![](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/fc15fcf8747a894378ccd6a7f2d0803109-fallalbums.rhorizontal.w700.jpg\")
<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\n Three bangers incoming.
\n Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos:\u2028Getty Images (Jason Koerner, Gareth Cattermole\/TAS24), Samir Hussein\/WireImage\n <\/p>\n
The song of the summer hasn\u2019t materialized. Alex Warren\u2019s \u201cOrdinary\u201d<\/a> nominally ruled the charts, but let\u2019s be real \u2014 who\u2019s playing that at the beach? The fictional girl group from KPop Demon Hunters<\/a>, Huntr\/x<\/a>, is currently No. 1 on the Billboard charts with \u201cGolden,\u201d<\/a> but it gained steam a little too late, and, now that it feels dominant, the summer is nearly over. With seemingly every pop artist who hasn\u2019t released an album in the last calendar year (and even some who have)\u00a0returning this fall, we\u2019re looking ahead instead. O-Rod, if you\u2019re reading this, there\u2019s still time. Below, every pop star attempting to make up for the summer by defining the fall.<\/p>\n Last year\u2019s song-of-the-summer sweepstakes winner with \u201cEspresso,\u201d Carpenter is barely waiting a year before putting out a follow-up to her smash album Short n\u2019 Sweet<\/a>. Man\u2019s Best Friend<\/a> already has a No. 1 hit in \u201cManchild,\u201d plus it\u2019s been embroiled in controversy<\/a> over the album cover \u2014 a good sign for any pop girlie worth her salt since Madonna. Carpenter has had the wind on her back since \u201cEspresso,\u201d and with a new album on the way, as well as a feature on her mentor Taylor Swift\u2019s upcoming record (see below), it doesn\u2019t look like the momentum is slowing down anytime soon.<\/p>\n Song of the Fall potential? <\/strong>9\/10<\/p>\n Sheeran, perhaps the defining pop star of the 2010s, hasn\u2019t had as much luck in the following decade. \u201cBad Habits\u201d and \u201cShivers,\u201d both released in 2021, hit the top ten in America, but neither felt even half as defining as \u201cShape of You,\u201d \u201cThinking Out Loud,\u201d or even his eternal classic \u201cThe A Team.\u201d He hasn\u2019t been back in the top ten since. Singles from Play, including \u201cAzizam\u201d and \u201cSapphire,\u201d have mostly been nonstarters in the U.S. Still, nobody expected Sheeran to become a pop blockbuster in the first place, so we\u2019d never entirely count him out.<\/p>\n Song of the Fall potential?<\/strong> 3\/10<\/p>\n Cardi B has waited so long to release her second studio album that it feels absurd that it\u2019s only her sophomore showing. Her debut, Invasion of Privacy<\/a>, was released way back in 2018, hit No. 1 on the album charts, and won her the Grammy for Best Rap Album. Since then, she\u2019s released huge, No. 1 songs like 2020\u2019s \u201cWAP\u201d and 2021\u2019s \u201cUp,\u201d both of which will be included on the album. Does it feel a little silly to include your five-year-old hit on your new album? The answer is yes. Does she care? No<\/a>. While Cardi\u2019s\u00a0first single off Am I the Drama?, \u201cOutside,\u201d did not match her previous chart highs, her Jay-Z-sampling \u201cImaginary Playerz,\u201d released August 15, might make up for it.<\/p>\n Song of the Fall potential? <\/strong>6\/10<\/p>\n So far, Lola Young has a song. Her track \u201cMessy\u201d is an international hit, making it to No. 14 on the Billboard Hot 100, and it would be a solid launchpad for any young (pun intended) star. She\u2019s got a clear vision on that track (\u201cRemi Wolf but less quirky\u201d) and a great voice. Nothing she\u2019s released since, including the three singles off of her upcoming album, have been able to recapture that level of attention. Still, more people are aware of her than ever, after a summer of festivals including Coachella, Glastonbury, and All Things Go. There\u2019s opportunity.<\/p>\n Song of the Fall potential? <\/strong>3\/10<\/p>\n It\u2019s always a mistake to count out Doja Cat. She may be a troll, and she may piss off her fans, but she also releases hits \u2014 and lots of them. Her last album, 2023\u2019s Scarlet, featured gigantic tracks including \u201cPaint the Town Red\u201d and \u201cAgora Hills.\u201d Granted, her most recent track, a collaboration with Jack Harlow called \u201cJust Us<\/a>,\u201d failed to launch, but that felt like an expression of his falling stock, not hers. We\u2019ll see if that\u2019s true when the first\u00a0song from Vie, \u201cJealous Type,\u201d is released on August 25,\u00a0co-produced by (get this) Jack Antonoff. Yeah, that\u2019s the kind of thing that will rule over Spotify and CVS playlists alike.<\/p>\n Song of the Fall potential? <\/strong>8\/10<\/p>\n Mariah Carey has gotten no less famous since she first burst onto the scene with \u201cVision of Love\u201d in 1990, but that fame has changed. Ask anyone under 24 today who she is, and they\u2019re more likely to simply say the words \u201cQueen of Christmas\u201d than to know any of her 18 non\u2013\u201cAll I Want for Christmas Is You\u201d No. 1 hits. Still, she\u2019s mounted comebacks before (most notably in 2005\u2019s \u201cWe Belong Together\u201d), and she has name recognition to spare. 2018\u2019s Caution<\/a> is better than it has any right to be, and though it didn\u2019t produce any real hits, we\u2019d never fully discount Mimi. Here for It All\u2019s first two singles, \u201cType Dangerous\u201d and \u201cSugar Sweet,\u201d are both good, but wouldn\u2019t it be amazing to have a Mariah Carey No. 1 in 2025?<\/p>\n Song of the Fall potential? <\/strong>4\/10<\/p>\n She\u2019s the most popular person on the planet, the biggest pop star of the century, and the defining artist of multiple decades. Taylor Swift is too big to fail. And why should we want her to, anyway? At the very least, no pop star in the world has given both her fans and her haters more to talk about in recent years than Taylor Swift. This album will reunite her with the 21st century\u2019s greatest hitmaker, Max Martin, whom she hasn\u2019t collaborated with since Reputation. The record is aiming to be \u201c12 bangers<\/a>,\u201d according to Travis Kelce, and the album title is already<\/a> a<\/a> meme<\/a>. She will succeed. She can\u2019t not.<\/p>\n Song of the Fall potential?<\/strong> 10\/10<\/p>\n Related<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Three bangers incoming. Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos:\u2028Getty Images (Jason Koerner, Gareth Cattermole\/TAS24), Samir Hussein\/WireImage The song of the summer…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":696,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[264],"tags":[922,975,976,18,117,19,17,977,980,978,337,5,981,974,979,972,973],"class_list":{"0":"post-695","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-cardi-b","9":"tag-doja-cat","10":"tag-ed-sheeran","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-ie","14":"tag-ireland","15":"tag-lola-young","16":"tag-main-pop-girls","17":"tag-mariah-carey","18":"tag-music","19":"tag-news","20":"tag-pop-music","21":"tag-sabrina-carpenter","22":"tag-song-of-the-fall","23":"tag-song-of-the-summer","24":"tag-taylor-swift"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=695"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}