Song of the summer 2025: writers pick their tracks of the season
This song, sung by a six-woman international K-pop group, begins with an analysis of how malleable English slang is. 'They could describe everything with one single word, you know? / Boba tea, gnarly / Tesla, gnarly / Fried chicken, gnarly,' one member of Katseye sings, the bass thumping every time she says the most versatile descriptive word in the language, signifying intensity, both positive and negative. It's the early 2010s, and we're so back. The song is as maximalist as can be, similar to Skrillex's 2011 Bangarang or Kesha's 2010 hit TiK ToK. The music video, in which the group assembles a grotesque sandwich, calls back to 2010's Telephone, when Lady Gaga does the same. The song is fun and rowdy. It speeds forward, apt for TikTok (the app), where it first gained popularity with a distinctive, jerky dance. If you like Gnarly, I would suggest going in search of other songs by one of the song's writers, Alice Longyu Gao. Rich Bitch Juice and 100 Boyfriends feature the same mix of heavy bass and saccharine, electrified vocals and instrumentation. Blake Montgomery
Since squishing a NOW! compilation's worth of ideas into three minutes on her solo single Angel of my Dreams, Jade has backed up what Little Mixologists always suspected – that she knows pop as if she has an MA in Bangers. Ahead of the release of her debut album That's Showbiz, Baby!, there's something invitingly scrappy to the way she's dovetailed from brash EDM to orgasmic disco, discarding cheap wigs and Jade-branded buttplugs in her wake. (To my mind, the only other pop act exploring genre this boldly is Sabrina Carpenter, who is something like a spiritual sibling to Jade as well as her stylistic opposite.) Plastic Box bottles a certain Scandinavian strain of sweet melancholy, with Jade playing the jilted lover over seductive electro-pop. Co-producers Grades and Oscar Görres, the latter of whom helmed most of Troye Sivan's slick Something to Give Each Other, hug her voice with rosy synths and a chorus that explodes in a cloud of confetti. It's an end of summer party that's chicer than SSENSE – and despite Jade's antics that made her so much fun to follow, Plastic Box proves that she's just as magnetic when she strips them away. Owen Myers
To me, summer feels like going at terminal velocity down a waterslide: an unstoppable blur that before you know it has spat you out in the run-out pool of autumn, dazed and blinking. PinkPantheress's new 20-minute, 30-second mixtape Fancy That feels the same way, a rush of UK dance music history – heavy with samples of Basement Jaxx and Underworld and nods to Fatboy Slim and Groove Armada – guided by a flirt laying down the law in girlish RP. Illegal is the only time Pink's grip loosens, thanks to a hero dose of THC that leaves her tangled in lust, paranoia and shame. Between the reality-obliterating synth strobes, her sensory production makes you feel all the freedom and frustration of being high, close breaths and screams flickering through the slipstream. Laura Snapes
There are plenty of songs of the summer about falling in love or partying or breaking up or going for a long, gorgeous drive, but there are hardly enough songs for summer lethargy. When the mercury hits 90 degrees, all my friends go insane, my technology stops working, and I start napping for at least one hour a day. Enter commie bf, a blunt buzzsaw of a song on which forty winks singer Cilia Catello yells that 'everyone and everything makes my ears ring' right before she and her bandmates unleash a maelstrom of nasty, dementedly catchy punk-pop. This is a funny, and fun, and ferocious track – loud and unruly, but so intensely catchy that even the guitar-music-averse among us would have to admire its moxy. Catello's sheer frustration rings through every second of the song, enough to shake you from that heatwave-induced stupor and get your ass back into gear, no matter how sweaty and malcontent you may be. Shaad D'Souza
While pop fans fret about there not being a good enough song of the summer this year, the UK has gone ahead and anointed its choice anyway. MK's Dior is now at No 1 in the UK charts, standard behaviour for a country whose inhabitants need only the faintest hint of a 4/4 pop-dance beat on a temperate day to crack open a tinned cocktail at 11am and go 'wheeeeey' with arms stretched wide. US producer MK, AKA Marc Kinchen, has been around since the early 90s (he's behind the still-ubiquitous Push the Feeling On) and therefore brings a level of craft to bear on his productions that puts them into a different league to all other mirrored-wall nightclub fodder. 2017's 17 still shines like the white walls and high-tensile glass of an Ibizan villa; 2023's Asking is as good as build-and-drop dance gets. 2025's offering Dior is more coiled and sensual than those tracks, with a really dramatic delayed drop: silence and Chrystal's a cappella vocal fill the space where you expect the beat, creating a simple but spine-tingling effect. The high fashion references meanwhile make it a sort of sequel to 2023's equivalent dance-pop song of the summer, Cassö's Prada. Ben Beaumont-Thomas
