As the summer of 2025 comes to an end, the question echoing throughout many people’s playlists, parties, and social media feeds is, what were the songs of the summer this year?
While everybody has their own opinions, here are some of the top tracks based on streams and impressive numbers.
According to what Billboard has to say, the song for the summer would have to go to “Ordinary” by Alex Warren, not only because it’s very popular, but also because it was very dominant throughout the whole summer. In a summer with a lot of good songs coming out every day, it gets very competitive to stay on the top, but “Ordinary” was anything but ordinary.
It stayed on Billboard’s Song of the Summer at the number 1 spot every single week starting from Memorial Day on the 7th of June, all the way to Labor Day on the 6th of September. But not only did “Ordinary” hold the top of Billboard, it also spent a whopping 10 weeks on the Hot 100, proving that you don’t always need a big, high-energy track to be at the top, but sometimes just a slower emotional song that resonates with millions of listeners.
Although Ordinary was very impressive and is hard to beat, on TikTok the top song globally was actually Jess Glynne’s “Hold My Hand”, which originally was released over 10 years ago back in 2015 but resurfaced thanks to all the TikTok creators that put this song on their videos, which helped the song regain popularity and relevance over 10 years later.
It appeared in over 9 million different videos from millions of different creators from all over the world, which helped it get over 80 billion views. It really shows the power of social media to influence what is relevant and what is not.
Meanwhile, pop culture had its own say in what it thought was the song of the summer; from the hit Netflix movie KPop Demon Hunters came Golden by HUNTR/X.
Not only was this movie a fan favorite, but so was the whole soundtrack of this movie, with Golden climbing to the number one spot on the Billboard Hot 100 and also marking history as the first animated girl group to top the chart since Destiny’s Child back in 2001.
For most fans, this song meant more than just any little silly catchy track, but that even animated fictional characters can leave a real mark on music history.
Many critics and streaming platforms had many different opinions, but they did overlap. Some highlights, like Spotify, did note that “Ordinary” was its most-streamed song globally this summer, but a lot of artists like Sabrina Carpenter, Bad Bunny, and PinkPantheress, just to name a few, all brought a lot of good tracks to the table that each captured different pieces of summer.
From beats to use at parties to songs with introspective lyrics, the songs of summer 2025 were not mono-audio but were very diverse.
So was the song of the summer a slow emotional track like “Ordinary”, or was it something more like a throwback from 10 years ago like “Hold My Hand”, or a song from a fictional movie like “Golden”? The answer will fluctuate based on who you ask. It might be a song that wasn’t even listed on any list.
But what we do know is that the song of the summer for 2025 was more than just being on the top of the charts—it was about songs that connected us, whether it was from the top of the streaming charts, viral dances, or animated adventures.