“Super Shy” by NewJeans, Thursday, September 14, 2023

As the music industry changes, many vestiges from when pop music was based on radio mono-culture don’t make sense anymore. Still, every pop critic feels the need to discuss “The Song of the Summer,” a made-up title given to often a high-energy pop song that usually peaks in popularity during the summer months. Billboard started tracking the song of the summer from 2010, naming Katy Perry and Snoop Dogg’s “California Gurls” for that year and retroactively dubbing a hit from each proceeding year until 1985. Later, they went back to 1975 and even listed the top tens from every summer since the chart's inception in 1958.

YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW MY NAME. “California Gurls” made sense as a song of summer. It was about sex on the beach, girls in bikinis, and all things summer. “Call Me Maybe,” “Despecito,” and “Old Town Road” were all listed as songs of the summer for the year they peaked in popularity. Psy’s “Gangnam Style” wasn’t a contender because it didn’t chart because Billboard hadn’t accounted for YouTube views at the time of the song’s peak popularity; however, many non-Billboard critics threw that song in as a contender for song of the summer of 2012. YouTube and streaming were the beginning of the breakdown of monoculture. Perhaps the pandemic was the other blow to musical monoculture, as we can see in the divide between pop and country displayed on the chart this year. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. In 2021, Billboard named “good 4 u,” Olivia Rodrigo’s teen angst-ridden pop-punk track as the song of the summer. No longer did the song of the summer have to be light and carefree. Last year’s song of the summer, “As It Was” is one in which Harry Styles fails to mask his anxieties under a retro ‘80s tune.

SOMETHING ODD ABOUT YOU. Billboard’s 2023 “Song of the Summer” chart wrapped up last week with Morgan Wallen’s “Last Night” topping the chart and Luke Combs’ cover of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” as the second biggest song. Pop critics have called these two songs “sleepers,” as they aren’t particularly summery or even memorable. This has led the critics at Switched on Pop, The New York Times’ Popcast, and others to craft their own lists and propose an alternate “Song of the Summer.” Some songs listed this year have been Taylor Swift’s “Cruel Summer”;  Dua Lipa’s “Dance the Night Away” or Billie Eilish’s “What Was I Made For?” both from the Barbie soundtrack--one news outlet even declared the Ryan Gosling-lead “Just Ken” as the song of summer; Jung Kook’s “Seven”;  and even New Jeans’ “Super Shy.” Today’s song was released in February. It’s a simple song that’s very “back to school,” which was released just in time for the new school year in March. Maybe “Super Shy” isn't the song of the summer by Billboard metrics, but from the Powerpuff Girls artwork collaboration to the driving rhythm, critics are loving the song. It’s bubblegum pop at a time when the pop charts would rather focus on racist-coded country songs. It’s a song for the kids when Country would much rather focus on the same narrative of getting drunk and taking back the nation. “Super Shy” may not be as deep as a Taylor Swift track, but it encapsulates the emotion of falling for someone, taking listeners back to their own awkward adolescence, trying to develop the moxie to talk to that special person. 

Read the translation on Genius.