Devon Powers says there is one significant data point no one has considered in the debate around 2025’s Song of the Summer, or rather, why there doesn’t really seem to be one this year: Donald Trump .

As media has become less centralized—music streamers replaced radio stations, TikTok killed the music video, and so on—how people consume music, and who they listen to, has become even more fragmented. But today, Trump represents a reawakened avatar of cultural togetherness. He may be the closest thing in our society we have to a monoculture. In the US, he is the one thing a majority of people have all fervently rallied around, be they for or against what he stands for.

His influence reaches far beyond the fractured political arena of Washington, DC, Powers says, and he could be having

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