The Winter Soup You Should Make, Based On Your Favorite Song Of The Summer

Whether you had a "brat summer" or found someone to match your freak, I figured out how to recapture the essence of 2024's vacation season by translating the hottest summer bops into my lone consolation prize of withering weather: soups. Or specifically, soups, stews, chowders, and chilis; the quartet of wintertime coziness.

I simultaneously swapped out my hot weather wardrobe as I resuscitated the vestiges of bikini season and read your fortunes like dinnertime tarot. Inspired by lyrical content clues, the artists' public personas, and how pop culture ate up the hits, I'll forecast your wintertime meals based on which of the ditties you kept on loop all summer right before the season slides into monotonous holiday droll (Mariah, it's not you, it's me). So, grab a pot, a wooden spoon, a splash or two of wine, and your Bluetooth speaker, and let me chaperone you back to the early months of Chappell Roan's reign.

Arguably the most universal song of the summer, Sabrina Carpenter's "Espresso" marked the artist's breakthrough hit into A-listerdom. On this track, she's able to tap into the over-the-top-ness of the greatest pop songs in recent memory — think, Justin Timberlake's "SexyBack," Katy Perry's "Teenage Dream," and contemporary Olivia Rodrigo's "Obsessed" — all while tethering the tune to her own signature cadence. In the first handful of listens, the lyric, "That's that me espresso," might ring a bit nonsensical. But as the song washed over the landscape of summertime, the words transformed into sounding more inventive. Now, months after the release of "Espresso," the phrase settles into a permanent term of pop culture quotations. 

So, when I sit down to stew over Carpenter's success, I suggest stirring up a savory pot of mole — seasoned with coffee, of course, to commemorate the titular beverage of "Espresso." Spiking your mole with those complementary notes of coffee (or instant espresso) and allowing them to intermingle with the earthy notes of the stew's signature chocolate will balance any sweetness the cacao brings to the pot.

Sampling J-Kwon's 2004 hit "Tipsy," Shaboozey's "A Bar Song (Tipsy)" also dwells on the buoyant joys of a week's closure and the promise of a stiff drink at the end of a timecard. Every generation deserves a good drinking anthem, and Shaboozey ushers Gen-Z to legal drinking age with a hip-hop-country crossover that could be a companion to Beyoncé's springtime 2024 release, "Cowboy Carter." Like many drinking anthems predating Shaboozey's entry into the gin-drenched cannon, the magic of "A Bar Song" relies on the melancholic, blue-collar woes lurking behind a frosted glass. The juxtaposition of a wild night out and the reality of its short-lived nature set the table for a single destined for the repeat button. 

Though Shaboozey name-checks whiskey in his No. 1 Billboard Hot 100 hit, the oft-referred occupational boredom leads me to recommend my favorite weeknight meal fit for a fancy evening out: mussels in white wine. Simple, sultry, and soaked in wine, the dish requires little more than some shellfish, garlic, and an open bottle of vino. Perfect if you're leaning into cuffing season and looking to woo a new flame, remember the sweaty summer nights by adding dashes of heat via red pepper flakes or hot sauce to this French classic.

With her third studio album "Hit Me Hard and Soft," Billie Eilish solidified her status as alt-pop's vocal-fry princess. Along with her brother, Finneas, the duo conquered their signature soft-spoken vulnerability on this collaborative record. Though the lead single of "Hit Me Hard and Soft" — "Lunch" — contains food imagery and innuendos, it was Eilish's follow-up hit "Birds of a Feather" that I flocked to.

Sexy, melodramatic, and winking all at once, "Birds of a Feather" was the mild summer banger softening the blow of the oncoming wintertime. And since the single smacked as an immediate classic, I assigned the snowy season's go-to cure-all as the stand-in for it: chicken noodle soup. Like the perennial classic bowl, both song and soup feature fowl swaddled in reassurance — either in warming broth or in the songscape Eilish complements. Plus, chicken noodle soup's chameleon-like qualities mimic the singer-songwriter's ever-morphing sense of style. So, whether I pull open my favorite can (Campbell's), cook my own from scratch, or wade into a new variation, chicken noodle soup hits the spot (hard or soft) no matter what. 

