The past few summers have been defined by massive cultural shifts, mostly into the mainstream. 2024 saw the major breakthroughs of Charli XCX, Chappell Roan and Sabrina Carpenter. Pop’s Powerpuff Girls had already been grinding it out for years, but last year marked a planetary alignment in making them global phenomenons.
Barbenheimer dominated 2023, where millions of cinema-goers exchanged their regular outfits for hot pink cowboy boots and even more extravagant cowboy hats. Although Oppenheimer didn’t exactly produce any stand-out bangers – sorry, Ludwig Göransson – the Barbie soundtrack dominated the airwaves. Dua Lipa dance the night away, Nicki Minaj and Ice Spice became Barbie Girls, and Ken was, well, ‘just ken’. 2022 was all about Harry Styles and ‘As It Was’, while 2021 was the year of Olivia Rodrigo, who ushered in a new era of f*ck your ex-boyfriend break-up pop.
But 2025 is currently missing its cross-cultural moment. We’re missing a summer record that you can’t escape and thus, soundtracks the summer. There’s always been a need for a song of the summer, at least in the UK. The warmer months are the only thing that gives us hope.
Looking at the UK charts today [23 June], Alex Warren’s ‘Ordinary’ sits atop the singles chart, while James Marriott’s ‘Don’t Tell The Dog’ owns the number one album spot.
As reported by the UK Official Charts, 2025’s ‘biggest’ song of 2025 is currently awarded to Lola Young with ‘Messy’, which shifted 597,000 chart units in the first quarter of 2025. It has certainly dominated TikTok feeds, and the Benson Boones, CMATs and Beabadoobees of this world are destined to be festival headliners of the tomorrow. But right now, no artist, song or album has truly crossed the cultural rubicon to claim 2025 as the year of them.
“Massive shifts in pop-culture are in short supply.”
Why is that? We are still in the infancy of this year’s festival season, while as of the time of writing [23 June] we’re still expecting albums from Lorde, Wet Leg, Renée Rapp and Mabel. But 2025 could also be the year of the reformation. Oasis have dominated the news headlines with their long-awaited reunion gigs, while Pulp topped the UK charts with ‘More’ the band’s first album for 24 years.
Another reason could be that brat girl summer is simply far too strong. That’s not a bad thing. Massive shifts in pop-culture are in short supply now that the internet has blurred the genre lines. Once, there were mods, punks, emos and 14-year olds bleaching their hair to look like Eminem, but truly unifying cultural trends are much harder to come by. That’s what made Charli XCX’s achievement such a rare, incredible, joyous one. The word ‘Brat’, with its roots in Old English and Celtic, is now forever owned by Charli. Brat isn’t just an album. It’s a brand that has influenced everything from late-night comedy to US politics.
But as we see the ‘Vroom Vroom’ star continue to be the dominant act at major festivals such as Glastonbury and Primavera, brat may have proved too powerful for newer acts to truly make an impact in 2025.
It’s still probably a little too early to predict the undisputed star of 2025. That prize could still be won with an iconic Glastonbury performance, after all. But either way, six months into the year, there’s still a prize to be claimed.
