Summer 2025: Why The Year's Most-Streamed Chart-Topper Can't Fill The Void Left By Last Year's Mega Hits

The Paradox Of Numbers Without Cultural Moment

With 940 million Spotify streams, Alex Warren’s “Ordinary” technically claims the crown as 2025’s summer anthem. Billboard’s Songs of the Summer chart confirms it sits at No. 1, calculated from streaming, sales, and radio airplay metrics. Yet behind this statistical victory lies an uncomfortable reality: the music industry and critics are struggling to crown a true song of the summer—a track that defines the cultural zeitgeist beyond raw numbers.

The disconnect reveals itself starkly when examining Billboard’s top 10 summer songs. Only five of the ten were actually released in 2025. The remainder are holdovers from 2024, with Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars’ “Die with a Smile” and the Kendrick Lamar and SZA collaboration “Luther” continuing their chart dominance months after release. This lingering presence of 2024’s hits isn’t just a footnote—it’s central to understanding why critics say this summer lacks a defining moment.

The Streaming Algorithm Effect: Longevity Over Virality

What’s changed between this summer and 2024? Stephen Thompson from NPR identified a key culprit: streaming algorithms and radio airplay mechanics that keep songs circulating “for what feels like an eternity.” Last year’s winners—Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso,” Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy),” Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us”—possessed infectious energy and immediate catchiness. They felt like natural phenomena, not carefully engineered chart positions.

By contrast, this summer’s winners lean toward slower, more contemplative territory. Behind “Ordinary,” the next three entries on Billboard’s chart are all Morgan Wallen country ballads—sonically the opposite of a “windows-down beach banger,” as Thompson described the ideal summer song. Even Sabrina Carpenter’s 2025 release “Manchild,” which reached No. 1, failed to replicate the cultural penetration of her 2024 smash hits “Espresso” and “Please Please Please.”

Critics Revolt Against The Numbers

Music critic Chris Molanphy on Slate’s Culture Gabfest podcast bluntly called the song of the summer competition “hazy” and “boring,” positioning 2024 as a vastly superior year for hit music. He framed the problem in two parts: first, last year’s juggernauts refusing to vacate the charts; second, that while a clear victor exists in raw numbers, it’s simply “a snooze of a song.”

This critical skepticism has manifested in competing lists. The Guardian, New York Times, and NME all bypassed the chart-toppers when curating their song of the summer selections. The Guardian’s journalists championed PinkPantheress’s “Illegal,” Haim’s “Relationships,” and Addison Rae’s “Headphones On”—none of which crack the commercial top 10. The New York Times consulted ten “tastemakers” ranging from actor Jeff Goldblum to political figure Zohran Mamdani, producing a list featuring Bieber’s “Daisies” and Laufey’s “Lover Girl” with zero overlap to Billboard’s rankings.

The Missing Breakthrough Moment

Major label releases from Justin Bieber, The Weeknd, and Miley Cyrus failed to generate genuine smash status this summer. Sam Wolfson from The Guardian suggested that perhaps 2025 simply has no song of the summer—at least not in the way previous years did. That cultural consensus, that one track everyone remembers, seems absent.

What this moment reveals is how streaming has fundamentally altered music consumption and chart mechanics. A song no longer needs to dominate through spontaneous organic enthusiasm. It can persist through algorithmic promotion and radio rotation long after its cultural moment passes. Meanwhile, potential 2025 breakout hits struggle to break through an overcrowded landscape where 2024’s winners refuse to fade.

Whether future New Year’s Eve song celebrations will reflect on 2025’s music landscape as a year without a defining summer anthem remains to be seen, but critics have already cast their verdict: when the chart winner and the cultural favorite diverge this sharply, the algorithms have won—not the music.

By The Numbers

• 940 million: Spotify streams for “Ordinary”
• 5 out of 10: New 2025 releases on Billboard’s top summer songs (compared to 9 out of 10 in 2024)
• 0: Overlap between New York Times critics’ picks and Billboard’s top summer songs