastel said they’re the songs that listeners can’t escape from at clubs, or that they can’t help but play while riding their bike.

Hit summer songs were easier to identify decades ago when radio stations and TV programs had listeners largely consuming the same media at the same time, according to Pastel. Yet as streaming platforms have given listeners more control over what music they listen to, he said it takes lot more for a song to stand out amongst the masses.

“It’s a lot more difficult for one thing to be ubiquitous and for everyone to be paying attention to it. So I think that it’ll be a lot more rare for us to see those major cultural moments like we were used to in years past,” Pastel added.

Kristi Cook, a pop culture content creator in Los Angeles, noted it’s sometimes easier to judge a song of the summer after the season ends altogether.

“It takes you back to a smell. It takes you back to a moment in time, like a piece of clothing,” said Cook, who has nearly 400,000 followers on her TikTok page Spill Sesh. “Like, it just really takes you back to where you were when you were listening to that song the most. When it was the most played at restaurants or bars.”

Could the 2025 summer anthem drop any moment?

Many social media users have completely given up on 2025 having a song of the summer, with the exception of devoted fans championing their favorite artists’ new releases.

Fans of Charli XCX are even pushing for hyper-pop “party 4 u” amid a popularity resurgence, despite the song being released in 2020.

Meanwhile, artists like Doja Cat, Lorde, Lana Del Rey, Lil Wayne, Miley Cyrus and A$AP Rocky are all expected to drop albums in the near future.

But summer hasn’t officially begun, and Cook is encouraging people not to throw in the towel just yet.

“People are looking at it a bit negatively because they don’t agree or they don’t like these songs that are available right now,” she said. “Everyone’s waiting for the ‘Espresso.’ I feel like everyone’s just waiting because they hear all these teases or they’re hoping their favorites are going to drop a song.”

With the music world still left in suspense, USA TODAY asked Torosian, Pastel and Cook what they believe should be the 2025 Song of the Summer. Here’s what they said.

• Cook’s pick: “Sally, When the Wine Runs Out” by Role Model

• Torosian’s pick: “Running in the night” – FM 84 and Ollie Wride

• Pastel’s pick: “undressed” – Sombr

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: What’s the 2025 song of the summer? Music fans have questions