Skeng – London
This summer, head down a backstreet in Hackney or stroll along the River Lea and at some point you’ll probably hear this gnarly celebration of the city blaring from a car or loudspeaker. To see also : Amazon Prime Video is partnering with AP Dhillon to release a fantastic ending to the third season of The Boys: Entertainment News. Skeng is an up and coming yet controversial dancehall rapper from Jamaica whose sound is much darker and more menacing than his peers; it shares stylistic touchstones with popular London rap styles such as UK Drill and like many of those artists, Skeng raps about the realities of street life and is accused of glorifying guns and gang violence.
It’s hardly a picnic tune, but this song – which he apparently wrote in celebration of his first UK tour here in the spring – references his comedy chops. It has a twist of People Just Do Nothing About it, starting with the line “Hello mate (bloody hell)”, while the video shows Skeng and friends on quad bikes in a London park swinging bottles of bubbly. The rest, as they say, is pure fire: while Skeng’s patois is distinctly thick and fast, it unfolds with sinuous precision across the instrument’s strumming strings; the guttural sound of his chorus – “Lon-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun” – lingers for days. Kate Hutchinson
Bad Bunny – Yo No Soy Celoso
Bad Bunny tried to make not just the song of the summer, but the album, stating that Un Verano Sin Ti should be played “in the summer, on the beach, as a playlist”. Pouring free tequila into your friends’ mouths, looking at people in swimsuits, contemplating the pinkish sky: there’s a song for every mood on this all-encompassing record, and thanks to Bad Bunny’s equally wide vocal range – from breathy pleas to barked orders – they are all kept as lively as a long volleyball rally.
Tucked in between the brilliant reggaeton, mambo and more is this gem, with a bossa nova adjacent rhythm picked on acoustic guitar and a drum rim; a wistful early evening track cut with melancholy of the small hours. Bad Bunny protests too much to a song whose title translates as I Am Not Jealous as he investigates his ex with someone he doesn’t like, but even if you don’t know Spanish, his pain is so palpable in the injured “ouch, mi corazon” ending the chorus: chest-out bravura caves to reveal a hurt little boy, in one of the musical moments of the year. This may interest you : Auburn Gresham’s Health Lives Hub Will Open This Month At 79th Street, Brings A New Life To The Tall. Someone gives the boy another caipirinha, stat. Ben Beaumont-Thomas
Jungle – Good Times
Kicking off with a heavenly sounding intro before exploding into what could become the hit of the blistering summer of ’22, the heady Good Times strikes a perfect balance between throwback jam and modern smash. The brainchild of production duo Jungle, nicknamed by British music makers Josh Lloyd-Watson and Tom McFarland (perhaps best known for their 2014 sleeper Busy Earnin’), it’s Good Times that should solidify them as dance floor staples.
There may be bigger hits and star performers during this summer music season, but with the song seemingly a sonic cousin to Glass Animals’ smash Heat Waves, Good Times could follow a similar underdog single to mainstream hit track and be absolutely everywhere as the days. slog On? To be fair, we are all aware that there is plenty worldwide to worry about and celebrate. On the same subject : In this Yiddish music festival, tradition is everything – and nothing – J.. But with Good Times we are urged to enjoy what we can and, at least for a moment, put on blinders for the rest. Let’s face the music and dance. Rob LeDonne
Sky Ferreira – Don’t Forget
Please, “wild girl summer” all you want, but I’ll personally chop to “vengeful wraith summer” and take Don’t Forget as my mean anthem. While Sky Ferreira’s thriving comeback single is bubbling straight onto her record label – an enduring cause of strife for the 30-year-old cult pop icon – it also suggests a significantly wide range of uses.
“Tears of fire in the sky,” she snaps, and with dangerous heatwaves and wild fires raging, we could be targeting the governments and corporations that casually burn the planet; when Ferreira sings of betrayal and exploitation by paternalistic forces, a few Supreme Court justices may come to mind. Raging with rage and towering over the earth on thunderclouds of reverb, Don’t Forget is a full-blooded offensive against your heart hardening through another successively hellish summer. Laura Snape
Beyoncé – Break My Soul
Break My Soul, the first single from Beyoncé’s upcoming album Renaissance, landed softly in the last week of June, fresh yet familiar. The elastic house track — which nods to, if not outright samples, Robin S’ 1993 dance floor key, Show Me Love — isn’t Lemonade’s boastful Beyoncé. After conquering almost all genres (and Coachella), Beyoncé is in a sublime restoration mode: “I just fell in love, and I just quit my job / I’m going to find a new drive, damn they work me so damn hard” , she chose , in a gesture to her non-billionaire fanbase landing sweeter than it should be.
