The phrase “Hot Girl Summer” has been reduced to a thousand social media captions, festival selfies and ironic memes over the years. However, Daezy take that familiar slogan and completely flip it on its head. Frontwoman Daisy Bateman doesn’t waste time dressing things up, as the opening verse lays everything bare: a dying grandfather, spiralling anxiety, unemployment and the overwhelming feeling that life has suddenly lost its direction. Rather than searching for grand metaphors, Daezy lean into brutal honesty. The result feels refreshingly human.
Born from a real-life conversation between Bateman and a friend while both were dealing with job losses and uncertainty, the song captures a feeling that will be painfully familiar to anyone trying to hold themselves together while everything around them falls apart. What began as a throwaway joke—”at least we’re still two hot girls in the summer”—became the emotional centrepiece of the track. The chorus doesn’t pretend everything is okay, as Bateman repeatedly admits she’s “barely breathing” and “trying to hold on”, yet still clings to the absurd optimism of the title phrase. It’s less a declaration of confidence than a survival mechanism. The kind of thing you tell yourself because the alternative is admitting defeat.
“‘Hot Girl Summer’ came from a really strange, heavy moment in my life where everything felt like it was falling apart at once,” explains Daisy. “I was on the phone to a friend while driving to Jackson’s (guitarist) place and we were both talking about losing our jobs, feeling completely lost. Then she said: “at least we’re still two hot girls in the summer. ” It completely broke the tension. I actually laughed.”
Daezy continue to occupy an appealing space between indie-rock grit and indie-pop accessibility. For this song, she is working again with producer Steven Schram, the band deliberately chased the energy of their live show, reportedly performing the song more than forty times in the studio before settling on the final take. That effort pays off. Nothing here feels overly polished or manufactured. There’s a looseness to the performance that makes every emotional punch land a little harder.
Perhaps the strongest moment arrives during the bridge when Bateman reveals she’s been “faking all the light” while quietly falling apart every night. It’s a devastating admission wrapped inside one of the song’s catchiest melodies. The track suddenly becomes less about being a “hot girl in the summer” and more about the masks we wear when life becomes overwhelming.
For longtime followers, ‘Hot Girl Summer’ feels like another significant step forward, as Daezy sound increasingly confident in their identity. The genius of ‘Hot Girl Summer’ is that it finds hope without ever becoming cheesy, and it acknowledges that sometimes life is objectively terrible. Sometimes people get sick, jobs disappear, anxiety takes over and nothing goes to plan.