Somewhat of a comeback for the Irish crossover act, "Too Sweet" marked Hozier's first No. 1 single in the United States. A full-throated indictment of a lover's disqualifications as a long-term paramour, "Too Sweet" baits the listener with a gleefully melodic hook, obscuring the narrator's scathing review of the differences between himself and his casual crush. The object of his rejected desire appears to order wack coffee, lame drinks, and goes to bed too early; while he — a bona fide rockstar — parties, stays out late, and sleeps in later. In practice, I wonder if this Hozier hit's correlative soup might be a sloppy bowl of cereal at noon. But for the sake of this list, I'm thinking anyone still yodeling the chorus of "Too Sweet" should enjoy a bowl of hot and sour soup this winter. 

Surely acidic enough for the anti-hero of "Too Sweet," hot and sour soup's roots harken back to China, with variations of the spicy, tangy dish now found worldwide. Its biting flavor profile is often offered at Chinese restaurants as an alternative to egg drop soup.

Chappell Roan's splashy summer surprised even the newly minted pop idol herself. Selecting a single from Roan's hard launch into stardom proved more difficult than assigning a soup to one of her stratospheric singles. The food-centric theme of "HOT TO GO!" — though on-topic — felt too on the nose and outdated considering the album which it calls home, "The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess," debuted back in 2023. Roan's follow-up single "Good Luck, Babe!" hit refresh on the critically adored but underplayed debut record and therefore triumphs as her 2024 song of the summer contender. Taking the track's title to heart, I'm stewing up a pot of an all-American soup signaling good fortune: black-eyed pea.

Eaten as a gesture of luck around New Year's Day, the dish's superstitious origins in the South harken back to the beans themselves symbolizing coins, along with the accompanying collard greens mimicking the look of money — not to mention its ability to stretch how many mouths one could feed with one pot. Like Roan, a Missouri native, a bowl of black-eyed pea soup comes from humble beginnings but now personifies the promise of a better tomorrow.

Tinashe's return to the top of the pop charts contains the intentionally off-kilter refrain, "I've been a nasty girl," on a loop. But it was the single's repeated inquiry — "Is somebody gonna match my freak?" — that proved to be the meme-able brainchild for summertime's Instagram feeds everywhere. However, while I spied innumerable matcha brands cleverly reacting to Tinashe's inquisition, not one freekeh pun passed through my algorithm — and the missed opportunity haunted me into autumn.

An underused kitchen staple in American households, freekeh can act as a stand-in for whenever a major grain runs out. With a nutty, smoky, earthy taste, this ancient super grain hails from the Middle East and can be used as a substitute for rice, orzo, cous cous, and even macaroni noodles. Diving into a bag of the ancient grain classes up salads (you can even fry the grains for an added crunch), soaks up juices from marinated meat, and provides extra body to soups. So, this fruit cake season, I'm unzipping my freekeh bag for health-minded vegetable soups, where the grain shares space with other hearty ingredients. 

One popular option would be chorba frik, a tomato-based soup featuring chickpeas and various vegetables that's heated with spices like cinnamon, cumin, paprika, and turmeric. While lamb (or even beef) is typically added in, you can easily keep it vegan by opting for a plant-based protein.

For tea spillers and gossip hounds (I'm raising my hand as I type), the Kendrick Lamar vs. Drake dispute made the summer of 2024 even hotter by fanning the flames of the rappers' ongoing tiff. For fans of either (and/or both), the back-and-forth between the two hitmakers marked a new era for the established artists' careers and bulked the music catalogs of both men. The rap battle ultimately concluded with Lamar's Top 10 hit "Not Like Us." While pop culture fanatics largely declared Lamar the victor (a fact perhaps even further solidified by his helming of the upcoming 2025 Super Bowl halftime show), the musical altercations themselves brought us all to the table. So, if your summer playlist centered around Lamar and Drakes's ongoing feud, I suggest commemorating the debate with a big pot of beef stew. 