Best efforts notwithstanding, the vibes aren't great this summer. The news is terrible, the AI ominous, the culture still in an extended hangover from last year's Espresso buzz and Brat bumps. There is no obvious song of the summer – the charts are basically tracks from 2024 or Morgan Wallen (though you wouldn't know it in godless New York); Charli xcx basically headlined Glastonbury; people are too busy arguing over Sabrina Carpenter's album cover to remember her Espresso follow-up Manchild. In this muggy malaise, I've been stuck on Haim's Relationships – the LA trio's best pop song to date, a bright, deceptively airy anthem for being fucking over it. Lyrically, this lead single off the sisters' aspirationally titled fourth album I Quit describes the messy end of some ill-defined entanglement. But its spare, intoxicating production – simple piano chords, ambling bass, synths glimmering like barlights at 9pm dusk – evokes a more general, potent summer ennui. I normally want the bpm up when it's hot, but this summer, I've been circling blocks to Danielle's dreamy falsetto, ascending with her rhetorical questions – fucking relationships, don't they end up all the same? – and then crashing back to earth with her 'when there's no one else to blame'. Feelings? In this strung-out summer? Try me next year. Adrian Horton
The most joyous sounding song of this summer addresses depression, numbness and the futility of it all. No Joy, by the tuneful New Zealand quartet The Beths, provides an ideal object lesson in the thrill of mixed messages in pop. The music couldn't feel more summery or light, fired by bouncy powerpop chords and chirpy backup vocals. The video, set in a candy-colored child's playroom, follows suit, with lead singer/writer Elizabeth Stokes deadpanning her way through lyrics like: 'All my pleasures, guilty / Clean slate looking filthy' and 'I feel nothing,' all while her bandmates smile with satirically exaggerated pleasure. It's impossible to keep a straight face while watching or listening to it, despite the fact that the numbness Stokes reports in her words reflects something sadly real. The lyrics chronicle her experience on the dulling SSRI drug she has used to deal with her depression. True as that may be for her, the song winds up giving the opposite feeling to the listener. When she sings 'no joy' over and over we feel nothing but – a twist that could make this the most ironic song of this summer, as well as the most irresistible. Jim Farber
Welcome to sombr season. Summer '25 seems to have given us a new star, and he's Shane Boose – otherwise known by his melancholy moniker, sombr. A native of New York's bustling Lower East Side, at just 19 he has effectively launched his mainstream career with a series of chart-topping singles which flaunts the artist's emotional, guitar-propelled lyrics. Yes you read that right, the new generation has officially rediscovered actual instruments, with the teenage artist seemingly channelling alt rock acts like Arctic Monkeys and Radiohead, the latter of whom he's cited as a major influence. Songs like We Never Dated flaunt brutally honest lyrics accented by guitar-picking led it to become an instant breakout upon its late June release, which makes it a no-brainer when it comes to Song of the Summer status. Meanwhile, he's riding high on other explosive singles including Back to Friends, which recently was anointed as the most-streamed song on Spotify's global charts. Rob LeDonne
Without a factory-made earworm to invade our every waking moment, the floor has opened up to a wider selection of artists this summer and, as there always should be in my opinion, a wider selection of vibes to go with it. Songs of the summer are typically characterised by the infectious perk and sweaty overwhelm of mid-afternoon sun but there's another seasonal feeling we all know, as the brightness starts to fade, that also deserves its space. Boston-born singer Khamari knows it too and in delicate downer Head in a Jar, he captures a brand of summery sadness that's also rather seductive, a deliberate dive into dark feelings that's as refreshing as an early evening breeze. It's a song about being pushed away from the centre of someone's life, forced to watch from a distance instead and, with a voice that has rightly earned comparisons to the mostly awol Frank Ocean, Khamari pierces right through. He's quietly been gaining buzz since his similarly reflective 2020 EP Eldorado and this one deserves to vault him from the outside in. Benjamin Lee
