Songs of Summer

In which we focus on a season, not a particular song

The school year is ending, the weather is getting warmer. Time to talk about summer.

Songs of Summer

Certain times of year attract songs like a powerful magnet attracts iron filings. Big holidays have campy songs, emotional songs, and traditional songs. I’ve always loved Christmas songs and with young kids, we do a lot of Halloween songs.

Seasons attract music too. I know it’s truly winter when we play Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue for the first time (often with the fireplace on). A particular kind of stark autumn wind only feels true when I put on George Winston’s Autumn album.

Though absurdly idiosyncratic, I play Beethoven whenever it rains. But, that might be too localized—just something I do.

Perhaps growing up in a region with limited sun, lots of cold, and lots of precipitation, I was drawn to The Beach Boys and California music. More specifically, to summer music.

Now, you don’t have to grow up in miserable weather to love summer music. Most people seem to love summer songs. They are generally upbeat, happy songs. Songs become associated in our brains with the context in which we experience them and summer is a time of vacations and exotic trips and no school. Summer music is tangled in our mental jumble with feelings of excitement and relaxation, with an absence of grind and responsibility. Summer music is the music of lazy possibility. It’s the reason we sometimes consider moving to a place when we are on vacation there.

Particular songs become a Song of the Summer (in caps) and these mark specific years, specific portions of lives. These songs associate not just with the season, but with the year and can bring us back to a particular age and life circumstance.

I’ve written before about how the movie and soundtrack to Eddie and the Cruisers looms absurdly large in my nostalgia. Double whammy for that one as it was not only a soundtrack of the summer, but a movie of the summer too. It even contains a sweltering summering scene with the Cruisers playing at resort bar. Over the years, that scene has almost come to define summer for me. I wonder how distorted it has become, replayed year after year in my head? I should rewatch Eddie and the Cruisers to compare the scene with my memorized version.

Sometimes music was intentionally released during the summer, sometimes I merely discovered the music and obsessively listened to it over summer months. I have no idea when the Beatles’ White Album was released, but I bought during the summer and listened to it nonstop for six weeks.

The original Karate Kid movie and soundtrack (which even starts by moving to California). More recently, Harry Styles’ Sign of the Times. (And speaking of Sign of the times) Prince’s Raspberry Beret (will always be associated with the front lawn at my mother’s house). The Beach Boys’ much hated 1985 self-titled album The Beach Boys (which I left in heavy rotation for at least two years, like a personal escape to a land of sunshine). Van Halen’s 5150, which took some getting used to as they had a new lead singer, but I was transitioning into high school anyway and everything was topsy-turvy. An extended family vacation in Florida where I listened to the cassette of David Lee Roth’s first full solo album, Eat ‘Em and Smile with Steve Vai’s virtuostic guitar practically singing in antiphony with Roth. Roxette’s Joyride on a family trip to Disneyworld. The Top Gun soundtrack. Hell, even the Pretty Woman soundtrack.

I’m sure you’ve got some of your own summer songs, burned into your brain like the unforgiving summer sun. Many of them from your teen years, because the first cut is the deepest. (Oh yeah, Sheryl Crow’s All I Wanna Do—forgot that one).

For me, the Big Daddy of summer music, the album that most defines that feeling at which I’m grasping in this piece, is Endless Summer by The Beach Boys. For years of my life, this album defined summer music. A compilation of The Beach Boys’ greatest hits, that introduced the band to children of the 70s, Endless Summer is treasure chest of amazing, bliss-inducing songs. From their earliest, simple tunes about surfing and cars to songs about loneliness, love, and longing. It’s a sampler platter. Here kids, taste this sweet music. A gateway to their sublime pop-symphony Pet Sounds and their psychedelic late 60s-70s phase. And now the studio sessions are being released, with demos and alternate versions. That little gray cassette in the 80s opened a lifelong door for me.

As kids age, family trips in July and August might be the only time the family all does something together. Any music listened to will forever be imbued with powerful emotion.

And then the trips stop. And summer ceases to be a time of no responsibility. So we periodically dip into our private treasure chest of solar-infused music and experience a slice of that feeling.

Summer songs don’t stop though. A few years ago we had a glorious k-pop summer where all the big girl groups released bangers(Lionheart from Girl’s Generation, Shake It from Sistar, Heart Attack from AoA, …). That music won’t be associated with childhood, but rather dancing in the living room with my wife, building our life together in California.

Summer time, like any time, is magical. We just notice the magic more.