Despacito, 1 Night and the other contenders for 2017's song of the summer
Luis Fonsi, Daddy Yankee, Despacito (Remix Audio) ft Justin Bieber
If we were assessing the Song of the Summer on chart success alone, Despacito would have won it. This reggaeton behemoth is saturating airwaves around the world: it’s topped the charts in 45 countries across Europe, North and Latin America, where it has become the most-rotated song in history. After winning more than 4.6 billion streams on Spotify, the streaming service has just declared it the most streamed song in history.
In short: no Spanish-language song has been as popular in the US since that template of incomprehensible dance hits, The Macarena, in 1996.
The work of Puerto Rican’s Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee, Despacito has followed the time-honoured successful summer song practice of being released in January (a trick that worked for Sia’s Cheap Thrills last year and Blurred Lines, which came out in March 2013) and has doubled its chances of success by releasing a remix with Justin Bieber to enchant the English-speaking world. Bieber, it should be noted, can’t actually perform the Spanish lines live – he genuinely replaces them with the word “Dorito”.
Lorde, Green Light
Lorde’s comeback single sated those fans hungry for new material from the New Zealand pop prodigy, but didn’t really reach the place it deserved in the charts. A complex, intricate piano belter about the melancholic freedom experienced after a breakup, Green Light’s key change and unusual percussion hasn’t made it an obvious summer smash – pop’s Midas-like producer Max Martin even turned his nose up at it.
However, after topping and tailing her Glastonbury set with a resplendent rendition of it, Green Light has the potential to earn summer song credibility, especially after the release of second album Melodrama in June.
Ed Sheeran, Shape of You
After a year of social media and recording industry absence from manning his record-breaking hit factory, Ed Sheeran returned to the pop ether with two new songs on 6 January, Castle on the Hill and Shape of You. Six months later, Shape of You has become the third streamed song ever and been performed during Sheeran’s headline Glastonbury slot.
A contemporary update on Sheeran’s trademark acoustic-guitar, rapid-fire verse pattern, Shape of You features a tropical house top line and received a welcome boost after grime star Stormzy offered a guest verse during Sheeran’s Brit Awards performance in February. All things considered, the song’s probably outlasted the short-lived lust that inspired it in the first place.
Carly Rae Jepsen, Cut to the Feeling
Carly Rae “Jeppo” Jepsen is no stranger to the summer smash. Indeed, her breakthrough hit, Call Me Maybe, dominated the top of the international charts in June 2012 – nearly a year after it was first released. Cut to the Feeling was quietly released in May, alongside Ballerina, the Canadian-French film whose soundtrack it accompanies.
Euphoric and commanding, Cut to the Feeling is a classic of the Jeppo genre. It’s yet to reach the charts, but the music press has united with Jepsen’s fans in naming it one of the best songs of the year so far. Should a full video release come in the next few weeks, it may win the airwaves before the end of September.
Calvin Harris, Slide ft Frank Ocean, Migos
This time last year, Calvin Harris was busy deleting all evidence of his and Taylor Swift’s relationship from the Internet while taking break-up comfort in Rihanna’s success with This is What You Came For, the song he wrote with his ex-girlfriend. She, meanwhile, was embarking upon a bizarrely public dalliance with Tom Hiddleston.
What a difference 12 months makes. In May, while Swift maintained her radio – and social media – silence, Harris announced he had made an album. The ambitiously titled Funk Wav Bounces Vol 1, features Snoop Dogg, Nicki Minaj, Frank Ocean, Kehlani, Future and Swift’s long-term nemesis Katy Perry and is stacked full of summery hits. The most successful sundowner so far, however, has been Slide, which is roundly agreed to be the kind of irrepressible banger everybody wished Ocean had delivered on his sophomore album, Blonde, in 2016.
I’m The One, DJ Khaled
Bieber doesn’t just spend his summer giving underwhelming performances to large crowds in outdoor venues, you know. The Canadian has doubled his chances of dominating the seasonal charts race (let’s never forget the time he urged his fans to get The Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Choir’s charity single to Christmas Number One over him) by collaborating with music mogul and Snapchat superstar DJ Khaled.
I’m The One also features the talents of rappers Quavo and Chance the Rapper in a four-prong ode to women who have captured their fidelity thanks to their skills in applying expensive make-up and attracting rich musicians. Just try and not dance to it.
Mura Masa ft Charli XCX, 1 Night
Emerging London producer and Charli XCX released this paean to one night stands in March, where, through Soundcloud and later, YouTube, it reached enough of an audience to make significant impact at BBC Radio One’s Big Weekend in May. Charli XCX has long proven her collaborations can a summer smash make: I Love It, the song she wrote for Swedish duo Icona Pop, dominated the Scandinavian charts in May 2012 before reaching number one in the UK 13 months later, and Fancy, which she wrote and featured on for Iggy Azalea, was named Billboards Song of the Summer in 2014.
With the cold resonance of a steel drum beat and the infectious “Do you wanna?” refrain, 1 Night has the trappings of a summer smash. Let’s see what happens when Mura Masa’s anticipated debut album drops on 14 July.
Liam Payne, Get Low
History would attest that claiming a song to be “the definition of a summer song” is a sure-fire way to guarantee it lingers around number 42 in the charts. However, Zedd, the moniker of German producer Anton Zaslavski, is clearly feeling confident in the second solo release from former One Direction member Liam Payne, and the cover art for the pair’s single features pink palm trees for good measure.
Get Low combines sparse, echoing synths with high-reverb fingerclicks with a catchy chorus. It's not a bad contender for song of the summer, but it is somewhat lacking in originality.
Haim, Want You Back
When Californian sisters Haim released Want You Back in April, it instantly sounded like a classic. That’s partially because its twanging guitars and swaggering chorus makes it a natural bedfellow to songs such as Falling and The Wire, which saw them crowned the BBC Sound of 2013. Want You Back shamelessly recalls the summery shimmer of Don McLean and is full of enough retro-sounding angst to be a rejected track on a parallel version of Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours.
It’s been streamed 11.5 million times on Spotify, which isn’t bad, but with the release of their second album, Something To Tell You, this week and a surprise show in London off the back of their Glastonbury gig, Want You Back may take the summer by lovelorn storm yet.
Skepta, Hypocrisy
In early July the Mercury Prize winner made headlines with the quiet release of his new track, Hypocrisy, thanks to the line: “Just came back from the Ivors/And look at what we collected. The MBE got rejected/I'm not trying to be accepted”.
The Cabinet Office doesn’t comment on who’s turned down official offers, so we’ll never know the background to the lyric, but the song has earned nearly quarter of a million spins on Spotify in four days, and has the potential to capture the airwaves as London’s heatwave continues to burn.
Little Mix, Power
Little Mix’s fans have been charmingly beguiled by the inclusion of nonsensical chant “Motorbike, motorbike, motorbike” in their anthem Power since it appeared on album Glory Days in November. These became marginally more logical when Power was released as a single, with an accompanying video that portrayed the X Factor winners as a Manhattan-based bike gang.
The pop-house tune was helped into the charts by Stormzy (who, along with his verses for Ed Sheeran and the Grenfell Tower charity single Bridge over Troubled Water, rivals Bieber for summer song features), who lent the gold-plated line: “You can be a woman and a boss and wear the trousers at the same time”.
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