J ason Aldean’s dream is my nightmare

Summer is almost half over, and I'm still looking to see what the "song of the summer" is going to be.

- Clarence Pag

That's not as easy to determine as it used to be before top 40 radio playlists lost their tastemaking dominance to TikTok, YouTube, and other newer technologies.

Every summer used to have its song or songs. Sly and the Family Stone's "Hot Fun in the Summertime" brings sun-burnished memories of 1969 back to mind. Roy Ayers' "Everybody Loves the Sunshine” brings the mellow side of the 1970s back to mind.

More recently, "Old Town Road" by Lil Nas X reminds me of 2020, when that country-flavored song won the rapper, singer, and songwriter the Grammy for Best Music Video, despite some purists who questioned questionably whether the Black artist's song was "country" enough. The TikTok generation, among other consumers, came to the rescue. By late summer 2019, users of platforms such as YouTube and Spotify had streamed “Old Town Road" more than a billion times.

It may sound a bit naive now, but I actually felt encouraged by the rise of a Black star to such heights in country music, especially after I later found out he also was gay. The times are changing, I thought, even in country music.

Well, I later found maybe not so much. All of which serves as the backdrop for the current