
Song of the summer 2025: writers pick their tracks of the season
This song, sung by a six-woman international K-pop group, begins with an analysis of how malleable English slang is. 'They could describe everything with one single word, you know? / Boba tea, gnarly / Tesla, gnarly / Fried chicken, gnarly,' one member of Katseye sings, the bass thumping every time she says the most versatile descriptive word in the language, signifying intensity, both positive and negative. It's the early 2010s, and we're so back. The song is as maximalist as can be, similar to Skrillex's 2011 Bangarang or Kesha's 2010 hit TiK ToK. The music video, in which the group assembles a grotesque sandwich, calls back to 2010's Telephone, when Lady Gaga does the same. The song is fun and rowdy. It speeds forward, apt for TikTok (the app), where it first gained popularity with a distinctive, jerky dance. If you like Gnarly, I would suggest going in search of other songs by one of the song's writers, Alice Longyu Gao. Rich Bitch Juice and 100 Boyfriends feature the same mix of heavy bass and saccharine, electrified vocals and instrumentation. Blake Montgomery
Since squishing a NOW! compilation's worth of ideas into three minutes on her solo single Angel of My Dreams, Jade has backed up what Little Mixologists always suspected – that she knows pop as if she has an MA in Bangers. Ahead of the release of her debut album That's Showbiz, Baby!, there's something invitingly scrappy to the way she's dovetailed from brash EDM to orgasmic disco, discarding cheap wigs and Jade-branded buttplugs in her wake. (To my mind, the only other pop act exploring genre this boldly is Sabrina Carpenter, who is something like a spiritual sibling to Jade as well as her stylistic opposite.) Plastic Box bottles a certain Scandinavian strain of sweet melancholy, with Jade playing the jilted lover over seductive electro-pop. Co-producers Grades and Oscar Görres, the latter of whom helmed most of Troye Sivan's slick Something to Give Each Other, hug her voice with rosy synths and a chorus that explodes in a cloud of confetti. It's an end of summer party that's chicer than SSENSE – and despite Jade's antics that made her so much fun to follow, Plastic Box proves that she's just as magnetic when she strips them away. Owen Myers
To me, summer feels like going at terminal velocity down a waterslide: an unstoppable blur that before you know it has spat you out in the run-out pool of autumn, dazed and blinking. PinkPantheress's new 20-minute, 30-second mixtape Fancy That feels the same way, a rush of UK dance music history – heavy with samples of Basement Jaxx and Underworld and nods to Fatboy Slim and Groove Armada – guided by a flirt laying down the law in girlish RP. Illegal is the only time Pink's grip loosens, thanks to a hero dose of THC that leaves her tangled in lust, paranoia and shame. Between the reality-obliterating synth strobes, her sensory production makes you feel all the freedom and frustration of being high, close breaths and screams flickering through the slipstream. Laura Snapes
There are plenty of songs of the summer about falling in love or partying or breaking up or going for a long, gorgeous drive, but there are hardly enough songs for summer lethargy. When the mercury hits 90 degrees, all my friends go insane, my technology stops working, and I start napping for at least one hour a day. Enter commie bf, a blunt buzzsaw of a song on which forty winks singer Cilia Catello yells that 'everyone and everything makes my ears ring' right before she and her bandmates unleash a maelstrom of nasty, dementedly catchy punk-pop. This is a funny, and fun, and ferocious track – loud and unruly, but so intensely catchy that even the guitar-music-averse among us would have to admire its moxie. Catello's sheer frustration rings through every second of the song, enough to shake you from that heatwave-induced stupor and get your ass back into gear, no matter how sweaty and malcontent you may be. Shaad D'Souza
While pop fans fret about there not being a good enough song of the summer this year, the UK has gone ahead and anointed its choice anyway. MK's Dior is now at No 1 in the UK charts, standard behaviour for a country whose inhabitants need only the faintest hint of a 4/4 pop-dance beat on a temperate day to crack open a tinned cocktail at 11am and go 'wheeeeey' with arms stretched wide. US producer MK, AKA Marc Kinchen, has been around since the early 90s (he's behind the still-ubiquitous Push the Feeling On) and therefore brings a level of craft to bear on his productions that puts them into a different league to all other mirrored-wall nightclub fodder. 2017's 17 still shines like the white walls and high-tensile glass of an Ibizan villa; 2023's Asking is as good as build-and-drop dance gets. 2025's offering Dior is more coiled and sensual than those tracks, with a really dramatic delayed drop: silence and Chrystal's a cappella vocal fill the space where you expect the beat, creating a simple but spine-tingling effect. The high fashion references meanwhile make it a sort of sequel to 2023's equivalent dance-pop song of the summer, Cassö's Prada. Ben Beaumont-Thomas
