New Delhi: There’s no one song of the summer in 2026 — it depends on your ZIP code what dominates your playlist.
The Washington Post analysed weekly Spotify chart data from 20 US cities and San Juan, Puerto Rico, tracking top-10 charts from May 15 to July 17. The reporting, by Ela Jalil, Ethan Beck and Klara Auerbach, found that the “song of the summer” changes depending on where you live.
Ella Langley’s “Choosin’ Texas” topped charts in 18 of the 20 US cities by mid-July and now holds the record for the longest-running No. 1 by a woman on the Billboard Hot 100, excluding holiday songs. And it’s not hard to see why it caught on: a steel guitar hook, a chorus that sticks, and a love-triangle plot messy enough to gossip about. Plenty of people singing along may not even realise it started as a country hit.
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Summer songs of America
Not everyone got the memo, though. Miami spent five weeks on Drake’s “Janice STFU.” New York and Los Angeles were busy nursing heartbreak to Olivia Rodrigo’s “stupid song.” And San Juan skipped the English-language hits altogether for Jay Wheeler’s “De Lejitos.”
TikTok did a lot of the heavy lifting elsewhere. Malcolm Todd’s “Earrings,” released more than two years ago, suddenly took off this spring once TikTok users found it, especially in Las Vegas. Mac Miller’s “Cinderella” had its own resurgence as a go-to backdrop for relationship posts, a strange kind of comeback for an artist who died in 2018.
Nostalgia had a moment too. A Michael Jackson biopic sent “Billie Jean” back into the top 10 in 18 cities, Salt Lake City especially. The Killers’ 20-year-old “Mr. Brightside” also broke into the top 10 across Detroit, St. Louis, Minneapolis and Omaha. There is no single reason that explains the surge, though one Omaha DJ credited wedding season for keeping it in heavy rotation.
The takeaway, per the Post, is that streaming algorithms and TikTok have splintered the kind of monoculture radio and MTV used to create. Radio still counts. Langley’s rise was helped along by pop stations climbing all summer steadily. But even with “Choosin’ Texas” leading the pack, the idea of a single song of the summer might just be over.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)