So, What Was The Song Of Summer 2015?

I momentarily got goosebumps outside today, which means summer is dead (about damn time). And despite the season’s alarmingly high temperatures, we all reached a universal consensus in July or so: Summer 2016 simply had no song to call its own. Oh, and that tragically, the entire concept of song of the summer is now dead — or that Drake is now king of all future summer songs or some shit. Summer Sixteen really didn’t pan out like Summer Fifteen, back when we had plenty of (non-Tidal exclusive) music to bicker about. As such, I dug out some previously unpublished thoughts on last year’s crop of certifiable jams, also-ran bangerz, and fucking disasters so we can at least talk about song of a summer, if not the summer. Here we go.

Back in August 2015 at the MTV VMAs, the spiky-haired youths in 5 Seconds Of Summer walked away with the coveted Song Of The Summer award, racking up an impressive 53 million fan votes for the New Millennium Weezer-cribbing “She’s Kinda Hot.” 5SOS, as they like to be called, faced stiff competition from Fifth Harmony’s “Worth It,” which conjured the seismic power of the Harmonizer fandom to near-victory but ultimately finished 2 million votes shy. Other leading nominees were Justin Bieber & Jack Ü’s future-pop earworm “Where Are U Now,” Demi Lovato’s, uh, curious “Cool For The Summer,” and Selena Gomez & A$AP Rocky’s sultry “Good For You.” But no one topped the almighty 5SOS.

So, by MTV’s own metrics, “She’s Kinda Hot” was the official, all-caps Song Of The Summer of record, right? Well, that’s where it gets complicated.

A month before I joined the team, MTV News rounded up the biggest SOTS contenders up to that point, and the Britney Spears/Iggy Azalea collab “Pretty Girls” came out on top with 15,000 votes. But this particular poll shows that when you measure is often just as important as how you measure it, because, like, who can even hum a bit of “Pretty Girls” now? (Britney has much better jams out in the ether now, anyway.)

Then came sleeper hits like OMI’s “Cheerleader” and Fetty Wap’s “Trap Queen,” both originally released in 2014, which kept gaining momentum and eventually sprung to life once again as potential SOTS throne-claimers. “Cheerleader” even ended up as Billboard’s official SOTS designee. The Weeknd’s “Can’t Feel My Face” — a.k.a the best Michael Jackson song since 1991—emerged, too, seemingly from nowhere, and slowly rose to the top of everything, including the Top 100 chart (where it was replaced by a Weeknd song that sounds nothing like MJ). Data-wise, Spotify named Major Lazer’s “Lean On” its most-streamed song of summer 2015, ahead of “Cheerleader” and Wiz Khalifa & Charlie Puth’s “See You Again.” And if you consider yourself hip by any metric (as I certainly do), Jamie XX & Young Thug’s “I Know There’s Gonna Be (Good Times)” was the song you told everyone “couldn’t be topped” as song of the summer, and you were at least half-right (Stereogum thought so, too).

Given all of the above, it seems clear that this debate is simply a matter of taste and that people are drawn to the genres and artists they’re predisposed to root for in these kinds of polls. But there’s one area that we haven’t talked about yet which may clear some confusion up: celebrity picks. Because let’s face it, who better can declare a true song of the summer than a pop star on an obscenely large stage with an equally obscene platform for unfettered public influence?

Ed Sheeran (remember him) proclaimed Walk The Moon’s U2- and Rick Springfield-indebted “Shut Up And Dance” his personal SOTS in June. The sheer magnitude of star power in Taylor Swift’s “Bad Blood” music video, which won Video Of The Year at the VMAs, along with her genius plan to dismantle each SOTS candidate one by one (à la Sayid when he started killing for Ben on Lost), makes it clear that Swift wanted detonate summer 2015 and rebuild the pieces into her own likeness. And that may have worked. From the inherent drama of its backstory to its boisterous, anthemic rhythms, “Bad Blood” was built to be savored, and to be the biggest. No one had a bigger summer 2015 than Taylor Swift.

But this is all just anecdotal data. What does it really mean? Who can officially claim the always-disputed title of “Song Of The Summer” for their own in 2015? Everyone, of course, and no one.

Or maybe we can. And that’s the entire point: These songs are ours. Stacked up and queued up one after another, they make for one hell of a playlist, no matter the season.

But for the record, it was definitely “Trap Queen.”