Forget about Rolling Stone . . .

The Wall Street Journal online edition has come through with its mix of this year’s hottest songs for summer. The winners?

Interestingly, a whole bunch of covers of just TWO songs — (VIDEOS BELOW THE FOLD)

“Robin Thicke’s irresistibly bouncy pop song “Blurred Lines” has lodged at the top of Billboard’s flagship singles chart for seven weeks in a row, the longest stretch of any track this year. But chart ranks or sales tallies are only two ways of gauging a song’s cultural impact. As important today is the number of cover versions the song inspires: The faster the homages spread, the more tenacious the hit. In the case of “Blurred Lines,” a racy music video propelled interest, but so did versions of the song performed by the formidable rock bands Queens of the Stone Age, Vampire Weekend and fun.These clones can also serve as a leading indicator of that all-important (but completely arbitrary) honor of Song of the Summer. By that measure, at least, the winner would be Daft Punk’s disco-redux anthem “Get Lucky,” which has accumulated 40,000 fan-made videos, according to YouTube, along with hit-or-miss renditions by such acts as Wilco, who performed the hypnotic song at a festival hosted by the band. “Blurred Lines” has amassed 16,000 fan-made videos, which can include covers, lip-syncing and other uses of the track; another seasonal earworm, Miley Cyrus’s “We Can’t Stop,” has garnered 10,000.”

[“Song of the Summer: Blurred Lines vs. Get Lucky,” The Wall Street Journal, 7/25/2013“]

AND NOW FOR THE (NOT ESPECIALLY DIVERSE) PLAYLIST . . .

http://youtu.be/s6NDY8FSr9M