What a summer time bummer — the place are all the recent bops for 2023?

Precisely one 12 months in the past, the highest of the Billboard Scorching 100 was bumping with chart-busting beats from Beyoncé’s “Break My Soul, Lizzo’s “About Rattling Time” and Harry Kinds’ pogo-pop powerhouse “As It Was.”

There’s no denying — the summer time of 2022 was nothing in need of a boppity bopfest, one that might ship us all twirling into the canine days with an additional pep in our step.

Flash ahead to the beginning of one other August, and the highest trio seems to be an entire lot totally different: Jason Aldean’s “Attempt That in a Small City,” Morgan Wallen’s “Final Time” and CMA Entertainer of the 12 months Luke Combs’ “Quick Automotive,” a Tracy Chapman cowl.

In order that’s two problematic — to place it mildly — nation artists in Aldean and Wallen, and a wistful traditional borrowed from a ’90s folk-rocker. (Which, by the way, makes Chapman the primary African-American girl to pen a rustic chart-topper on her personal.)

It’s, in truth, the primary time within the historical past of the Billboard Scorching 100 — because it began method again in 1958 — that three nation singles have claimed the uppermost spots on that pop chart.

The place within the “Hot in Herre” hell did all of the summer time pop bops go? (Shout-out to Nelly and his Band-Assist.)

Twenty years in the past, we had Beyoncé making a scorching solo splash with “Loopy in Love,” together with a killer help from baby-daddy-to-be Jay-Z.

Behind an insane go-go groove that simply wouldn’t give up for eight consecutive weeks at No. 1, it turned one of many all-time songs of summer time.

And since then — from Mariah Carey’s “We Belong Collectively” in 2005 and Rihanna’s “Umbrella” in 2007 to Kinds’ “Watermelon Sugar” in 2020 and any variety of Drake jams (2015’s “Hotline Bling,” 2016’s “One Dance,” 2018’s “In My Feelings,” take your decide) — there has all the time been a tune of summer time that you’ll bear in mind as if the sand was nonetheless between your toes.

Not in 2023.

Severely, with only one month to go earlier than the unofficial finish of summer time on Labor Day, it’s exhausting to think about one single summer time shimmy that has united — to cite a sure 1978 Funkadelic traditional — one nation below a groove.

Sure, there was Jung Kook’s “Seven” — the primary solo tune from a BTS member to go No. 1 — Selena Gomez’s “Calm Down” chill-out with Afrobeats artist Rema, and Olivia Rodrigo’s moody “Vampire” chart-topper.

However none of those songs will come near defining the summer time season in the way in which that we’ve got come to anticipate, going all the way in which again to the Seaside Boys’ “California Women” in 1965.

The O.G. Kens’ seminal surfer tune “Enjoyable, Enjoyable, Enjoyable” was featured in an early trailer for the present “Barbie” blockbuster, however even the soundtrack to that smash flick hasn’t been capable of give us that summer time slay with Nicki Minaj and Ice Spice’s “Barbie World” transforming of Aqua’s “Barbie Lady.”

We love Billie Eilish’s “What Was I Made For?” — one other Oscar contender for the 21-year-old star that can also be on the “Barbie” soundtrack — however rattling, what a mellow summer time bummer. Can we please do a remix of “Dangerous Man” or one thing?

And even Travis Scott’s new single “K-pop” — the rapper’s triple-threat comeback that includes each Dangerous Bunny and The Weeknd — is kinda meh-pop.

At the least the queer neighborhood has had an authorized winner within the electro ecstasy of Kylie Minogue’s “Padam Padam.”

However until one thing hotter comes out this month, we may need to accept Taylor Swift’s “Merciless Summer season,” which has discovered new love — 4 years after it was first launched as an album monitor on 2019’s “Lover” — because of her epic Eras Tour.

Wouldn’t that be merciless.