You know you're in the right party if someone throws down this tune. The Chilean-German firebrand Matias Aguayo returned in May with a subversive dancefloor heater that has been building in notoriety over the subsequent months. It's sung in Spanish but translates to, Aguayo says: 'walking through the city on hot summer nights looking for the perfect dancefloor'. But it's also a mission statement, longing for 'revolutions in music and dreams in community' away from homogenisation, social media likes and solely facing the DJ booth. In the track, Aguayo remembers the freewheeling days of YouTube rips where you could hear 'raw, primitive and direct music' from, say, a Syrian wedding or Angolan teenagers dancing on the streets – references for El Internet's own jittery, restless rhythm and also his live DJ sets, where he sings and dances inside a circle in the audience, inviting onlookers to move freely with him and let loose. It's lithe, gonzo techno for sticky evenings in search of catharsis and connection. Kate Hutchinson
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The Guardian
42 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Elon Musk opened a diner in Hollywood. What could go wrong? I went to find out
It was just before lunchtime on its third day of operation, and the line outside Elon Musk's new Tesla Diner in Hollywood already stretched to nearly 100 people. The restaurant has been billed as a 'retro-futuristic' drive-in where you can grab a high-end burger and watch classic films on giant screens, all while charging your Tesla. After months of buildup and controversy, the diner had suddenly opened on Monday, at 4.20pm, the kind of stoner boy joke that Musk is well-known for. Hundreds of fans lined up to try burgers in Cybertruck-shaped boxes, or take photos of the Optimus robot serving popcorn on the roof deck of the gleaming circular diner. But that was for the grand opening. Less than 48 hours later, when we visited for lunch, the Tesla Diner experience was less a futuristic fantasy than a case study in how to fail with impunity. Many parts of the experience were breaking down, the food was mediocre, yet the fans were still cheerfully lining up to buy merch. The line to get into the diner on Wednesday morning was so long, an employee told us, in part because of technical problems. The app that allowed Tesla drivers to order from their cars was glitching, so the diner was 'prioritizing' Tesla owners who had to come inside to order instead. This meant that non-Tesla owners in the walk-up line might need to wait as long as two to three hours before we got our food. I expected at least a few people to leave the walk-up line immediately, but the only ones who did were two families of Tesla owners who went back to order from within their cars. Even if the app didn't work for them, they would still get their food faster. The hierarchy was clear: things were broken for everyone, but owners of Musk products had to suffer slightly less. The rest of us kept waiting in the hot sun. 'Retro-futurism', in this case, seemed to mean gorgeous, Tesla-inspired, mid-century modern architecture coupled with wait times that would shutter an ordinary McDonald's. An episode of Star Trek was playing on the giant drive-in movie screens, but the best entertainment available was watching tricked-out Cybertrucks arrive and depart. I counted at least six when I arrived, and more kept appearing: a neon orange Cybertruck with Texas plates, another floating on giant custom rims. I did not spot a single anti-Musk protester, though social media posts were advertising protests outside the diner later in the week. Musk's special projects have often unfolded with a degree of chaos. Most recently, his attempt to dismantle the large parts of the US government ended with him feuding with the president he had spent nearly $300m to elect. Serving high-end burgers to Tesla fans while they charge their electric cars should be much easier than launching space rockets, developing brain implants or running a social media platform that is not overrun with hate speech and harassment. And Musk's diner operation partners, the Los Angeles chef Eric Greenspan, who advised Mr Beast Burger, and restaurateur Bill Chait, of République and Tartine Bakery, have impressive food industry credentials. But the billionaire CEO tends to make big promises and not quite fulfill them. That appeared to be true even for a tiny burger joint. You don't have to own a Tesla to order a meal at the diner, and its appeal clearly reached far beyond Tesla drivers. There were many people in the walk-up line on Wednesday with babies and small children, some of whom were particularly excited to be visiting the Tesla Diner after seeing videos about it online. While we all waited and waited, employees in branded T-shirts brought us glasses of water and paper menus. Jake Hook, who runs a Los Angeles-focused 'Diner Theory' social media account, had described the Tesla Diner menu to me as 'all over the place', with a combination of 'very fast food shlocky' items combined with sandwiches made with 'bread from Tartine', the luxury California bakery. The diner also offers a mix of 'own the libs' and 'we are the libs' options: on the one hand, 'Epic Bacon', four strips of bacon are served with sauces as a meatfluencer alternative to french fries, and on the other, avocado toast and matcha lattes. There was a kale salad served in a cardboard Cybertruck: welcome to southern California. 