Throwing back to the week of September 27, 1975, we find John Denver atop the Billboard Hot 100 with ‘I’m Sorry.’
This is one of the six songs I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that topped both the Country chart and the Hot 100 that year. ‘I’m Sorry’ was the last of four chart-topping singles for Denver, all released between 1973 and 1975.
My final candidate for this year’s alternate universe Song of the Summer is ‘Relationships,’ the lead single of Haim’s fourth studio album, I Quit.
Haim has never had a song reach the Billboard Hot 100 (with the exception of Taylor Swift’s ‘No Body No Crime,’ on which they featured). So this breezy single had no chance of cracking the actual Song of the Summer chart. It was also released in March, three months before the album dropped, so maybe it’s more a Song of the Spring.
I have my daughters to thank for my next Song of the Summer candidate. They recently introduced my wife and me to Audrey Hobert, a talented singer-songwriter whose debut album dropped last month.
Hobert is part of a recent crop of nepo baby artists, and is childhood friends with another of them, Gracie Abrams. After starting her career as a TV comedy writer (a job that made her father successful), she co-wrote songs with Abrams. That work led to her own record deal.
Men have seemingly surrendered the pop music landscape to women in recent years, but I do have one male artist among my personal picks for an alternate universe Song of the Summer.
Justin Bieber released his seventh studio album, Swag, on July 11 with no advance notice. His first full-length release in four years debuted at #2 on the albums chart while first single ‘Daisies’ mirrored that feat, debuting at #2 on the Hot 100. Nine weeks later it’s still in the top ten (just), but that wasn’t enough to land it on the official Songs of the Summer chart.
My #1 pick for the alternate universe Song of the Summer is Chappell Roan’s ‘The Subway.’ Roan’s ‘Good Luck, Babe!‘ was in a tight race with Sabrina Carpenter’s ‘Espresso’ as my personal pick for last year’s top summer song, and this year she claims the title.
Roan has been performing ‘The Subway’ live for more than a year but resisted releasing a recorded version at first because she had other singles on the runway and later because she thought it wouldn’t live up to the concert experience. She finally relented and dropped a studio recording on July 31.
Meet Me In Montauk 