The Mix: The Songs Of The Summer

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To celebrate the official start of summer, we've brought back our Songs Of The Summer mix. Though it may be too soon to definitively name 2018's Song of the Summer, we've added to the mix a few songs that are well-positioned to take the crown this year. Give those new earworms a spin alongside summertime hits from the past five decades via our Spotify playlist.

People have funny ways of describing hit pop songs. A song is "infectious," an "earworm." It "gets under your skin." It's not summer without little annoyances — sunburn, mosquito bites, sweat — just as it's not summer without the Song of the Summer. We're talking about a song (or two, or three) that explodes and quickly permeates pop culture. It runs rampant up and down your radio dial, around your parties and deep in your brain. Perhaps this is why such pop music is described in terms usually reserved for the plague.

The songs that win the summer season spread so fast and far because they work. They're fun to sing. The hooks are catchy. They speak to something larger than our tastes, fulfilling a collective need for music that's as danceable as it is escapist as it is a shared experience. This happens every year. We here at NPR Music wondered what we might discover when we put all the Songs of the Summers of the past 50 years or so in one place. What story would they tell us?

Billboard has compiled lists of the Top 10 charting Songs of the Summer since 1985, so figuring those was easy. For the summers of 1962 through 1984, we looked through the June-August Billboard charts, taking note of which songs were on the charts the longest, in any position, and which had staying power at No. 1. It wasn't a perfect science, but we made our best educated decisions about which songs once ruled the radio and the cash registers.

Some interesting patterns pop up when you consider the songs listed below. The sound of popular music has changed the most, as the top summer hits go from surf rock in the early 1960s through British and then American rock 'n' roll, disco, power ballads, R&B, boy bands and hip-hop. Recently, anthemic dance pop has taken over, with songs that seem louder and more bombastic than ever (even if hits today tend to be slower in tempo). And there's something in the songs' messages — be it that breakups suck, or that summer is the best time to be carefree, or that dancing is our path to freedom — that tells us what cultural values seeped into (or out of) music in a given year.

Songs In This Mix:

2018: Childish Gambino, "This Is America"

2018: Cardi B, "I Like It (Feat. Bad Bunny, J Balvin)"

2018: Drake, "Nice For What"

2018: Zedd, Maren Morris & Grey, "The Middle"

2018: BTS, "FAKE LOVE"

2018: Calvin Harris with Dua Lipa, "One Kiss"