By Gavin Kentch
A journalist sitting down to write about The Song Of The Summer for the year 2025 CE, the third year of the XXXIII Olympiad, immediately encounters a problem: There is not, in fact, a single clear candidate for this year’s estival anthem.
“For the first time in a long while, the ubiquitous Summer Banger has failed to really materialise,” The Independent opined last week. Stereogum readers recently voted the song of the summer to be “Elderberry Wine,” by Wednesday, which is, uh, a choice; you cannot deny that that this literally a song that was literally released this summer. The Associated Press resorted to a categorized preview — “song of the summer for the chronically online,” “for the girls and all those who love them,” “for singles ready to mingle this summer,” etc. — which hit a lot of marks but also attested to the heterogeneous nature of this year’s cultural poetics.
[Read more: You Better Not Kill the Groove: USST Athletes Share their Personal Song of the Summer (from 2024)]
By the numbers, for what it is worth, the clear winner this year is, regrettably, “Ordinary,” Alex Warren’s inescapable, bland yet keening dirge that lands with all the emotional subtlety of a sledgehammer. It is currently no. 1 on the Billboard Songs of the Summer chart, a purely mathematical accounting of which songs are played the most between Memorial Day and Labor Day; it was no. 1 last week, and has likely occupied that spot for the lion’s share of the summer, if its ubiquity on commercial pop radio is any indication.
But “Ordinary” cannot be the song of the summer, because it is bland, mid at best, and I don’t like it it simply does not sound in the appropriate register. Last year, for perspective, brought us the simultaneous aristeia of Sabrina Carpenter, Chappell Roan, and Charli xcx, a cornucopia of carefree riches.
“Ordinary,” by contrast, sucks “doesn’t sound bright and summery at all,” The Independent noted: “This is music suited to a Lloyds TSB [viz., a bank] advert, without the cultural cachet of an ‘Espresso’ or ‘Poker Face.’” Slate, meanwhile, called the song “a perfectly cromulent slurry of devotional pop,” which is more charitable than I would have been. And the wags over at Todd in the Shadows authored an all-timer of a review rife with lines eminently more memorable than anything in the underlying song. Exhibit A: “If God loves you so much, why would he let you write that lyric?”
(If you would like to take your cultural pronouncements from an elder millennial thousands of miles removed from the centers of American culture, my pick for a song of the summer this year, fwiw, as the term is reasonably understood, is probably either “Headphones On,” by Addison Rae, or “Love Me Not,” by Ravyn Lenae. Or Sabrina Carpenter, “Manchild.” Or even “Pink Pony Club” or “Golden” (Chappell Roan and KPop Demon Hunters soundtrack, respectively), if we overlook the inconvenient fact that they were released too long ago and too recently, respectively. Anyway, it would have to be something in that genre if you are looking for your classic bubbly summer soundtrack.)
The skiers I surveyed for this year’s roundup are largely not looking for such content, it appears. “Too Easy,” by Connor Price and Nic D, is probably the closest this list comes to a classic song of the summer, and even that is a stretch. I don’t have a unified theory for why choosing to toil in an obscure, non-summer sport is correlated with preferring more obscure, non-summery music, but I suspect there is something to that
Without further ado, here’s what your favorite skiers are listening to this summer. Thank you to all athletes for their time. Special shoutout to John Steel Hagenbuch for his enthusiastic advocacy on behalf of local favorite The Stripers, whose songs are interesting and good. Alex Warren could never.
Songs are listed in random order. Nothing personal to the athletes whom I didn’t contact this year; I just wanted to get some new voices in the mix.
Jack Lange: Matchbox Twenty, “3AM”
Michael Earnhart: Kenny Rogers and the First Edition, “Just Dropped In (to see what condition my condition was in)”
Zanden McMullen: KBong, “Open my Eyes”
Jessie Diggins: Connor Price and Nic D, “Too Easy”
Julia Kern: Mumford & Sons, “Awake My Soul”
Murphy Kimball: Drake, “Under Ground Kings”; Tame Impala, “End of Summer”; Fleetwood Mac, “Rhiannon” [current streams on Spotify: over 546 million]
John Steel Hagenbuch: “A lot of Arcy Drive and the Stripers, which is a Dartmouth band comprised of some of my best friends. Song of the summer is definitely Summer Street by the Stripers.” [current streams on Spotify: 13,257]
Zak Ketterson: “A lot of Radiohead, rediscovered how good they are. One I really like is ‘No Surprises.’”
Novie McCabe: Lorde, “Buzzcut Season”
Luke Jager: Pops, “Monkey Ate My Mango”
Sydney Palmer-Leger: Carpetman, “You Will Never Know It”
Jack Young: “Every time it hits about 85 degrees outside I put on 1865 (96 degrees in the shade) by third world. We have had an unfortunate amount of those days in the VT this summer, so I guess this is the song!
“An honorable mention for me would be 40oz to Freedom by Sublime. In a way the song is about persevering in the face of adversity… right…?
“To get something on the board that was released this year, I really liked Bitin’ List from Tyler Childers’ new album.”
Rosie Brennan: “I keep listening to something good by alt-j which is not at all new or trendy…no particular reason but I have had to look hard for something good many days so maybe it reminds me to do so.”
Kate Oldham: “I’m a big fan of a Spotify algorithm so almost all my playlists are continually updating, my country mix being my most frequent listen 🤠 it’s full of 90s country, folk and bluegrass mostly. But, my outlier of late is Don’t Leave Me This Way by Thelma Houston when I want to change it up and disco on the way to practice. I don’t know if I could pick a single song of the summer but that one’s fun!”
Ben Ogden: Dropkick Murphys, “Tessie” [“Go Sox,” added the native of Landgrove, Vermont, taking this submission from 9 out of 10 New Englands up to a full 10/10]
You’re reading this on Nordic Insights, one man’s labor of love dedicated to publicizing American skiing. We started with nothing and now we’re going to the Olympics. You can read more about our first three years here, and donate to the Olympics fund here. Thank you for consideration, and, especially, for reading.