Best efforts notwithstanding, the vibes aren't great this summer. The news is terrible, the AI ominous, the culture still in an extended hangover from last year's Espresso buzz and Brat bumps. There is no obvious song of the summer – the charts are basically tracks from 2024 or Morgan Wallen (though you wouldn't know it in godless New York); Charli xcx basically headlined Glastonbury; people are too busy arguing over Sabrina Carpenter's album cover to remember her Espresso follow-up Manchild. In this muggy malaise, I've been stuck on Haim's Relationships – the LA trio's best pop song to date, a bright, deceptively airy anthem for being fucking over it. Lyrically, this lead single off the sisters' aspirationally titled fourth album I Quit describes the messy end of some ill-defined entanglement. But its spare, intoxicating production – simple piano chords, ambling bass, synths glimmering like barlights at 9pm dusk – evokes a more general, potent summer ennui. I normally want the bpm up when it's hot, but this summer, I've been circling blocks to Danielle's dreamy falsetto, ascending with her rhetorical questions – fucking relationships, don't they end up all the same? – and then crashing back to earth with her 'when there's no one else to blame'. Feelings? In this strung-out summer? Try me next year. Adrian Horton
The most joyous sounding song of this summer addresses depression, numbness and the futility of it all. No Joy, by the tuneful New Zealand quartet the Beths, provides an ideal object lesson in the thrill of mixed messages in pop. The music couldn't feel more summery or light, fired by bouncy powerpop chords and chirpy backup vocals. The video, set in a candy-colored child's playroom, follows suit, with lead singer/writer Elizabeth Stokes deadpanning her way through lyrics like: 'All my pleasures, guilty / Clean slate looking filthy' and 'I feel nothing,' all while her bandmates smile with satirically exaggerated pleasure. It's impossible to keep a straight face while watching or listening to it, despite the fact that the numbness Stokes reports in her words reflects something sadly real. The lyrics chronicle her experience on the dulling SSRI drug she has used to deal with her depression. True as that may be for her, the song winds up giving the opposite feeling to the listener. When she sings 'no joy' over and over we feel nothing but – a twist that could make this the most ironic song of this summer, as well as the most irresistible. Jim Farber
Welcome to sombr season. Summer '25 seems to have given us a new star, and he's Shane Boose – otherwise known by his melancholy moniker, sombr. A native of New York's bustling Lower East Side, at just 19 he has effectively launched his mainstream career with a series of chart-topping singles which flaunts the artist's emotional, guitar-propelled lyrics. Yes you read that right, the new generation has officially rediscovered actual instruments, with the teenage artist seemingly channelling alt-rock acts like Arctic Monkeys and Radiohead, the latter of whom he's cited as a major influence. Songs like We Never Dated flaunt brutally honest lyrics accented by guitar-picking led it to become an instant breakout upon its late June release, which makes it a no-brainer when it comes to Song of the Summer status. Meanwhile, he's riding high on other explosive singles including Back to Friends, which recently was anointed as the most-streamed song on Spotify's global charts. Rob LeDonne
Without a factory-made earworm to invade our every waking moment, the floor has opened up to a wider selection of artists this summer and, as there always should be in my opinion, a wider selection of vibes to go with it. Songs of the summer are typically characterised by the infectious perk and sweaty overwhelm of mid-afternoon sun but there's another seasonal feeling we all know, as the brightness starts to fade, that also deserves its space. Boston-born singer Khamari knows it too and in delicate downer Head in a Jar, he captures a brand of summery sadness that's also rather seductive, a deliberate dive into dark feelings that's as refreshing as an early evening breeze. It's a song about being pushed away from the centre of someone's life, forced to watch from a distance instead and, with a voice that has rightly earned comparisons to the mostly awol Frank Ocean, Khamari pierces right through. He's quietly been gaining buzz since his similarly reflective 2020 EP Eldorado and this one deserves to vault him from the outside in. Benjamin Lee
