The Tamesis
“She’s experiencing global upheaval from Trump to climate change, but she’s still thinking about how to put on her sunglasses and move forward as best we can,” Louie said. “How do you deal with the fear of our current existence? In the midst of history, we’ve tried to find ways to find joy and love and life — and that sparked the idea in Charly that there’s always a risk that we might be partying off a cliff.”
It’s not just Charlie who’s stuck in the metaphysical quagmire, there are others too. Many of the contenders for SOTS in 2026 are not entirely optimistic. Ella Langley’s “Choosin’ Texas” has been lingering on the charts all year, a country ballad that seems destined to be heard on boats on the lake and at backyard barbecues all summer long. Filled with melancholy and tears, the song tells the story of a cowboy who escapes home to dusty Texas, leaving only a bottle of Jack Daniels for a Tennessee girl. Ariana Grande will also return petal;The album’s first taste is sour, a slow, sad ballad called “Hate Me to Make You Love Me,” which lyrically references flowers being placed on someone’s cold, dead grave and bumblebees trapped in honey.
And then there’s Kim Petras’ brilliant new “Jeep,” which she says was inspired by her experience evacuating her home during the 2025 Palisades fire, when she was forced to pack all her belongings into a car and escape to the desert. As for Olivia Rodrigo’s take on the national mood? The title of the first single from her latest album says it all: “Drop Dead.” “Party rock anthem,” this is not.
“Sure, sometimes songs are meant to transport us to some fictional place where everything is fun and shiny, but to me the most important artists touch on the reality of the world, and right now the reality of the world isn’t always that rosy,” says Best Coast’s Bethany Cosentino. Best Coast released an indie rock classic in July 2010 with the sad summer masterpiece. crazy for you. In the song, she sings about romantic indecision and emotional confusion, bathing it all in the golden haze of her native Los Angeles. More than a decade later, in 2023, she released “Natural Disaster,” a song inspired by climate anxiety. “In the summer, there’s a lot of pressure to post about your epic Cape Cod vacation. The energy is high and you’re supposed to be out frolicking, running in the sprinklers with your white claws, and getting a tan. But the truth is, a lot of people are just trying to survive.”
Another artist vying for SOTS this year is Drake, who has been keeping a low profile following a knockout match with Kendrick Lamar and surprisingly released three (!) new albums in May. Infamously, Lamar delivered several fatal blows to the Canadian rapper on the diss track “Not Like Us,” which eventually became its own SOTS in 2024 when car radios and Bluetooth speakers in Central Park inevitably blared. Now, Drake is back with a bruising release, an album titled Iceman As if to say, he’s destined (or destined) to remain cold and grim, no matter what the weather forecast is outside. He’s recorded a slew of SOTS songs over the years, but, because he’s always had some emotional soul, too, many of them, like “Passionfruit” (2017) and “In My Feelings” (2018), have a shiny surface atop their Mobile core. On this latest three-album feat, he sounds wizened and shambling while also desperately trying to dance his way into our hearts with the fun “Cheetah Print.” But the song that got the most buzz and hit No. 1 on the Billboard charts was probably the prickly, resentful “Janice STFU.”
