There may not be a song of the summer, but there's certainly a sound
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Google Trends data suggests that there's no clear "song of the summer" this year. Illustration: Maura Losch/Axios
As Google Trends data suggests, people aren't necessarily rallying around a particular song of the summer this year, as they have in the past.
The big picture: If last summer boasted an embarrassment of refrains — "that's that me espresso," "they not like us," "good luck, babe" — this summer is all crickets, according to Google. Unless you're on TikTok.
Zoom in: Even if there's not a song of this summer, there's certainly a sound.
- A 2024 ad from British budget airline Jet2.com went mega-viral on TikTok and has soundtracked at least 2.2 million videos on the platform. The jingle features singer Jess Glynne's 2015 song "Hold My Hand."
- Most videos using the audio depict something gone haywire: a flooded subway car, a log through a windshield — holidays straight from the Final Destination universe.
Between the lines: The Trump administration was criticized for using that viral sound as part of its meme-heavy social media presence that has adopted a mocking tone toward undocumented immigrants.
- The White House and the Department of Homeland Security posted videos showcasing deportations and ICE raids, featuring footage of Homeland Security officers escorting handcuffed, detained people from a van and onto a plane — with the Jet2 commercial as the audio.
If "song of the summer" is a numbers game, this year it's an open-and-shut case, with the title going to Alex Warren's "Ordinary," which just topped Billboard's Hot 100 chart for its ninth non-consecutive week.
The other side: Some argue, however, that there are other, less quantifiable criteria that define a zeitgeist-dominating tune.
- Last year's "Brat Summer," for instance, infiltrated the lexicons of everyone from the former Vice President to the dictionary.
- In 2022, Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)" re-entered airwaves nearly 40 years after its release, thanks to a perfectly-deployed Netflix needle drop.
- There's the lasting cultural cache of a track like Megan Thee Stallion's "Hot Girl Summer," which brands referenced ceaselessly in 2019 and which the artist herself has capitalized on through brand deals years later.
But neither "Running Up That Hill" nor "Hot Girl Summer" ever topped the Billboard Hot 100, and Charli XCX's Brat didn't produce a song that did.
The intrigue: People seem to be in agreement about the lack of a summer '25-defining track.
- The search query "no song of the summer" reached an all-time high in July and "what is the song of the summer" is being searched more than ever before, according to Jenny Lee, lead data analyst at Google Trends.
- "Justin Bieber" and "Sabrina Carpenter" are the top trending artists searched with "song of the summer" since June 20, however, with Carpenter's "Manchild" and Ravyn Lenae's 2024 track "Love Me Not" also generating interest.
But "Jet2 summer" has both the meme DNA of Brat Summer and pulled-from-the-archive lore of Kate Bush.
- Even Glynne's original song has seen a surge of interest, with the track itself featured in over 15,000 videos since the trend began, according to data provider Chartmetric.
