INDIO, Calif. — It’s still spring, but attendees at Coachella are already dreaming about what the so-called song of summer might be.

The honor — a somewhat arbitrary one, to be sure — is awarded to whatever tune dominates airwaves and playlists between Memorial Day and Labor Day. Billboard, which tracks the most dominant tracks from week to week, typically declares a winner in September based on what was streamed, purchased and played on the radio during the summer, although frankly, the victor is also crowned somewhat on vibes. Historically, the chosen song is upbeat, easy to dance to and unavoidable, blasting from speakers through open windows and on crowded beaches throughout the warmer months, so much so that you’re ready to never hear it again come fall.

Past songs of summer include earworms like “Call Me Maybe” by Carly Rae Jepsen and “I Had Some Help” by Morgan Wallen and Post Malone. But things took a turn for the soulful last year when Alex Warren’s “Ordinary” emerged triumphant. The chart topper, which belongs to a genre that we  dubbed “secular praise music,” was unusually difficult to dance to for a summer song. It ended Morgan Wallen’s two-year streak, though his duet with Tate McRae, “What I Want,” came in second place.

That doesn’t mean there’s no debate and dissent about the culture-defining anthem of each season. For instance, Charli XCX never topped the charts in 2024, but who could deny the existence of Brat Summer? During the first weekend of the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival, I spoke with dozens of fans about their predictions. They might all have very different streaming service algorithms and relationships with the radio — RIP monoculture — but they’re certainly in-the-know about music. Here’s what they told us.

Everyone really does want it to be 2016 again 

No shade to Alex Warren, but when I reminded Coachella attendees that he snagged last year’s song of summer title, I was met with mostly groans. They wanted bangers and were particularly nostalgic for the music of 2016.

“We need Drake,” Haley, a 28-year-old from Los Angeles, tells me urgently. The world seemed a simpler place when “One Dance,” which debuted just before Coachella 2016, was the biggest song in the country, she explains.  A new Drake album called “Iceman” is reportedly defrosting on May 15, but will it hit as hard now that  Kendrick Lamar has eviscerated Drake  in their legendary beef?

“Literally anything Justin Bieber” was a prediction I heard from multiple influencers at Revolve Festival, the swag-and-content-creation extravaganza that runs parallel to Coachella every year. Not a surprising sentiment, given that we spoke on the very day of Bieberchella, when chatter about the pop star was the go-to small talk conversation du jour.

In the weekend after his performance, Justin Bieber saw a 165% increase in streams on Spotify, according to data shared with Yahoo. That includes songs from his 2025 albums “Swag” and “Swag II” as well as decade-old hits, like 2012’s “Beauty And A Beat.” Earlier this year, when there was a random wave of nostalgia for 2016, “Let Me Love You” by DJ Snake and Justin Bieber also reentered the Global Top 50, according to Spotify.

Bieber’s not the only artist to capitalize on culture’s retro mood this year: Zara Larsson has had an astronomic rise with “Lush Life,” a 2016 song that hit its highest peak on the charts in 2026 after Larsson wisely capitalized on a meme, rebranded her style and went viral with a catchy new dance. Before she made a surprise appearance on stage with PinkPantheress, several people invoked her name as a song of summer contender, including Veronica, a 21-year-old Coachella attendee from Sweden. She predicted that Larsson’s 2025 bop “Midnight Sun” — which is as relentlessly summery as its name — would see a resurgence soon and climb the charts.

The main pop girls — and aspiring ones

The months leading up to Coachella 2024 served as a turning point for two huge popstars who performed that year in front of massive crowds: Sabrina Carpenter, who released “Espresso” ahead of her set, and Chappell Roan, whose “Good Luck Babe” came out just a week before that. It yielded such a 180 for Carpenter’s career, “her Espresso” became shorthand for a breakout moment, or a “ticket out of the Khia asylum” as pop fans would say. Carpenter’s moment has proved durable: As I stood around waiting for Carpenter’s headlining Coachella set, multiple people told me “House Tour,” boosted by its Bling Ring-themed music video, could ascend to song of summer status.

But a new class of emerging pop girls is still in the running too. Slayyyter drew massive crowds with her club-friendly sound paired with a belt buckle and a trucker hat, capturing what music is all about now — vibes and aesthetics. “She’s really that girl,” Jayvon, a 28-year-old from Dallas, tells me before yelling “CRANK IT!” — a line from a Slayyyter song that has become a call-and-response for fans. Could her own version of Brat Summer be brewing?

K-pop girl group Katseye’s performance generated buzz as well, though people weren’t talking about their music. Just before Coachella — and the song they released right before it, “Pinky Up” — the group announced that member Manon Bannerman would be going on hiatus. Cheers on her behalf echoed across the desert between songs. The crowd’s verdict on Katseye? I heard from many fans that while they put on an incredible show visually, they haven’t found their best hit yet. Sorry, “Pinky Up.”

I left Coachella before Olivia Rodrigo dropped her first single in years, “drop dead,” so I didn’t get to do a vibe check. The following weekend, she debuted it on stage during Addison Rae’s set, the performance for which I was berated the most for missing after I returned home.

Anything but country 

I mentioned earlier that country artist Morgan Wallen has claimed two of the last three songs of summer — and only narrowly missed winning last yeart Coachella, people were sick of it.

“No country. That’s enough country,” Jessica, a 29-year-old from Orange County, tells me. “No Morgan Wallen,” confirmed another person who overheard our conversation (the vibe at Stagecoach, Coachella’s country music sister festival, will likely be very different next weekend). I sense Wallen strumming a new hit as we speak.

If the charts have anything to say about it, country haters might be out of luck again this summer. Even as Coachella catapulted artists like Bieber and Carpenter to the upper echelon of cultural conversation, Ella Langley, a rising country artist, was topping the charts with her new album  “Dandelion” and the single “Choosin’ Texas” clinching No. 1 on the Hot 100 for a seventh week.

But at Coachella, the artist I heard named more than any other (besides Bieber) was Don Toliver, who performed at Revolve Festival. Men especially — including TJ Palma from Love Island — shouted out the singer. His pick for song of summer is “E85,” which is extremely popular on TikTok. Palma was there with his girlfriend and fellow Love Islander Iris Kendall, who pulled out her phone to confirm the name of her favorite artist of the moment, Sienna Spiro. “She’s going to be big,” Kendall tells me. Spiro’s song “Die on This Hill” is also big on TikTok.

There are other dark horses in the race, too. I heard a lot of love for EDM and house music, particularly John Summit, a DJ who performed a surprise set at Coachella and Anyma, a Coachella headliner who had to cancel his performance that weekend because high winds put his set at risk (if you’ve ever seen a Anyma set, you know the scary robot person who appears behind him on screen is kind of a huge part of the draw). My husband will not stop telling me to listen to Nine Inch Noize, a collaboration between rock band Nine Inch Nails and EDM producer Boys Noize, after livestreaming their performance from home.

I would be remiss not to mention how Taylor Swift was on many people’s lips, though she has not released new music this year and is rumored to be getting married this summer. That suggests to me that she might be a little busy to do the song of summer circuit, but I know better than to underestimate her.

All in all, the vibe among festivalgoers was an almost desperate craving for something upbeat to shake ass to in the summertime — for what can only be called, knock on wood, recession pop. People are reaching back into the catalogs of Bieber and overlooking years of distaste for Drake in search of an escapist banger. They’re scrolling through their social media feeds in hopes that a new pop princess will be crowned. Pop stars, rappers, R&B singers and EDM dudes, hear our cry — the people need a danceable bop. You have until Memorial Day to turn in your assignment and have a shot at the song of summer.