It’s been 266 days since Vulture, in a surprise move, skipped over the divisive work of the Black Eyed Peas to crown Drake’s “Best I Ever Had” 2009’s Song of the Summer. That was dramatic, right?! Well, now the competition begins anew. There are still a few weeks to go before Memorial Day, but it’s always a good idea to get a head start on scanning the charts, airwaves, and blogs for that transcendent summer anthem — the one song which, when you hear it again in fifteen years, will immediately bring you back to the summer of 2010, when you did [romantic/moderately risqué thing X] with [awesome person Y] at [unexpected/classic location Z]. So, here we go!
This year, since even Andy Rooney knows the music industry is fragmented, we’re taking a new tack. Instead of entering every contender into general competition right away, the Song of the Summer field will be broken out into its natural divisions — Laid-back Radio Country, Car-Stereo Hip-Hop, Steamrolling Inescapable Pop, etc. (Don’t worry, category names are still being fine-tuned.) From there, an overall champ will eventually emerge. First up: the current contenders for the Hipster Cookout Song of the Summer. What are the top tracks you can reasonably expect to hear at every gathering of young, Pitchfork-conscious people in Brooklyn from now until September?
This year, since even Andy Rooney knows the music industry is fragmented, we’re taking a new tack. Instead of entering every contender into general competition right away, the Song of the Summer field will be broken out into its natural divisions — Laid-back Radio Country, Car-Stereo Hip-Hop, Steamrolling Inescapable Pop, etc. (Don’t worry, category names are still being fine-tuned.) From there, an overall champ will eventually emerge. First up: the current contenders for the Hipster Cookout Song of the Summer. What are the top tracks you can reasonably expect to hear at every gathering of young, Pitchfork-conscious people in Brooklyn from now until September?
2. Yeasayer, “O.N.E.”
This futuristic funk workout is actually a bum-out breakup song (sample lyrics: “it’s hard having fun / it’s much easier said than it’s done”), although listeners will surely be far too busy getting the hell down to pay attention to boring stuff like words.
