Justin Timberlake is back with summertime single 'Can't Stop the Feeling.'(Photo: Jonathan Nackstrand, AFP/Getty Images)
For what seems like the first time in years, the song-of-summer crown is completely up for grabs.
Typically by mid-May, we're able to spot the ubiquitous pop anthem that will come to define the warm-weather months. Last year, it was Felix Jaehn's remix of OMI's Cheerleader, which Billboard dubbed an early favorite due to its surging sales and radio airplay. In years prior, Iggy Azalea's Fancy and Carly Rae Jepsen's Call Me Maybe already had a clear lead on the competition: charting in the top five of Billboard's Hot 100 chart at this point, on their way to seven- and nine-week reigns at No. 1, respectively.
But this year, a trio of songs are neck-in-neck for the title: Desiigner's viral hit Panda, Drake's stream-heavy One Dance, and Justin Timberlake's sales-driven Can't Stop the Feeling (his first to debut at No. 1). All three have topped the Hot 100 for at least one week this past month, and with just-released singles from Ariana Grande (Into You) and Adele (Send My Love) entering the fray, the race is wide open. Experts say the increasingly fragmented media landscape could be changing the scope of the song of summer phenomenon.
"It's definitely a different animal," says Jason Lipshutz, Fuse Media's deputy editor of digital, who notes the growing divide between artists people talk about online (Beyoncé, Chance the Rapper) and listen to on radio (Lukas Graham, Mike Posner).
With such a crowded landscape, "I don't think there's as much of a fuss about what the official song of summer is anymore," he adds. "People kind of remember OMI's Cheerleader as last year's summer song, but also (Wiz Khalifa's) See You Again was there, Fifth Harmony's Worth It — there was a lot of stuff. It's more prevalent when there's something that's absolutely inescapable, but I feel like that hasn't happened" since Robin Thicke's Blurred Lines or Katy Perry's California Gurls. "I'm not sure there's anything this year that's going to be absolutely dominant like that, but if there is, my money's on One Dance."
John Ivey, program director at Los Angeles' KIIS FM, has Timberlake's Feeling as his song-of-summer pick. "It reminds me of Pharrell's Happy before you got tired of Happy," Ivey says. "It's super easy to remember and just a perfect pop record."
If Drake or Timberlake has the song of summer, it would break the recent streak of newcomers to take the badge — most of whom have either fallen off due to backlash (Azalea, Thicke) or failed to chart with follow-up singles (OMI, Jepsen). While some have chalked it up to a song-of-summer "curse," Lipshutz says the hit-and-miss careers of former champs are merely part of pop music's unpredictable nature.
"We've seen artists score that huge hit in the summer, and frantically try to forge a career out of that one song," Lipshutz says. "You have success stories like Meghan Trainor, who had her debut single (All About That Bass) go No. 1, and follow it up with a bunch of other hits. Then you have an artist like Magic!, who had the song of summer 2014 (Rude), but are not on anyone's radar right now."
Whether or not a song of summer can spell career longevity, the trend around it, at least, is here to stay.
"People like talking about things that are shared experiences, and there are increasingly fewer of those with culture being so fragmented," Lipshutz says. "Even if you're not a pop music fan, you know what song is inescapable just by being around a radio and watching TV. It's something everybody can have an opinion on."
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