By Ethan Millman, Rolling Stone | Declaring the song of the summer has always been and will forever be an elusive task for music lovers. Some say the song of the summer is dead, or that it never really existed in the first place. And yet, like moths to a flame, every year when the weather gets above 80 degrees, fans begin a feverish debate on which song stands above the rest as the de facto anthem of the season.
We’re not above this instinct. But we’re also curious what happens when you stave off more subjective qualities like hype, personal taste, and critical consensus and instead focus on the numbers – looking at song streams as well as overall track “streaming equivalents,” which are determined by using a formula that translates streams into units. Rolling Stone identified 10 songs that have dominated much of the critical discourse in the race for this year’s song of the summer crown, and we pulled data from Luminate to track their overall performance since the last week of April.
While some of the results are in line with what we expected given the level of hype, cultural presence, and media attention a few of these songs have generated, some of what we learned left us a little surprised.
This list focuses on tracks whose surge started within the past three months. While chart behemoths like Benson Boone’s “Beautiful Things,” Teddy Swims’ “Lose Control” and Hozier’s “Too Sweet,” are among the most popular songs in the country right now and have all garnered at least 220 million streams in the time period we analyzed, their peak began too early to consider as summer tracks.
Check out our full list below, counting down from 10 to the current number one.
10: Charli XCX, ‘360’ (44.3 million streams)
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Go here to read the other 9:
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/song-of-the-summer-1235061379/
What’s the Song of the Summer? Let’s Do the Math
