What is 2024's song of the summer?

Summer has officially begun, the year is halfway through, and that means it's time to declare once and for all: what is 2024's song of the summer?

Today on Commotion, music experts Suzy Exposito, Rosie Long Decter and Carl Wilson join the Group Chat to deliver their Mid-Year Music Report. They highlight which artists have held our attention in a highly competitive year for pop releases, and which single deserves to be crowned song of the summer.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player.

Elamin: We're going to talk about the ever-present competition to be crowned song of the summer. These are the songs you're just going to hear everywhere that you go for the next few months, and they're the ones that we're going to be listening to years from now and go, "That's what the summer of 2024 was like." Rosie, I'm going to start with your pick, Shaboozey's A Bar Song (Tipsy). Why is this your song of the summer?

Rosie: For me, this is the song of the summer because I think summer also is, as much as it's about fun and getting loose, I think it's got a little bit of melancholy to it. And I like that this song has a melancholy to it, you know? It's about having fun, but it's also about like, life is hard and there's a lot of reasons why we need to go out and blow off steam. That really hits for me; this feels like a really vibrant twist on country music, and it's working for me.

Elamin: Speaking of blowing off steam: Suzy, your pick is Charli XCX's The girl, so confusing version with lorde. I've played this song maybe a million times in the last week. Let's work it out on the remix, dude. Do you want to talk about why that's your pick?

Suzy: I do love it when people get vulnerable at the club, and I think that's what brat really symbolizes for me. Charli's new album is just about getting messy with your feelings at the club. This song is beautiful because Charli and Lorde, they're tackling an issue that arises not just interpersonally between us mortals, but you have a moment when so many women are duking it out on the charts right now.

And I know that girl hate and competition between women is frowned upon and understood as anti-feminist, but it's inevitable in an industry where you have to compete commercially. That's just what the job is. So for Charli and Lorde to sit with these feelings — Charli expressing her insecurity over a sick beat about being compared to Lorde, who in turn is just like, "Girl, I was spiraling. I wasn't competing with you" — that's real. I really like the therapeutic approach.

Elamin: I like the therapeutic approach, too, because when Girl, so confusing, the original version, came out, there was all this internet speculation of who's this song about? And then very quickly, the Charli XCX subreddit was like, "It's about Lorde." And then sure enough, a few days later we have this remix, where they do work it out. Sometimes people do work it out, as opposed to when they don't.

Carl, I gotta say, Kendrick Lamar is powered by hate. This man hates Drake so much, it is making him age backwards. It's just incredible to me. What do you think it is about this song, Not Like Us, that has given it this longevity? Because its moment has lasted for quite a while at this point.

Carl: I mean, partly it's just that for a dense, unpleasant diss track, it has hooks. It slaps. But I think the other thing is that beef — although it was kind of ugly to witness and problematic on a bunch of levels — it was a moment. It'll be something that we remember about this year in music, and this song has stood for the fact that we went through, as a pop audience, a collective experience.

And I think there's something deeper, too. Hip-hop is kind of at a crossroads right now. After being dominant for 20 years, it's kind of unclear where it's going next. And these are two of the biggest figures of the past phase of hip-hop, kind of wrestling with what rap is all about. This song is really about who's in the community, what are our values, what matters, who's vouching for you, you know? So I think there's a lot going on, as odd a summer song as it is.

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Panel produced by Stuart Berman.