Drake's ICEMAN holds at No. 1 in its second week on the Billboard 200 albums chart, and the rapper still has four songs in this week's top 10, led by "Janice STFU" at No. 1. The song also leads Billboard's inaugural "Songs of the Summer" chart for 2026, but powerhouse competition looms.
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No discussion of the midyear pop charts would be complete without a breakdown of contenders for the honorific "song of the summer" — namely, the track that comes to dominate radio playlists, beach hangs and barbecues. The designation is unofficial and frequently based on vibes, but Billboard still does its best to make it as scientific as possible.
Each summer, Billboard unveils and updates its latest limited-series Songs of the Summer chart, which adds up and averages how the biggest current hits perform on the Hot 100 between late May and early September. Last year, No. 1 overall went to Alex Warren's "Ordinary," which ruled the Hot 100 for much of the summer — and only last week dropped off the chart amid the deluge of new Drake songs.
To make the Songs of the Summer chart, a song can't have been a major hit in a prior summer; that would have precluded "Ordinary," for example, from inclusion in 2026. The only song in this week's top 20 that doesn't qualify for Songs of the Summer in 2026 is Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean," which climbs to No. 19 on the Hot 100 thanks to renewed interest sparked by the horrendous Jackson biopic Michael.
Because Drake's ICEMAN is still posting massive numbers on streaming, that album locks down seven of the 20 tracks that make up 2026's inaugural Songs of the Summer chart. But the number is bound to drop in the coming weeks, as ICEMAN streaming subsides and major new releases enter the conversation: Olivia Rodrigo's new album, you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love, drops on June 12 — its latest single, "The Cure," debuts on both the Hot 100 and Songs of the Summer at No. 5 — while Ariana Grande readies a new record, Petal, for release on July 31. (The first single from Petal, "Hate That I Made You Love Me," dropped last Friday and is set to make its presence felt on the Hot 100 next week.)
One song sure to complicate the conversation: "I Knew It, I Knew You" by Taylor Swift. The song, which will appear on the soundtrack to Pixar's Toy Story 5, drops Friday. And Swift is already taking preorders for physical copies of the song, which will ship on June 19; if previous Swift sales drops are any indication, that's bound to trigger a huge chart surge.
In the meantime, though, your Songs of the Summer are dominated by not only Drake (for now), but also many of the songs of the spring: Olivia Dean's "Man I Need" and "So Easy (To Fall in Love)," Bruno Mars' "I Just Might" and, of course, the two biggest singles from country singer Ella Langley. This week, "Choosin' Texas" — which has spent 10 weeks at No. 1 this year so far — and "Be Her" climb to No. 2 and No. 3, respectively.
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Last week, Drake did something that had never been done before: He landed the country's top three albums simultaneously. All he had to do was release three albums on a single day!
This week, the Drake album everyone was expecting (ICEMAN) holds at No. 1, while the surprise drops (HABIBTI and MAID OF HONOUR) dip to No. 7 and No. 8, respectively. That triggers chart climbs for this summer's other biggest hits: Ella Langley's Dandelion jumps from No. 5 to No. 2, while Noah Kahan's The Great Divide, Morgan Wallen's I'm the Problem and two Michael Jackson catalog titles (Thriller and Number Ones) all rise to fill the vacuum.
Rounding out the top 10 are two K-pop acts: BTS, whose ARIRANG climbs to No. 9, and the girl group Le Sserafim, which posts its fifth top 10 album with PUREFLOW. That record posts the week's only debut in the top 100, let alone the top 10 — a telling data point that this week's charts are… a little slow, news-wise.
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As noted above, this week's top 10 is dominated by an onslaught of familiar faces and repeat offenders: four Drake songs, two Olivia Dean songs, two Ella Langley songs and one song apiece by Bruno Mars and Olivia Rodrigo, who've each got additional hit singles hovering just outside the top 10.
The chart is bound to receive a shakeup soon enough, but in the meantime, the theme of this week's Hot 100 is repetition — which, appropriately enough, was the theme of last week's Hot 100.
Consider the case of Drake, whose onslaught of debuts last week helped him set a record with 42 of the top 100 songs. This week, that number drops to 29 — which is still more than enough to crowd out dozens of contenders. Before the streaming era, the Hot 100 contained only tracks that had 1) been released as singles; and 2) found an audience via sales and radio airplay. Now, the chart is larded with deep cuts and fueled by passive listening to supersized blockbusters.
There's no perfect metric to measure the popularity of a song or album, and certainly no metric that's impervious to artists and labels attempting to artificially inflate their numbers. But there must be a better system than this, right?
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