Skeng – London
Take a walk down a Hackney backstreet or walk along the River Lea this summer and at some point you’ll likely hear this city celebration blaring from a car or loudspeaker. This may interest you : Sunday Conversation: Why MUNA Is The Next Big Band Of Music. Skeng is a rising and controversial dancehall artist from Jamaica whose sound is darker and more sinister than his peers; shares the touchstones popular in London-centric rap styles like UK drill and similar to many of those artists, Skeng raps about the reality of street life and has been accused of weapons and gang violence.
It’s not a picnic song but this track – which he wrote to celebrate his first tour of the UK here this summer – hints at his comedy music. It’s got an air of Just People about it, opening with the line “Hello mate (bloody hell)”, while the video shows Skeng and friends swinging bottles of hubbly on quad bikes in a London park. The rest are, as they say, pure fire: although Skeng’s patois is thick and fast, it snakes smoothly over the instrument’s strings; the guttural purr of its refrain – “Lon-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun’ – lasts for days. Kate Hutchinson
Bad Bunny – Yo No Soy Celoso
Bad Bunny didn’t just try to make it a summer song but an album, saying Un Verano Sin Ti should be played “in the summer, on the beach, like a dance party”. Pouring free tequila into the mouths of your friends, making eyes at people in swimsuits, looking up at the sky-pink-ening sky: there is a song for every emotion on this all-inclusive record, and thanks to Bad Bunny’s same broad type of sound – from breathing. pleads to the punched orders – everything is kept wide open like a long volleyball rally.
Suspended between bright reggaeton, king and other elements, it has a bossa nova-oriented rhythm drawn on acoustic guitar and drum rim; the song of the dawn cut by the small-hot hours. Bad Bunny screams a lot on a song with a title that translates to I am not Jealous, when he examines his ex with someone he doesn’t like, but even if you don’t know Spanish his pain is heard in the wounded “ouch. On the same subject : Recommended: Always Summer: Hamptons on Amazon Prime Video. , mi corazon” concludes the chorus: chest-out bravado caves in to portray a wounded little boy, in one of the song’s most memorable moments of the year. Someone takes one guy caipirinha, stat. Ben Beaumont-Thomas
Jungle – Good Times
Starting with the prelude to the sky before it explodes in what could be the hit of the hot summer of ’22, the all-rounder Good Time strikes the perfect balance between a throwback jam and a modern smash. The brainchild of the production duo Jungle, the moniker of the British music producers Josh Lloyd-Watson and Tom McFarland (perhaps best known for their sleeper 2014 Busy Earnin’), it’s Good Times that should establish them as a dance floor first.
There may be big hits and artists in this summer’s music season, but with a song that seems like a descendant of Glass Animals’ smash Heat Waves, Good Times could follow the same underdog single to mainstream hit trajectory and be as ubiquitous as the days of slog. on? To be honest, we all know that there is much to worry about and celebrate around the world. On the same subject : Beyoncé and Drake make this the summer of house music – and we’re here for it. But with Good Times, we are encouraged to enjoy what we can and, for a moment, put a blind eye to others. Let’s look at music and dancing. Rob LeDonne
Sky Ferreira – Don’t Forget
Please, “feral girl summer” all you want, but I personally will be preparing for “revenge summer” and taking Don’t Forget as my badass song. Although Sky Ferreira’s return to fame is directly related to his record – a perennial source of controversy for the 30-year-old pop icon – it also shows a wider range of uses.
“Tears of fire in the sky,” he shouts, and with the dangerous hot air and wildfires burning, we can sneak up to the government and organizations and let the ground burn; as Ferreira sings about betrayal and exploitation by the patriarchy, perhaps a few high court judges may come to mind. Soaring furiously and high above the earth in the stormy years of action, Don’t forget the full pain about letting your heart harden during one next summer. Laura Snapes
Beyoncé – Break My Soul
Breaking My Soul, the first single from Beyoncé’s upcoming album Renaissance, released in the last week of June, is new but familiar. The elastic house track – which nods to, if not actually samples, Robin S’s 1993 dance floor touchstone Show Me Love – is not the explosive Beyoncé of Lemonade. Having conquered almost every genre (and Coachella), Beyoncé is in the best of recovery mode: “I just fell in love, and I just quit my job / I’m gonna find a new drive, damn they work for me too much,” she says. , in a gesture to his non-billion fanbase who is always sweeter than he should be.
This is a food for different purposes – the best on the dance floor, a salve in the hot sun, to improve the mood of daily life in the midst of endless, endless problems. If there is a sound, for me, that calls the fun out of spring, it’s Beyoncé dropping “oh baby baby” in the chorus, or the mantra given by New Orleans bounce legend Big Freedia: “release your business, release your stress, release your love, forget everything else”. Queen he’s happy, and I keep listening. Adrian Horton
Bartees Strange – Wretched
Just try to sing along. Don’t worry if you can’t. Yes, the chorus of Bartees Strange’s Wretched sounds unreadable at first. But the Ipswich, England born, Oklahoma raised rising star of soulful fun will have his vocal performance stuck in your mind and on the tip of your tongue all summer long.