You know you're in the right party if someone throws down this tune. The Chilean-German firebrand Matías Aguayo returned in May with a subversive dancefloor heater that has been building in notoriety over the subsequent months. It's sung in Spanish but translates to, Aguayo says: 'walking through the city on hot summer nights looking for the perfect dancefloor'. But it's also a mission statement, longing for 'revolutions in music and dreams in community' away from homogenisation, social media likes and solely facing the DJ booth. In the track, Aguayo remembers the freewheeling days of YouTube rips where you could hear 'raw, primitive and direct music' from, say, a Syrian wedding or Angolan teenagers dancing on the streets – references for El Internet's own jittery, restless rhythm and also his live DJ sets, where he sings and dances inside a circle in the audience, inviting onlookers to move freely with him and let loose. It's lithe, gonzo techno for sticky evenings in search of catharsis and connection. Kate Hutchinson
Taken from London-based polymath Tom Rasmussen's High Wire, a remixed and reimagined version of last year's excellent Live Wire album, new song Gay Bar – not a cover of Electric Six, apols – showcases two of my favourite summer past-times; trashy storytelling and gossip. Who doesn't love a steamy page-turner on the beach, interrupted only by the details of last night's escapades wafting over from the gaggle of pals nearby? On Gay Bar, Rasmussen details three attempts at a night out; the first is interrupted by a pint to the face, and then completely ruined by the gay bar now being a Slug & Lettuce. Night two, meanwhile, involves going to the place where 'Danielle sucked on that MP's armpit', but – shock horror! - it's now a Crossfit gym full of 'muscled up yuppies'. By night three, with hope dwindling, Rasmussen takes a straight friend giving off 'bi vibes' to a busy gay bar. As the song's hi-NRG dance pop ratchets up, you find yourself gripped as the story reaches its climax; will Cassandra get off with anyone? What's Rasmussen doing in the basement? When will the decimation of queer nightlife end? It's a real page-turner. Michael Cragg

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Daily Mail
a minute ago
- Daily Mail
Ashley Tisdale fans can't figure out what she has done to her face during rare sighting in Malibu
Ashley Tisdale fans could not figure out why she looked so different in recent photos as they took to X to discuss her metamorphosis. The images were taken while the High School Musical actress stepped out in Malibu on Monday. The 40-year-old actress was makeup-free with her hair down as she dressed casually in a black T-shirt paired with oversize, blue jean overalls. 'She might just look different because she gave the glam team the day off,' wrote one fan as another chimed in, 'Day off from the paint.' Others thought maybe she had just gotten lip filler: 'Bigger lips, went to doc,' remarked a fan. Several came to her defense adding, 'She looks great with no makeup on, good for her, a natural beauty' and 'Leave her alone, she is perfect.' Ashley Tisdale fans could not figure out why she looked so different in recent photos as they took to X to discuss her metamorphosis. The images were taken while the High School Musical actress stepped out in Malibu on Monday This comes after the mother-of-two — who shares daughters Jupiter Iris, four, and Emerson Clover, 10 months, with her husband Christopher French — made a surprising revelation about her beliefs surrounding aging a few months ago. In late April, she shared a TikTok video of herself with an age filter on her face to make herself appear older. Alongside the video, she explained that she used to think she'd look a lot older at age 40 than how she looks now. 'Almost 40 and still feeling 25,' she wrote in the caption of the clip. Over the video, she said herself with and without the filter represented 'how I thought I'd look at 40 versus how I actually look.' Many fans were left in disbelief as they shared their reactions in the comments. The general consensus was shock that she is 40 as many assumed she was much younger. Earlier this year, Tisdale also revealed why she was drawing back her social media presence and becoming more private with her personal life compared to the past. This comes shortly after the High School Musical alum left her fans in disbelief over her appearance when she made a surprising revelation when she put a filter over herself in a TikTok video In a since-deleted Instagram Story from February, the former Disney star said she felt the need to separate her private life from social media because of her young children. The High School Musical star also blamed digital spaces for being dominated by and cultivating 'judgment' and 'assumptions.' 'As the world is getting loud, I find myself wanting to share less and less,' she shared. 'Maybe it's because I don't feel I can contribute in my positive way when everything feels so negative.' The mother-of-two — who shares daughters Jupiter, three, and Emerson, five months, with husband Christopher French — said her decision was prompted by attempts 'to protect my peace while navigating life with work and kids.' 'I've been loving putting my phone down and being in the moment,' the Disney Channel alum added. 'Social media is such a blessing when you want to connect with everyone but can also be so noisy when used with judgment and assumptions,' she finished the lengthy note.