'Diners are kind of a reflection of the community, and it doesn't seem to really be that,' Hook told me over the phone. 'It's like a diner-themed restaurant.' An employee gave the Wednesday walk-up line another update: they didn't have chicken, waffles or milkshakes, or any of the 'charged sodas', which came with boba and maraschino cherries and extra caffeine. 'It gets better and better,' sighed a man behind me. Josh Bates and his son Phoenix were in town for the day from Orange county, where they lived. 'We are big Musk fans,' he said. Phoenix, age 10, had been excited to visit the diner. 'I never seen Elon Musk open a restaurant, so I just wanted to come here and see how the food is,' he explained. But after waiting in line for 20 minutes and not getting much closer to ordering, Bates decided it was time to find somewhere else for lunch. 'It's the grand opening – things happen,' the father said. 'It is what it is. They're doing the best they can.' Bates wasn't the only Musk fan with this attitude. Ivan Daza, 36, who lived in Los Angeles, later told me that he had waited two hours the day before, only to be told around 6 or 7pm that the Tesla Diner's kitchen was closed. He had brought his eight-year-old daughter back the next day to try again. She had seen the Tesla Diner on YouTube and was especially excited to see the Optimus robot. But it turned out that Optimus was not in operation. Daza said he was surprised by the various problems the kitchen seemed to be having – he thought they would have a 'plan B'. But he was pleased the diner offered an 'experience'. The prices, though expensive, weren't that bad for Los Angeles. The burger was $13.50, without french fries. Later, as Daza ate the meal that had taken him two days to get, he grinned: 'Delicious.' The interior design was certainly closer to Disneyland than In-N-Out: all sleek and shining chrome, futuristic 1950s white chairs and tables, and beautifully designed lighting. The curved staircase up to the Skypad was decorated with robots in display cases on the wall. Inside a curved chrome window was what looked like a pretty ordinary, low-tech restaurant kitchen. I had waited in line for a full hour before I could place my order. When I finally got to the register, I asked an employee to remind me what on the menu was actually available. She said I needed to check the screen in front of me – they had whatever was there. It turned out, contrary to what I had been told, that I could order both chicken and waffles. After the long wait outside, my food arrived in about 10 minutes – much less than the three-hour wait I feared, but absurdly long for any fast-casual restaurant. A waffle, branded with the Tesla lightning bolt, was cold. The fried chicken had a tasty coating but was also cold. The heap of kale and tomatoes was only partially dressed with an odd dill-flavored dressing. The generic-brand cola tasted cheap and was served with a woke bamboo straw. But the food did come in elaborate Cybertruck boxes – and they were, to be honest, delightful. While locals seemed to be forgiving of the new diner's glitches, some tourists were less impressed. Rick Yin, 32, who was visiting Los Angeles from China with his mother, had stopped by the diner on their way to the airport to 'grab a quick lunch' that had turned out not to be quick at all. Yin had also been excited to see the Optimus robot in action, and had hoped the diner would be 'more hi-tech'. What he had found was 'a regular restaurant'. 'It's all right,' he said, while still waiting for his food. After eating, he said he liked the Cybertruck boxes: 'That's the only thing that's worth it.' I took my meal upstairs , to the Skypad, an open-air balcony with a view of the charging Teslas. The Twilight Zone was now playing on two giant screens. I sat down next to a steady line of people buying Tesla Diner merch: a $95 retro diner hoodie, $65 Tesla salt and pepper shakers, a $175 'levitating Cybertruck' figurine. There was a large popcorn machine in front of me, which seemed to be where Optimus had been serving snacks on opening night. Musk had been posting on X earlier in the morning that 'Optimus will bring the food to your car next year' and suggesting the robot might be dressed in a 'cute' retro outfit. In reality, Optimus was nowhere in sight. The robot was 'out today', an employee told me later, as if the pricey piece of machinery were a human celebrity with a busy schedule. 