The, ahem, surprisingly (no pun intended) packaging detracts from the summer song formula. And that’s what makes it so important. That and, of course, the upbeat keys and percussion, and Strange’s genre-enigma guitar playing. Along with its soft-sounding verse-chorus style, those elements make Wretched defy its title post-lockdown game crowd pogo-and-holler worthy song. And after the sound of the song sinks in, delving into its lyrical source is equally exciting on subsequent listens – especially its themes of resilience, rescuing friendship in this age of echo chambers and isolation. Kyle Mullin
Charli XCX – Used to Know Me
There’s a scene in the second season of the acerbic comedy Hacks that cuts to a slow-mo montage of a day of party fun, on a lesbian trip. The song riffs, the Euro-house synths grind. As Charli XCX drops the hook, Hacks protagonist Ava steps up (watch the show if you haven’t already, on Prime Video). Back down the hard, layered story reinforces the approach.
Charli XCX’s final song from her five-album Sony deal sees her lunge for fun in the direction of pop, playing the conventional star she refused to be. Here, he sings about “being freed from your rule”. Is it just a post-breakup show, or two thumbs up to his name? It’s a winking, dance-down banger and it’s the perfect song for the summer candidate: one that’s been out since March, with time to roll. True heads will notice that she joins Beyoncé in a rendition of Robin S’s Show Me Love (Stonebridge Mix), sampled here. Tshepo Mokoena
Flo – Immature
Summer songs aren’t all beach breezes, catchphrases over barbecue smoke, or escapist lyrics mixed with vodka-sloshed oonts oonts beats. Sometimes they need grit. Everyone gets angry as the temperature rises and patience is usually the first thing to go.
At Immature, Renée Downer, Stella Quaresma, and Jorja Douglas, AKA the most promising British girl Flo, have enough. Riding a laid-back, low-key beat reminiscent of early 00s Timbaland – complete with a crybaby cut a la Aaliyah’s Are You Somebody? -the trio conspires with a mute man with signs that isn’t shooting. “Say you love my body, body / But you don’t do nothing about it” Douglas croons on the chorus, before the triple nail that helped the day, life-is-too-short-let’s-look-at-what. -more-than-he-is-out-to-be-sorrowed by the cut, “I’m trying to understand your point of view / But you’re playing with me, playing with me.” That all brings with it the honey finesse of peak Brandy gives a dash of summer warmth for a long kiss away. Michael Cragg
Sofi Tukker – Original Sin
Great summer songs that make us feel free. The latest from the inventive dance duo Sofi Tukker goes further. It makes us feel forgiven. Original Sin is a song of forgiveness, ear-wrenching its way into your consciousness to lessen guilt as it draws you to a place designed for sin: the playground. “So, I think there’s something wrong with you/Something wrong with me too,” the duo sang. “But the world you’re in is innocent / what made the first sin?”
The song, which has more than a pound of energy, has been a club favorite for months, building a sound that is sure to soothe us throughout the summer season. The subtle flow of the rhythm draws you in, while the voices of the duo – Sophie Hawley-Weld and Tucker Halpern – beguile. There is a great play between the intelligence of his dead delivery and the care of his voice. The song itself couldn’t be simpler, repeating the same verse over and over again, leaving little head space for its chorus. But the unique combination makes the sweet song go down easily. Jim Farber
5amDiaries and Jackson Homer – SOFA
Watching Netflix on the sofa may not be the first go-to activity in the summer months (unless, of course, it’s still a painfully hot summer and there’s an active A/C setup) but in unknown rapper 5amDiaries’ new song. , makes it sound like the only place to be. Using a loud, out-of-season 90s beat, courtesy of Jackson Homer, he continues to tell a simple, easy-to-tell tale of using the imagination to watch “a cool show I want to show you” for ideas and stupidity instead. . Who among us…
It’s hard to listen to without getting off the couch to walk around anyway (Spotify in the kitchen?) and it’s hard not to smile at his frustration at the bad behavior of his day (“knocking shit on top, he doesn’t use a coaster” he says, head presumably shaking, eyes rolling) and while the song did something it’s a quiet thing, it’s even harder to imagine this one not joining the heavy summer party cycle at the end of the season. Benjamin Lee
Cardi B ft Kanye West and Lil Durk – Hot Shit
It’s been four years and a lifetime since Invasion of Privacy, Cardi’s hood-winning epochal major-label debut that surprisingly saw all 13 tracks chart platinum or better. Since then, the South Bronx pop-rapper has hit the can while the anticipation of a long-awaited follow-up has only increased, spawning two children with Offset and a string of non-album singles including Everywhere. chart-toppers Top and WAP.
Hot Shit may not have the juice to match those dizzy heights, but our first girl as a solo artist in 17 months is a worm of a posse cut that goes to the club – well, Cardi’s field at least (the Electric Boogie. sample!) – and turn your car’s subwoofers to where it ends. Durk has shown better during his meteoric rise than his mid-verse, Kanye sounds like he needs a break even though he’s welcomed back to cussing, and producer Tay Keith won’t be accused of going overboard with his now-popular bass-heavy trap beat sound. like much of his earlier work. But Hot Shit – which has been irresistible on Hot 97 since the beginning of July when it dropped – is a great example of a song that rises above the sum of its parts on the sheer magnetism of the singer. Bryan Armen Graham