Times
3 minutes ago
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My hair-raising investigation into a Gen Z cult
The idea is absurd. It is my wife's. 'I keep seeing these really young men with moustaches,' she says, planting the seeds of it, one evening. Soon I am seeing them too, downtown and in scruffy Brooklyn. It's a peculiar sight. When I was growing up, moustaches were strictly for tradesmen and grandfathers. Now here they are on the faces of people who barely remember 9/11. Harry Styles starts wearing one. And there are these young dudes who call themselves the East Villains. 'It's a play on East Village residents,' an East Villain aficionado tells me. She is 21, a college student; we're in the garden of a bar in Brooklyn. 'In California, it's Silverlake Men. You have the Silverlake Men and the East Villains. It's a big thing on social media. 'They are these guys that smoke Marlboro Reds, they have hiking carabiners looped in their 501 jean pockets. They have a backwards cap or a frontwards cap, a little bit of a mullet. And these people … will always have a moustache. Always. Bar none.' Does Donald Trump have something to do with this? I ask because whenever something happens now, you have to assume he might be involved. 'I think it goes along with this archetyping, or codification of the idea of James Dean,' the student replies. 'This is my theory: old Hollywood stars, they didn't always have moustaches but the aspirational man, trying to emulate this old Hollywood man, he has to have a moustache … You go for a moustache just to have the facsimile of what is masculine.' Hey, I say to an editor. We should get some old codger in the office to grow a moustache and see if people start treating him as a member of Gen Z. Some guy who is a bit past his prime. 'Good idea,' she says. I stop shaving my upper lip. For about ten days you cannot really tell, except with powerful lighting. 'It's really good,' says one of my son's friends, who has something similar. He is 11. Then I start to glimpse it: a horizon of fur beneath the eye. It gives you the fleeting impression that you are furry all over. This must be what it is like to be a bear. I fear people will treat me differently. Interviewing the actor Kelsey Grammer, I feel obliged to explain that the nostril hedge is just part of an investigation. 'It's a little thin,' he says. 'How many days?' Two weeks. He did not like to mention it, he says. 'I always assume that young men are growing whatever part of their facial hair because that's what they can grow.' By week four, the moustache is in full bloom. 'You've got a mo!' cries an Australian colleague in the office. 'You gotta go and find your mo bros.' I go in search of mo bros on a humid Monday night with James Gallagher, a film-maker and photographer. Alighting in Williamsburg, there are moustaches everywhere. I see five just walking off the subway platform. There's another on the face of a Harvard student named Elio Torres, celebrating his 21st birthday in a beer garden. 'I'm second-generation Latino,' he says. 'It's a little hard to demonstrate that in terms of your physical attitude.' Hence his moustache. It's new. 'I was really thrown off by it,' says his friend Simone Marteo, 21. 'I was like, 'Woah! Are you Orlando?' Which is his dad's name.' In a bar called Alligator Lounge, a tech developer named Brendan Justice, 29, pulls out his phone. 'I'm in a group of men called the Moustache DAO,' he says. It's a Whatsapp group. 'All these men are in crypto,' he says. 'DAO stands for decentralised autonomous organisation. We are all dedicated to advancing moustache-kind.' Brendan's moustache is blond and he has a mullet that spills from his backwards cap — for apparently, these are back in fashion too. A large screen behind him is playing something called Nostalgia TV, with lots of moustaches. There's Hulk Hogan and his bleached walrus bristles; there is Chris Pratt, lavishly whiskered. Members of Moustache DAO post pictures of themselves to the group chat and an AI bot scans them for an evaluation. 