'Maybe tomorrow.' 'Is it possible to get some popcorn regardless of the robot?' a woman asked. 'It's probably old popcorn,' an employee told her regretfully. A different employee warned me that I could not walk down the same staircase I had taken up to the Skypad because it was too crowded and that 'everyone's colliding with each other and trays and milkshakes'. I would have to go down another way: a bland flight of stairs without any hi-tech decoration. During a Tesla earnings call on Wednesday, as the company disclosed declining revenue and profits, Musk highlighted his new burger palace as a success: 'Diners don't typically get headline news around Earth,' he bragged. He also called the diner 'a shiny beacon of hope in an otherwise sort-of bleak urban landscape'. (It is located on Santa Monica Boulevard, in a neighborhood full of high-end art galleries.) I'd had plenty of time in the diner line to think about 'retro-futuristic' experiences, and how good a description that was, not so much for this very ordinary diner, but for the rightwing political project that Musk had joined. We were now moving into a future that offered tank-like electric cars and on-demand drone deliveries, and also a resurgence of measles outbreaks and women dying from preventable pregnancy-related complications. But continuing to function in the United States right now requires being very good at compartmentalization. I tucked away the cardboard Cybertruck lids to show my co-workers, threw away the Tesla waffles, and went on with my day. Nothing works properly here any more, but hey, it's an experience.
Telegraph
42 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Maga's plot to restore Cold War era patriotism to ‘woke' Hollywood
In her 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand expounds her individualist philosophy by portraying a dystopian society in which titans of industry fight back against burdensome bureaucracy. Though widely panned by critics, the book has remained a cult favourite of the libertarian Right. Paul Ryan, the former Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, gave out copies to staff members as Christmas presents. Donald Trump, not widely known as a reader, has named Rand as his favourite author. It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that an adaptation of Atlas Shrugged is among a handful of projects proposed by Founders Films, a new Right-wing production company aimed at restoring patriotism to Hollywood. The planned venture, which is being pitched to potential investors, comes amid a broader shift to the Right across the US media industry as the return of Trumpian politics triggers a war on 'woke'. '[Founders Films] goes against everything that we know about Hollywood, which is that traditionally it is quite Left-liberal, it is quite compassionate, it is rarely associated with blood and thunder narratives,' says media analyst Alex DeGroote. 'It's a real punch in the face for woke.' Founders Films is being launched by a handful of figures linked to the Silicon Valley data giant Palantir, including chief technology officer Shyam Sankar, early employee Ryan Podolsky and investor Christian Garrett. The company's name is a play on Founders Fund, the tech-focused venture capital fund launched by Palantir founder Peter Thiel. Documents seen by the US news website Semafor outline the tech executives' vision for the project, with the ethos described as: 'Say yes to projects about American exceptionalism, name America's enemies, back artists unconditionally, take risk on novel IP [intellectual property].' In a post on Substack late last year, Sankar wrote nostalgically about all-American blockbusters of yesteryear including Red Dawn, Top Gun, Rocky IV, and The Hunt for Red October. He argued that the US had lost the ability to leverage its film industry as soft power and called for the resurrection of the 'American Cinematic Universe' largely, it seems, by portraying Chinese communists as baddies on screen. 'Breaking out of our cultural malaise will require the studios to wake up and choose America,' he added. Cultural warfare In many ways, it is a rekindling of cinema as cultural warfare in a way not seen since the Cold War. Alongside Atlas Shrugged, other slated projects include films about the evacuation of the World Trade Center on 9/11 and the assassination of Iran's Gen Qasem Soleimani, as well as The Greatest Game, a thriller spy series that 'lays bare China's plans to replace the United States as the dominant global power'. Sankar points to examples of Chinese-ordered censorship and the fact that Disney's Mulan was filmed in Xinjiang as evidence of Beijing's growing sway over Hollywood. 