Seasons affect our buying trends and tastes and the music industry capitalizes on such behaviour. A 5 June 1910 edition of the New York Tribune asked: ‘What will it be this season? Will it be humorous? Will it be sentimental? Will it be unmitigated trash?’ The idea that there is one song that could encapsulate summer might seem like a product of our voracious digital media cycle that demands the dissection of every cultural phenomenon, but it is also driven by the same desire that makes artists and labels vie so fiercely for the Christmas Number One. Our search for a defining song of the season is over a century old. Taylor Swift, You Need to Calm Down, 2019, video still. With summer now considered to be the most lucrative period for new music releases, are these tracks genuine attempts to create memorable, nostalgia-inducing music or just recycled songs repackaged and sold to us as new? While Old Town Road Remix was in an uncharted genre of its own, a look back at the summer smashes of the last half-century, from the surftastic pop of the Beach Boys to viral tracks such as Drake’s In My Feelings (2018), reveals something calculated about the alchemy of songs released during this time of year.
The remix, with its potent mix of singalong-ability and meme potential combined with social media support for an endearing underdog, proved to be a winner and Old Town Road Remix remained number one for a record-breaking 19 weeks. The original version of country-trap song initially went viral with a TikTok challenge, before receiving more mainstream attention when it was kicked off the country music charts for not incorporating enough elements of traditional country music. But Billboard’s 2019 Songs of the Summer chart, which tallies up the streams, radio plays and sales of charted songs from 8 June to 7 September of each year, gave the title to Lil Nas X’s Old Town Road Remix (2019) featuring Billy Ray Cyrus. This year, there were a few contenders: Taylor Swift’s You Need to Calm Down and Senorita by Shawn Mendes and Camilla Cabello.
The way it's depicted is all mostly insane, and a little bit beautiful.Every year at the tail end of the season, we crown a song of the summer.
It's a smart, potent message, one not just applicable to South Korea. The song, and the visuals above, call out the country-specifically, Seoul's posh Gangnam District-for its unhealthy materialism. Or maybe it's because, as The Atlantic and countless others have dutifully pointed out over the years, "Gangnam Style" is a carefully crafted satire of South Korea's 1%. Why did this cheesy descent into madness, directed by Cho Soo-hyun, bust YouTube's play counter and reign as the site's most popular video for years? Maybe it has something to do with one of the things listed above. He rests his head on the shoulder of Sauna Man. He makes two women walk with him through a garbage tornado. This T-Pain-endorsed piece of art is close to impossible to summarize, so instead, here's a quick list of the batshit stuff you'll see Psy do: He sunbathes, more or less, fully clothed.