'Call Me Maybe' Crowned Top Song of Summer

After a season of pop culture ubiquity, Carly Rae Jepsen's debut U.S. hit "Call Me Maybe" is Billboard's top Song of the Summer.

The Canadian pop singer's maiden American hit spent nine weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100. After fellow Canadian Justin Bieber revealed his affinity for the song to his then-approximately 20 million Twitter followers, the song's popularity surged, spurring impromptu versions of it by everyone from the all-male Harvard baseball team to (thanks to digital ingenuity) President Obama.

"Maybe" has sold 5.5 million downloads since its release, according to Nielsen SoundScan, and garnered an astounding 1.8 billion in cumulative audience on Billboard's Radio Songs chart, according to Nielsen BDS.

Billboard's annual Songs of the Summer running tally, presented by Pepsi, tracks the most popular songs based on cumulative performance on the weekly Hot 100 chart from Memorial Day through Labor Day.

Jepsen is the first artist to claim top Song of the Summer honors with a first Hot 100 hit since Katy Perry won the mantle in 2008 with her first Hot 100 entry, "I Kissed a Girl." Since, Perry has become synonymous with summer anthems. Her "Waking Up in Vegas" ranked No. 10 for summer 2009, while "California Gurls," featuring Snoop Dogg, was No. 1 for summer 2010. Last year - while LMFAO's "Party Rock Anthem," featuring Lauren Bennett and GoonRock, earned the top Song of the Summer ribbon - Perry placed two titles on the season's final chart: "Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)" (No. 5) and "E.T.," featuring Kanye West (No. 9).

This year, Perry appears in the final Songs of the Summer chart for a fifth consecutive year, as her "Wide Awake" places at No. 4.

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