'The statement is that Hollywood's been captured by a foreign adversary and there's some good evidence there,' says Dr Dominic Lees, associate professor of film-making at Reading University. Another strain of the Founders Films philosophy is rooted in the culture wars. The new studio wants to bring an injection of unashamedly conservative thinking to an industry that has long been dominated by liberals. 'What they are taking a punt on is that there is a movie-going market for films that counter what they're calling a Left-wing agenda,' adds Lees. It builds on growing criticism of Hollywood from the Right, with criticism levelled at studios for introducing heavy-handed progressive politics into films or removing anything deemed offensive. Disney has found itself at the centre of this controversy, with critics blaming the House of Mouse's political leanings for a string of recent flops, including this year's live-action reboot of Snow White, starring Rachel Zegler. Disney itself has admitted that there might be a potential 'misalignment' between the films it is making and what consumers want after splurging almost $1bn (£740m) on a string of box office failures in 2023, while boss Bob Iger has outlined plans to cut the studio's output and refocus on quality. Meanwhile, Gina Carano, the actress who was dropped from Star Wars series The Mandalorian in 2021 over her political posts on social media, is suing Disney and Lucasfilm for wrongful termination and discrimination in a lawsuit backed by Elon Musk. Carano was sacked for a post on Instagram that equated the persecution of Jews by the Nazis to the persecution of Republicans in the US. Tinsel Town takeover There are already signs that conservative ideology is gaining commercial traction in Hollywood. Am I Racist?, a Borat-style mockumentary lampooning the diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) movement, became the highest-grossing documentary of 2024 after pulling in more than $12m at the box office on a budget of just $3m. Reagan, a biopic starring Dennis Quaid as the former US president, grossed $30m last year despite scathing reviews from critics. The streaming era has also opened up an opportunity for what once would have been niche sub-genres to break out and find their audience. Christian cinema, for example, has made something of a resurgence at the US box office in recent years thanks to hits such as The King of Kings and The Chosen, a multi-series drama about the life of Jesus. In one week earlier this year, three of the top 10 US box office spots were faith-based titles. Tinsel Town's rightward shift is just one part of a broader assault on the US media heralded by Trump, who earlier this year appointed Sylvester Stallone, Mel Gibson and Jon Voight as 'special ambassadors' to Hollywood, tasked with reversing what he deems to have been a period of decline. Meanwhile, controversy is growing around an $8bn takeover of Hollywood giant Paramount by Skydance, the US media group run by David Ellison, which was approved this week. Paramount's recent decision to reach a $16m settlement with Trump for a lawsuit filed against its broadcaster CBS has been widely condemned as an effort to make concessions to the president. This disquiet was fuelled by CBS's shock decision last week to cancel The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, just days after the long-serving host branded the settlement a 'big, fat bribe'. Trump has since poured more fuel on the fire after claiming Skydance had promised to give him $20m worth of free advertising and programming in a side deal. Democrat senators have opened an investigation into potential corruption. The president's sway over the Paramount deal suggests he could exert pressure over the studio's output too. It is fuelling concerns about the threat to freedom of expression across the Atlantic. DeGroote describes Trump as 'lacerating the bit of the media universe which he doesn't like', adding: 'It's a dual pincer movement. You're going after the politicians, but you're also going after the media platforms.' Patrick Spence, the TV producer behind Mr Bates vs The Post Office and The Hack, an upcoming drama about the phone hacking scandal, says: 'It feels like we're living in a Batman movie because the villains are so cartoon-like. But the trouble is it's real. It's actually happening in front of us.' Ultimately, however, a Right-wing takeover of Hollywood will depend on making hits. Lees casts doubt on whether the gun-toting style of propaganda film-making proposed by Founders Films will be effective. 'My sense is that these guys at the moment are not very culturally sophisticated,' Lees says. 'If they want to really make an impact it's going to be how they subvert the different existing genres.'
Daily Mail
2 hours ago
- Daily Mail
The Lylas: Trailer, certificate and where to watch
The sisters of chart sensation Bruno Mars try to take the world by storm 2013
