Music
The 10 best songs of summer 2016
Chance The Rapper, Rihanna, Lizzo, and Justin Timberlake made some of our songs of the summer.
Chance The Rapper at Bonnaroo
© Joe Gall
We all need a song to soundtrack the joy and the heartbreak, and the laughter and the tears that come with this most amazing season we call summer. There's always one tune that rises above the rest, because it captures the glory and tragedy of those few months we wait for all year that we wish would last forever.
And so here we are, it's summer 2016 and it's time to pick that one perfect summer jam, turn it up, put it on repeat. Here are 10 of our favourite summer 2016 songs.
10. This Is What You Came For by Calvin Harris feat. Rihanna
Zedd, Avicii, and Dillon Francis are all following Calvin Harris's template. He also showed the world how a DJ can be a debutante at the same time. His collaborations with Rihanna have been particularly transcendent: We Found Love is one of the best pop songs ever written and their follow-up, This Is What You Came For, is equally wonderful and desperate. Rihanna, despite being uber-famous since she was 17, always sounds like she’s singing directly to you. Harris popcorns her vocal on the delightfully strung-out hook, and for a few moments, you are in love. She's right – that’s what we came for. (Luke Winkie)
9. All We Got by Chance The Rapper feat. Kanye West
Kanye West hailed his The Life Of Pablo as a gospel album, but Chance The Rapper's triumphant Coloring Book more fully realises that potential. Over music that's both lush and harsh – Kanye added some production touches to the mix, including stripping out the drums and replacing them with MPC synthesiser – Chance offers an amped-up story of his life, issuing autobiographical lyrics that are both grateful and playful ("I might give Satan a swirlie") with increasing fervour. The combination of Chance's stirring delivery, the crashing backing track and the eventual entrance of the Chicago Children's Choir will instill optimism on even the harshest summer days. (Maura Johnston)
8. Once Dance by Drake feat. Wizkid and Kyla
Neediness isn’t catchy. There are thousands of bangers about lust, obsession, pain and fidelity. But, generally speaking, the Hot 100 isn't kind to dithery uncertainty. So maybe it's especially impressive how Drake has spent an entire career giving that ugly feeling in the pit of your stomach a song. One Dance, the centrepiece of the dour, monolithic VIEWS, contains some of the Drakeist sentiments ever laid to tape. "You know you gotta stick by me, soon as you see the text reply me." Yeah, one of this year’s indisputable summer jams deals with notification anxiety. The deflating ennui of the end-of-night experience, where reality is inevitable and everything hurts, is a near-universal summer experience. At least now we have something to dance to while we're dealing with it. (LW)
7. Flex (All In My Head) by Fifth Harmony feat. Fetty Wap
Bringing together the breakout girl group's overflowing confidence, lyrics celebrating bedroom prowess and a sample from Mad Cobra's 1992 dancehall hit Flex, this single from Fifth Harmony's 7/27 album is a sizzler. Each of Fifth Harmony's members takes a turn offering up flirtation that winkingly tips over into pillow talk, but the cherry on top is one of last summer's biggest breakout stars,Fetty Wap, whose boisterous come-ons are balanced by a call-and-response with Normani Kordei. (MJ)
6. Dangerous Woman by Ariana Grande
Guitar solos are one of the worst tropes in music. That isn’t the case on the crescendo of Dangerous Woman, the title track from Ariana Grande’s new album. The singer has come a long way since her Nickelodeon days, and here, in her first definitive statement of 20-somethingness, we get near D'Angelo levels of shredding. It’s awesome. It's self-disciplined. It's confident. And it bubbles under every word she sings about how good it feels to be bad. (LW)
5. Bobo by J. Balvin
Reggaeton singer J. Balvin had a blazing 2015 thanks to his track Ginza, which ruled Billboard's Hot Latin Songs chart for months. His sensitive-guy side is on full display in the gently rolling Bobo, in which Balvin comforts a woman who had to suffer fools in her romantic life. Carried along by a simple vocal riff and rife with encouragement toward the dancefloor, it's made for the sort of summer-appropriate dancing that allows movement while also being aware of not making things too hot. (MJ)
4. Boyfriend by Tegan And Sara
Tegan And Sara are experts at turning messy situations into carbonated pop jams and Boyfriend might be their finest moment. "You call me up like you want your best friend / you turn me on like you want your boyfriend / but I don't want to be your secret anymore." They shout it out, finally unafraid of being seen. For those of you exhausted by the messy, dubiously drawn lines of an affair, this is your anthem. (LW)
3. Can’t Stop The Feeling by Justin Timberlake
Running recent years' bouncy, funk-tinged summer jams – Blurred Lines, Get Lucky, Happy – through Justin Timberlake's dapper persona, this Max Martin/Shellback-penned track smears the line between the dancefloor and the bedroom, making its lyrics about "getting you close" as family-friendly as the context requires. It'll probably be lighting up wedding reception dance floors and baseball stadiums for years to come. (MJ)
2. All The Way Up by Fat Joe and Remy Ma
If modern pop songwriting has taught us anything, it’s that all you really need to succeed is a fun chant. See Classic Man, We Dem Boyz, Bad Blood. Pop music is fantasy, it's wish-fulfilment, and we need heroes to teach us how to take care of ourselves with vague, upwards-moving mantras. Fat Joe has been more or less absent since the beginning of the decade, but here he stumbles into something perfect. Nothing can stop me, I'm all the way up! he roars over a stupefying horn line. It barely makes sense, but that doesn't matter. Every summer needs a theme song for staring at yourself in the mirror before a particularly vindictive night on the town. If Fat Joe is going to have one more hit before he permanently hangs up his Jordans, he certainly picked a good one. (LW)
1. Good As Hell by Lizzo
Lots of truly indelible summer jams have a cast-off-your-troubles element – even the carefree Get Lucky has the fraught possibility of "giv[ing] up who we are" lurking within its lyrics. This bouncy, piano-driven call-and-response from the Minneapolis-based MC/singer Lizzo is a chin-up motivator for a pal whose boyfriend isn't treating her the way she deserves. ("If he don't love you anymore," Lizzo trills on the pre-chorus, "just walk your fine ass out the door.") But its chorus, in which Lizzo gives herself a once-over before she and a boisterous backing choir determine that, yes, she does look as good as hell, carries this song to the top of the summer-song heap. (MJ)
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