Of course, the pun is too good to pass up — just like a piping hot bowl of warmth-giving stew. But this dish also provides the heft and heartiness to get you through the winter months (or, to the Super Bowl). And while you could stick with an old-fashioned beef stew recipe, you could also spend the colder months trying to one-up yourself by elevating the dish with these flavorful additions.

Admittedly, I didn't see Empress Of's highly acclaimed "For Your Consideration" soar in popularity like I expected it to. This is despite the fact that the Honduran-American singer-songwriter's fourth studio album found a footing in today's pop music landscape more than she ever has before. Genre-less, bilingual, beat-driven yet very sad at times, lead single "Kiss Me" features singer Rina Sawayama. A throwback to a '90s sound à la Suzanne Vega meeting latter-day Britney Spears, it's the song of the summer your friends just haven't heard yet. 

If you, like myself, can't stop yourself from returning to Empress Of's "Kiss Me," celebrate her in sweater weather with a soup boasting as much variety as her music: tapado de pescado. Creamy and slightly sweet from a coconut-based broth, this Honduran soup has a little bit of everything — white fish, seafood like crab or shrimp, hunks of various veggies, and plantains. Like the artist in question's musical sound, this perfect-for-winter soup refuses to be pinned down into a single flavor profile.

Until the summer of 2024, I had successfully dodged succumbing to the charms of both Post Malone and Morgan Wallen. But together, and with the help of other country-R&B crossover hits (like Lil Nas X's "Old Town Road" and Beyoncé's "Texas Hold 'Em," for example), my defenses broke down — and I found myself giddily singing along to the duo's catchy country-pop collaboration "I Had Some Help." Perhaps because the song itself contains winking references to Wallen's public controversies, or maybe since Malone guested alongside two fan-favorite pop artists before "I Had Some Help" hit airwaves (on Beyoncé's "Levii's Jeans" and Taylor Swift's "Fortnight"), something about the twosome's partnership just makes sense. 

So, if you too still need assistance prying the tune out of your head, try an indulgent helping of broccoli and cheddar with a beer-soaked broth. Though I'll never entirely understand how the companionships meld so well — in the case of both soup and tune — when the craving for either strikes, there's no match for caving in. While broccoli and cheese soup is already a hearty, vegetarian-friendly favorite during the colder months, the addition of beer will add complex, rich notes to the soup that will only up the comfort factor.

Charli XCX's "Sweat" concert tour is keeping "brat summer" alive and well, as of this writing. Though I traded in my slime-green tank tops for lime-colored rain boots, Charli XCX's "Brat" remix record has further buoyed her sixth studio album's relevance, saving it from sinking into the forgotten frills of summer long into our damp fall days. With hits like "360" and "Apple," the English singer's intentionally abrasive music evades the aisles of drugstores, gym classes, and most restaurants. But it's her sly introspection and her long gazes into her own self-consciousness that broke "Brat" into the mainstream. 

Since Charli XCX's entire "Brat" album became the symbol of summer 2024, I'm advising devotees to never let the emblematic shade of green go and cook up a pot of bright green split pea soup whenever recalling the raucousness of "brat summer." After all, if the "brat" ethos is all about keeping it casual but with a bit of an edge, messy yet confident, and owning who you are, then this comforting soup fits the bill. 

Its base is a take-me-as-I-am kind of rustic, made with pantry basics like onion, carrots, celery, veggie broth, and common spices — but split pea soup itself is also easily customizable. So, feel free to experiment with your recipe, but keep it simple: Throw in some cooked ham and bacon for added protein and flavor, smoked paprika for extra smokiness, lemon zest for a little zing, or cream to really lean into the soup's decadence factor.