From Sabrina Carpenter to Kendrick Lamar, Guardian writers pick out the songs that will be soundtracking their barbecues for the summer
Check out a Spotify playlist of the choices
No offense to the Lana del Rey and boygenius girls, but when it comes to music, I have a limited tolerance for languid, sad or woozy; during the heat of summer especially, it’s uppers only. Few do that better than Charli xcx, a premier practitioner of loud, high-BPM music, who captured the zeitgeist in June with her album brat. And no song embodies the album’s insouciant, candid, neon-green bold ethos – or the fuck-it heedlessness, headlong nights and chaotic mood swings of summer – better than album closer 365. The mutable track, essentially a version of album opener 360 on stimulants that blasts into full club mode over three minutes, wields the figure of the party girl as an enviable, imitable main character experience. It’s a glorious celebration of hedonism, of cresting a wave of reckless energy, whether or not you “do a little key, have a little line”. (This song has given me lucid dreams of doing coke.) Everything is a disaster, so why not aspire to pure, oblivion-chasing fun? I will be bumpin’ that all summer long. Adrian Horton
