As summer officially comes to a close, the debate about which song best represents the season from this year rages on.
Something that sets summer apart from other seasons has always been its place with regard to pop culture and nostalgia. Vacations, hot weather and the chance to disconnect from the stress of school for a few months; what is there not to like?
So it is no wonder we like to look back on each year’s summer and associate it with a particular song, something that comes on and immediately are taken back to whatever memory or memories you have from that time period.
The MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs) were held on Sept. 11, and one of the organization’s categories since 2013 has been “Song of Summer.”
In my view, MTV had an amazing crop of picks to choose from for this year’s “Song of Summer.”
Many will look back on the summer of 2024 with Charli XCX’s electropop album “Brat” in mind, with some even proclaiming the season as “Brat Summer.”
Any of the hits from the album would have served well in the category, and a remix of a track on the album’s deluxe edition “Guess” featuring Billie Eilish was actually nominated this year.
Additionally, MTV nominated Eilish’s “BIRDS OF A FEATHER,” a heartwarming track about enduring love off her third studio album “Hit Me Hard and Soft,” another good choice.
Another breakout hit from the summer was Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us,” a diss track aimed toward Toronto-based rapper Drake.
I will not relitigate the entire beef in this article, but I think it is safe to say Lamar came out of the feud as the victor. He dropped several diss tracks over the course of the feud, but “Not Like Us” was the real nail in the coffin among much of the public’s view.
The song’s key message is that Drake and his camp are not comparable to people like Lamar who are firmly embedded in hip-hop’s culture and like many of the legends in the West Coast scene more specifically.
You truly could not escape hearing that addicting opening instrumental for quite some time during the summer.
All of this is to say that “Not Like Us,” would have been my pick for the category this year, and it would not be particularly close.
However, disappointingly, MTV picked “Fortnight” by Taylor Swift and Post Malone as the “Song of Summer.”
I could not believe the decision at first, and I would argue it was the worst they could have made if not for “Houdini” by Eminem also being a nominee.
MTV made it rather clear with the choice that they value inoffensive radio-friendly hits by pop stars like Swift much more than cultural impact.
The song was arguably one of the more listenable tracks from Swift’s album “The Tortured Poets Department,” which saw her songwriting take a turn for the worse. The album received middling scores from aggregators like Metacritic which dished out a 76/100, and a 6.6/10 from Pitchfork which is honestly more generous than I would give.
It just was not a good album, and I know it is the prerogative of awards shows to maximize popularity with rabid fanbases like Swift’s, but that does not make it fair or just.
Maybe if Lamar had not referred to Drake as a “certified pedophile” in “Not Like Us,” he would have had a better shot, but whitewashing the mainstream music scene is not the way to go here. It is not the ‘70s anymore when radio ruled all; the public has much more agency nowadays in determining what becomes popular, and if we choose a raunchy, hard-hitting diss track like Lamar’s, then that should be respected.
Even if the judges could not stomach elevating a diss track to a winning spot, they still could have gone with something with more staying power like “Too Sweet” by Hozier, “Please Please Please” by Sabrina Carpenter or “Good Luck, Babe!” by Chappell Roan.
I think any one of these songs would come up in discussions with an average person when you talk about the song of the summer, but I am almost certain “Fortnight” would not be brought up by anyone outside of die-hard Swifties.
I suppose this is all just another reminder that awards shows are increasingly out of touch and their cultural prominence is fading but hey, at least the performances are cool!
Nathan Hope can be contacted at
nhope@kscequinox.com
