WANTED: Song Of the Summer 2015, Infectious Pop Tune Needed For Seasonal Hit

The song of the summer is dead. It's only been five years since Billboard started tracking the "Songs of the Summer," and now, the Huffington Post is trying to kill the seasonal jam.

Writer Lauren Duca points out that there hasn't been a definitive song of this summer yet, and it's already late July. She's not wrong. While OMI's "Cheerleader" has been heralded as 2015's song of the summer, it currently sits at No. 4, according to the Billboard chart. That puts it behind Wiz Khalifa's "See You Again," Taylor Swift's "Bad Blood" and Fetty Wap's "Trap Queen."

Songs of the summer need to be "infectious, uptempo and a little bit different," iHeartMedia’s Tom Poleman told Billboard. iHeartMedia owns 850 radio stations across the country, as well as the digital iHeartRadio. Poleman said it also helps if the song is on the radio early so it's familiar by the start of summer.

The idea that one song will dominate summer listening has surprisingly long roots. Newspapers discussed the song of the summer as far back as 1910. Since then, predicting the song of the summer has become somewhat of a game, according to Vox.

This year, a vote taken by RyanSeacrest.com named Britney Spears and Iggy Azalea’s "Pretty Girls" the 2015 song of the summer. One Direction's "No Control" won a similar poll from Billboard after the band's fans demanded it be added.

New York magazine offered an analysis in 1995 before the definitive ruler of popular music charts, Billboard, dug through their archives to name the songs of the summer since 1985. ("Shout" by Tears for Fears was 1985's song of the summer, in case you were wondering.) More recent summer hits include Iggy Azalea's "Fancy," in 2014, Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines," in 2013, and Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe," in 2012.

The Billboard list is rather extensive, ranking the top 10 songs of every summer. But Billboard's definition of "summer" is the period between Memorial Day and Labor Day -- so really late spring and most of summer. Rihanna is credited with a string of summer hits, including "Pon de Replay," in 2005, "Unfaithful," in 2006, "Umbrella," in 2007, and "Take A Bow," in 2008.

It takes a lot of money to create a song of the summer. An NPR report from 2011 put the production costs about $78,000. But that pales in comparison to the millions spent on advertising to and wooing radio stations. Of course, money like that is only shelled out for stars; other artists are on their own.

So, is the song of the summer dead? Media scholars would point out that the Internet and streaming services have led to an increase in media fragmentation -- meaning that now that we have so many choices, we're not listening to the same things. This also contributes to what's been referred to as the long tail, where fewer songs are bona fide hits, but more songs are made and listened to. Billboard has been doing its best to incorporate streaming services into the charts.

However, often what we colloquially refer to as the "song of the summer" doesn't match the charts, as the New York Times pointed out last year. And this year, with a somber Wiz Khalifa song taking the top of the charts, maybe we're still waiting for the song of the summer to make its mark.

Maybe in the future we'll remember 2015's song of the summer as one of the other songs. Our money is on "Watch Me."