This is multipurpose food – an upper on the dance floor, an ointment in the scorching sun, a mood stabilizer for everyday life in the midst of overlapping, never-ending crises. If there’s been one sound for me that evokes the fun of this sputtering summer, it’s Beyoncé dropping “oh baby baby” in the chorus, or the mantra offered by New Orleans bounce legend Big Freedia: “release your trade , let go of the stress, let go of your love, forget the rest.” The Queen offers happiness, and I continue to listen. Adrian Horton
Bartees Strange – Wretched
Just try singing along. Don’t worry if you can’t. Yes, the chorus of Bartees Strange’s Wretched sounds inscrutable at first. But the Ipswich, England-born Oklahoma-lofty rising star’s rush of heartfelt exuberance will have his expansive performance stuck in your head and on the tip of your tongue all summer long.
It’s, ahem, odd (no need to forgive the pun) structuring eschews the condescending summer song formula. And that’s what makes it so essential. That and of course the propulsive keys and percussion, and Strange’s genre-enigma guitar playing. Along with its soft-loud verse chorus pattern, those elements will see Wretched defy its title for post-lockdown festival crowds craving a pogo-and-holler worthy anthem. And after the song’s galvanizing tone sets in, it’s a real pleasure to delve into the source stream of lyrics on subsequent listens — especially the themes of steadfast, saving friendship in this age of echo chambers and self-isolation. Kyle Mullino
Charli XCX – Used to Know Me
There’s a scene in season two of the biting comedy Hacks that cuts into a slow-mo montage of revelry on a lesbian cruise. This song blares, the Euro-house synths crunch. As Charli XCX pulls the titular hook, Hacks protagonist Ava practically rises (watch the show if you haven’t already, on Prime Video). Back on dry land, a layered story underlies the track.
Charli XCX’s final album of her five-album Sony deal sees her almost comically flip to pop, cosplaying the standard major-label star she refused to be. Here she sings about “finally being free of your control”. Is that just a reflection after the breakup, or two fingers shot at her label? It’s a wink, a dance floor blast, and that summer candidate’s ideal song: one that’s been out since March, with time to trickle down. Real headliners will find her joining Beyoncé in interpolating Robin S’s Show Me Love (Stonebridge Mix), sampled here. Tshepo Mokouna
Flo – Immature
Summer hymns can’t all be light-hearted beach parties, talk about barbecue smoke, or escapist lyrics mixed with vodka-slopped oonts oonts beats. Sometimes they need a little spice. Everyone is irritable when the temperature rises and patience is usually the first thing to do.
On Immature, Renée Downer, Stella Quaresma and Jorja Douglas, aka the hugely promising British girl band Flo, have had enough. Riding to an elastic, low-slung beat reminiscent of early 00s Timbaland – complete with cut-out baby howls a la Aaliyah’s Are You That Somebody? – the trio protests with a stupid man whose signals don’t sound right. “Say you want my body, body / But you never do anything about it” Douglas casually shrugs in the chorus, before the trio that sun-supported, life’s-to-short-let-me-check-what -else-is-out-there frustration with a curt, “I’m trying to understand your point of view / But you fuck with me, fuck with me.” That it’s all delivered with the honeyed finesse of Peak Brandy offers at least a touch of summer warmth to the long-awaited kiss. Michael Cragg
Sofi Tucker – Original Sin
Wonderful summer songs give us a liberated feeling. The new one from the inventive dance duo Sofi Tucker continues. It makes us feel liberated. Original Sin is a hymn of absolution, deafening its way into your consciousness to relieve guilt, all the while luring you to a place tailor-made for transgression: the dance floor. “So, I think there’s something wrong with you / there’s something wrong with me too,” the duo sings. “But the state you are in is innocent / what is original sin anyway?”
Rolling over pounds, the track has been a club favorite for months, building a buzz it deserves to serenade us all through the warm season. The insinuating flow of the rhythm pulls you in, while the vocals of the duo – Sophie Hawley-Weld and Tucker Halpern – are deceiving. There’s a great play between the humor of his deadpan birth and the care in her tone. The song itself couldn’t be simpler, repeating the same verse over and over, with just a few pauses before the lilting chorus. But that sublime combination ensures that the sweet message of the song comes across easily. Jim Farber
5amDiaries and Jackson Homer – SOFA
Watching Netflix on the couch might not be your first go-to activity in the summer months (unless, of course, it’s this scorching hot summer and there’s an effective air-conditioning setup), but in rapper’s little-known new song 5amDiaries, he lets it sound like the only place to be. Using a sly beat from the 90s season courtesy of Jackson Homer, he tells a simple, easily recognizable story about using the guise of watching “a cool show I want to show you” to get tipsy. to become and instead to be fooled . Which of us…
It’s hard to listen though without getting off the couch to move (Spotify in the kitchen?) he says, presumably shaking head, rolling eyes) and while the song has made a hushed debut, it’s even harder to imagine that this doesn’t go into a heavy summer party rotation by the end of the season. Benjamin Lee
