For teen girls seeking a role model their parents wouldn’t appreciate, kid-TV talents turned pop stars were the way to go. The weather was hot, but the news was hotter. Miley Cyrus had her tongue out more often than it was in, one-time Nickelodeon darling Amanda Bynes started a gasoline-fueled fire in someone’s driveway, and stars from Kanye to KStew lost it on invasive paparazzi.
We’ll breakdown 2013, but you can relive all your summer anthems year by year: 1995 | 1996 | 1997 | 1998 | 1999 | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013
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And here were the most memorable tracks we listened to while it all went down. (See all the No.1s from 2013 here.)
1.”Blurred Lines” – Robin Thicke
This one-hit wonder will be forever ingrained in our memory—likely less because of the actual song and more because of the amount of nudity featured in the NSFW music video. And then there was the controversy around lyrics that many felt “blurred a line” around consent. Oh, and we’ll never forget Thicke’s raunchy live rendition of the song with Miley Cyrus dressed as a naughty teddy, violating a foam finger. For all the scandal surrounding it, the tune peaked at number one in more than 25 countries.
2. “Get Lucky” – Daft Punk feat. Pharrell Williams
Evidently, a little disco resurgence was just what the masses wanted. The three-way collaboration sold a whopping 9.3 million copies, but its success didn’t come without long hours; it reportedly took Daft Punk 18 months to finish the song. The masked duo co-wrote the jam with Pharrell Williams, and they probably couldn’t have done it without the iconic disco king himself, Nile Rodgers.
3. “We Can’t Stop” – Miley Cyrus
Children of the ’90s grew up with Miley Cyrus on Hannah Montana, and saw her transform from girl next door to a twerking young adult. “We Can’t Stop,” the first single off her Bangerz album, was a drug-fueled slow-burning party song. And because her loyal fans were ready for a new sort of Cyrus, the song’s music video received over 30 million streams in less than 40 days. The finale of the song’s promotion was that memorable MTV Video Music Awards performance with Robin Thicke, which certainly was not Disney-approved.
4. “Can’t Hold Us” – Macklemore & Ryan Lewis feat. Ray Dalton
Macklemore and Ryan Lewis know how to get a crowd pumped, as the premiere of “Cant Hold Us” proved. It was so uplifting that the Oklahoma City Thunder used it to pump up the crowd during the NBA playoffs until Macklemore asked them to stop— he was a loyal Seattle Supersonics fan. Wait, Seattle had a basketball team? (yeah, they became the Thunder in 2008.)
5. “Come & Get It” – Selena Gomez
Miley Cyrus wasn’t the only Disney star to show off a new, more adult side of herself—Selena Gomez’s version was just far less provocative. “Come & Get It” was the first song off her debut solo album, Stars Dance, and her first solo number one on the charts. Many speculated the pop track about luring a man was inspired by Gomez’s über-public breakup with Justin Bieber, but she didn’t write it—the song was originally intended for Rihanna.
Little did we know…
Finding a summer fling became way easier thanks to the launch of Tinder. Instead of going to bars, millennials could satisfy their dating dry spells without ever leaving bed, thanks to a few USC grads. The app won a TechCrunch Techie Award in its first few months, and by summer, it was one of the top 25 social networking apps. The dating crowd was swiping right, left and right.