Ed Sheeran has the closest thing to a song of the summer. Is that a ‘recession indicator’?

What follows an Espresso summer? Sabrina Carpenter’s career-boosting song might lack a seasonal theme – unless you count “my honey bee, come and get this pollen” – but it became the sunniest and most unshakeable of pop creations in grey 2024, hanging around last summer like a musical barfly.

Carpenter’s “give-a-f**ks” were on vacation, she told us – and, listening to Espresso, it was possible to feel likewise for three minutes. Either that or it just washed over you in a nothingy radio way – equally, an ideal state of being come midsummer.

It pays to lay your towels down early: Espresso extended a recent music-industry pattern of releasing the most stubborn of summer hits in April and locking down their earworm status by May. This year, however, the forecast for future sun-drenched classics remains cloudy.

I’ve seized the opportunity of optimum laboratory conditions – 22-degree heat, a melted head – to review the data available as of May 1st, and so far it’s inconclusive.

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With Marina’s C**tissimo a regrettably niche pleasure and Doechii’s Anxiety too, well, anxious, the closest thing to a contender is Ed Sheeran’s Azizam. This qualifies as a summer song on the basis that it’s about wanting to dance “as one” with someone, lose all track of time with them, then get lost in their metaphorical ocean, which coincidentally is my plan for the bank holiday weekend.

The desire-laden song – from Sheeran’s upcoming album Play – is laced with Persian influences and aspires to be carefree. He’s concertedly aiming for a mid-career blue-sky vibe. But it isn’t the song that will soundtrack TV sport montages. It’s not the song that will send crowds into raptures when it gets played between festival acts. It’s a summer song, but it’s not the song of the summer. That title remains unclaimed.

Beyond the realm of pop and dance-pop singles, the year has already delivered what for me is the perfect summer album: Weirdo, by the British nu-jazz artist Emma-Jean Thackray. Her music is golden-hour quality. It shimmers, it wanders, it coalesces into one euphoric whole. It’s a layered detour of a record that demands no sudden movements.

Otherwise, I’ve dived back into my summer Spotify playlist, which opens with Thackray’s exuberant Sun, to remind myself that though there are many things to fear about summer – hay fever, climate screwiness, camping – a chance encounter with “Spanglish” lyrics isn’t one of them.

Summer is not a season for rules. It’s a time for doing stuff you wouldn’t normally do. Drink German beer. Wear white. Embrace the wisdom of Mungo “In the Summertime” Jerry. Still, for the sake of authenticity I do recommend listening to the greatest “novelty” summer smash, The Ketchup Song (Aserejé) by Las Ketchup, from 2002, in the original Spanish.

Summer music falls into two broad categories: songs that make you feel better about the life you have and songs that offer a fantasy of a more glamorous, more exotic existence that is somehow as magically affordable as the drinks at Club Tropicana.

I’ve always had a weakness for LDN by Lily Allen, in which she blithely paints the grimmest portrait of city life – everything seems nice but is “all lies” – yet cancels it out with the chorus “sun is in the sky, oh why, oh why would I wanna be anywhere else?”. This sounds so cheerful that I forget it must be ironic.

For channelling the feeling of being absolutely anywhere else than where you are, musical passports are available: there’s the druggy 1990s groove of Picnic in the Summertime, by the dance band Deee-Lite; the 1980s new wave of Echo Beach, by Martha and the Muffins; and the 1960s bossa nova of The Girl from Ipanema, with languid vocals by the late Astrud Gilberto.

I’m not saying I missed other countries in 2020, but I am saying this was the year I decided “pool”, “sea” and “beach” were all distinct subgenres of summer music, pool songs being sparkly and contained (Swimming Pool, by Anna Calvi), sea songs being serene and expansive (The Sea, by Morcheeba) and beach songs being fun, illicit or both (High by the Beach, by Lana Del Rey).

But my main audio salve in the brighter months is Saint Etienne’s How We Used to Live, a multipart, nine-minute novel of a song that is everything summer should be: glittering, wistful, long. It could be the day, it suggests, when you finally “sail away”. This, in essence, is what all the best summer songs do: dangle the idea of permanent escape.

On that note, I quit. Sorry, no, I Quit – that’s the title of the imminent fourth album by the band Haim, of Summer Girl fame. It sounds promising, obviously, but we’re still going to need something daft and disposable, something pollen-proof. A summer song should be so current that it immediately attracts the internet’s favourite new verdict. Which, if you missed it, is “recession indicator”.