'It will give you proof of moustache,' he says. There is a leaderboard charting how often people have given proof. 'The top person has sent their moustache 51 times,' he says. 'I'm at 13.' He looks at mine. 'You should join,' he says. I explain that it is just part of an investigation. Or possibly, a midlife crisis. I cannot quite imagine that anyone would find it attractive. It feels like the defensive pikes of an infantry battalion, repelling all advances. My wife refers to it as 'the chaperone'. But then James, the photographer, tells a story about his girlfriend. She so loves moustaches that he grew one for Valentine's Day. 'Every time I walked into a room, she lit up,' he says. We are by now in a bar called Union Pool, with several luminaries of the moustache movement. One of them is ND Austin, a leader in New York's 'underground drinking' scene who creates pop-up speakeasies. As long as I have known him, he has always had a delicate black moustache that rises at the corners like a smile. 'My experience,' he says, 'since I grew a moustache, is that the people who haven't wanted to kiss me because of the moustache was … far, far outweighed by people who are like: 'Ooohhh.'' I think mine makes me look like a deviant. The other day, delivering a box of coffee to my children's primary school, I caught sight of my moustache in the video screen at the front door. I did not think they should let me in. 'You have a sex-pest moustache!' Austin exclaims. 'One hundred per cent!' 'You do,' concurs his friend Jason Eppink, 41, a bearded artist. Austin says a friend of his had a moustache so fierce that when he went into bars, 'dudes that felt threatened would get into fights with him. He's a total pacifist but he just looked like someone who was about to shiv you', he says. 'His girlfriend made him shave the moustache off. The moment he did that, no problems.' Another of his friends 'has a moustache that makes him look extra sleazy and he works it,' he says. 'He is an international lothario.' This friend arrives. His name is Brendan Burke, 44. 'I think Covid launched a lot of moustaches,' he says. 'You could come out, afterwards, and pretend you always looked this way.' He shows me some photos of earlier models: a handlebar, and then a pencil moustache. The current number, shades of Clark Cable, has a peculiar effect on certain people, he says. 'I go talk to cops, they think I'm on the force,' Brendan says. 'If I put on a suit I can walk into a movie theatre without buying a ticket.' Other men with moustaches nod to him. 'I met someone at a rave in Detroit the other day,' he says. 'We were in the tech booth talking about how well situated each other's moustaches were, to our faces, and what was our whole journey with that.' 'Your journey!' Eppink exclaims. 'Fulfillment!' Austin says. 'You have finally come into your own.' But 'now every freaking person has a moustache', Burke says. 'I used to be different! Now I'm just every other hipster again.' They fall to talking about moustache care. Austin suggests that I mascara my moustache, to give it some oomph. But I think I will get shot of it. If it makes me look any younger, this can only be because it distracts from the other cracks in the painting. It is like wearing a monocle. I take it with me on one last outing, to a book launch in Chelsea. The actress Gina Gershon is there. She was in Cocktail and Showgirls. She has big dark hair and a mischievous half slant to her smile. What do you think of my moustache? I ask. 'If I were a guy, I would have a full beard and moustache and mutton chops,' she says. 'So maybe I'm the wrong person to ask.' I'm just growing it as part of an investigation, I say. 'I think it looks great,' she says. 'I think they make you look … like you are hiding something naughty.' She gives me one of her wicked smiles. And all of a sudden, I start thinking about keeping it.


Daily Mail
4 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Kennedy fans have mixed reaction to latest images of Sarah Pidgeon as Carolyn Bessette for new movie
There is a new movie coming out about the Kennedys. American Love Story will follow JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy's whirlwind romance as they became a power couple then tabloid fodder. The couple tragically passed away in a plane crash in 1999 when she was 33 and he was 38 but there is still massive intrigue about the two. Sarah Pidgeon, 29, is playing Carolyn in the new project. On Tuesday a new look at Sarah as Carolyn was shared with mixed reviews on if she nailed the look. Some fans on Reddit said she was 'spot on with those big eyes' while others felt her hair was not 'blonde enough' to play the glam queen of New York. Many wondered if Sarah was wearing a wig or if she dyed her hair blonde. The movie premieres in February 2026 Pidgeon was seen filming on the street in New York City. The star wore a black turtleneck with slacks and a black purse over her shoulder. Her long blonde hair was worn down in a casual style as she had on brown eye makeup and red lipstick on. Her bails were short as she did not appear to have her wedding rings on. The star was coming out of the subway exit in the midtown area of Manhattan. Carolyn was a fashion publicist who worked for Calvin Klein until her 1996 marriage to JFK Jr. The couple, along with her older sister Lauren, died in a plane crash off the coast of Martha's Vineyard in 1999. Bessette was born in White Plains, New York and had two older sisters, twins Lauren and Lisa. The star with the French background attended Boston University's School of Education, graduating in 1988 with a degree in elementary education. Bessette briefly attempted a modeling career, but it did not pan out. On Tuesday a new look at Sarah as Carolyn was shared with mixed reviews on if she nailed the look During her career at Calvin Klein, she went from being a saleswoman to becoming the director of publicity for the company's flagship store in Manhattan. Then she worked with Klein's high-profile clients like Annette Bening and Diane Sawyer. Bessette first met Kennedy in 1992, while he was dating actress Daryl Hannah. Bessette and Kennedy began dating in 1994, she then moved into Kennedy's Tribeca loft in the summer of 1995, and the couple became engaged later that year. Kennedy and Bessette wed on September 21, 1996 on the remote Georgia island of Cumberland. The couple honeymooned in Turkey. She got a ton of media attention and there were comparisons to her mother-in-law, former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Her long blonde hair was worn down in a casual style as she had on brown eye makeup and red lipstick on. Her bails were short as she did not appear to have her wedding rings on. The star was coming out of the subway exit in the midtown area of Manhattan There was talk the Kennedys were experiencing marital problems and contemplating divorce in the months preceding their deaths. In his book, The Kennedy Curse: Why Tragedy Has Haunted America's First Family for 150 Years, Klein claimed that the couple's problems reportedly stemmed from Bessette-Kennedy's difficulty dealing with the media attention. Bessette-Kennedy died on July 16, 1999, along with her husband and older sister Lauren, when the light plane John Jr. was piloting crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off the western coast of Martha's Vineyard. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) determined that the probable cause of the crash was: 'The pilot's failure to maintain control of the airplane during a descent over water at night, which was a result of spatial disorientation. Factors in the accident were haze and the dark night.' After a five-day search, the wreckage was discovered in the late afternoon of July 21. The bodies were recovered from the ocean floor by Navy divers and taken by motorcade to the county medical examiner's office, where autopsies revealed that the crash victims had died upon impact. All tested negative for alcohol and drugs. The new movie has several other Kennedy characters in it. Jackie O - also known as Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis - is being portrayed by Naomi Watts, 56. Onassis was a writer, book editor, and socialite who served as the first lady of the United States from 1961 to 1963, as the wife of President John F. Kennedy. Jackie died in 1994 at the age of 64 in New York City. Blonde actress Watts sported a brown wig as she transformed into Jackie. Watts was filming a scene in a park on Monday afternoon in New York City. Also in the movie is Paul Kelly, who will play Jackie's son John F. Kennedy Jr. Grace Gummer, who is playing Jackie's daughter Caroline Kennedy, was also seen playing in the park with two little girls that are playing Caroline's daughters Rose and Tatiana. JFK Jr's ex-girlfriend Daryl Hannah is being played by Dree Hemingway, 37, whose mother is actress Mariel Hemingway. She gained attention playing the lead in director Sean Baker's feature Starlet. Dree has since become known for her high-profile fashion campaigns and her extensive work in independent film.