This column concerns songs about summer. Subject matter will include: the heat, grilling, surfing, driving around, making out, partying, sweating, seasonal depression disorder, and other tangential topics. Song titles that directly mention summer will be favored, though explicitness is not a requirement. In some cases, songs may not state which season they take place in. In those instances, I have conducted investigations to conclusively (or at least somewhat conclusively) deduce that the action described therein is set sometime between Memorial Day weekend and mid-September.
Are you ready for some hot fun in the summertime? Summer’s here, and the time is right, for ranking songs in the streets. Put on some sunscreen and join me.
PRE-LIST ENTERTAINMENT: SONGS ABOUT SUMMER VS. SONGS OF THE SUMMER
Before we continue, an important semantic clarification: This column is not about songs of the summer, which are songs that achieved widespread popularity during the hottest months of a particular year. Some of these songs about summer are also songs of the summer, but these alignments are coincidental and not my primary project.
I’ll give you an example: The most popular song in America right now is “Ordinary” by Alex Warren. Actually, it might very well be the most popular song in the world, having reached the Top 10 in the UK, France, Italy, Poland, Sweden, South Africa, Lebanon, and the Czech Republic. We are only in the middle of July but it seems unlikely — based on the raw numbers, anyway — that any song will threaten “Ordinary” for “song of the summer” status for 2025.
But I don’t care about “Ordinary.” It’s not a song about summer. Now, an Alex Warren fan might argue that “Ordinary” is about monogamous romantic devotion and that it is custom designed to be played at weddings. And weddings frequently take place in the summer. So, ipso facto, that makes it a song about summer. A compelling argument, but ultimately incorrect. In the video, Warren wears jeans and two layers of shirts. Clearly way too many clothes if the song was taking place in the summer. Also, summer is the sexy season — school is out, temperatures are elevated, and ample skin is showing. Which makes it doubly strange that so many people are into “Ordinary” right now. It’s borderline Christian pop made for couples who have conjugal relations purely for procreation, and only if there’s a sheet with a hole cut out placed between them.
Lest anyone think I’m letting personal biases get in the way of my judgement, I’m also leaving off one of my personal all-time songs to hear in the summertime, “Right Down The Line” by Gerry Rafferty. It’s one of the greatest soft-rock tunes of the 1970s, and one that I most associate with the feeling of sitting in the backyard at 3 p.m. on a Saturday in August when you have absolutely nothing to do for the rest of the weekend. It strongly evokes summer for me, but it’s not about summer. In fact, it is practically identical to “Ordinary” lyrically — it is about monogamous romantic devotion and I’m sure it has been played at a million weddings.
Maybe I was too hard on Alex Warren. I need to reconnect with my chill inner Gerry Rafferty.
40. LFO — “Summer Girls” (1999)
I don’t know if this technically counts as a “best” song about summer. It is, in so many ways, the opposite of best. The lyrics are famously moronic, but that overshadows how the music is also moronic. It sounds like the kind of song where the people performing it know how ridiculous it is as they’re doing it, but it’s too late to back out now. It’s just a list of things that don’t connect to one another: New Kids On The Block had a bunch of hits, Billy Shakespeare wrote a bunch of sonnets, the great Larry Bird jersey 33. (Also two mentions of Macaulay Culkin, the Home Alone star’s strangest pop-music cameo since Michael Jackson’s “Black Or White” video.) It’s like if William S. Burroughs developed the cut-up technique just to impress Carson Daly. Or if Vanilla Ice tried to write his own version of “We Didn’t Start The Fire.”
But I couldn’t not include “Summer Girls.” Honestly, it was one of the first songs I thought of. Yes, it has “summer” in the title. But it also covers the other essential bases. Textually, it’s about pining after an attractive person you barely know (which is why she’s identified only by the brand of clothing she wears), and that’s one of the foundational summertime activities. Subtextually, “Summer Girls” addresses the common condition that renowned seasonal expert Lana Del Rey once dubbed “summertime sadness.” This isn’t a sad song, it’s a (stupidly) happy one. But at the core, it’s about already feeling nostalgia for the times you’re currently experiencing, and that’s a very summer-y emotion. Baked into the warm-weather months is the knowledge that all this fun is fleeting. The summer girl will leave, the beach will close, the weather will turn cold, and we will all be one more year closer to death. But it’s still fly when girls stop by for the summer, for the summer.
39. Bryan Adams — “Summer Of ’69” (1985)
The other song I thought of immediately for this column. Like “Summer Girls,” it’s about nostalgia. Also like “Summer Girls,” it is moronic. But I love it. Bryan Adams turned 26 in 1985, which means he was 9 years old during the actual summer of 1969. It’s possible that he bought his first real six-string that year, and I guess it’s not totally implausible that he formed a band with some (little) guys from school. But it’s absolutely B.S. that one of those kids quit the band to get married. (Unless this song takes place in 1869.) Adams later claimed that “Summer Of ’69” was about the “nice” sexual position, the most ridiculous outcome of all.
38. Real Estate — “Suburban Beverage” (2009)
We’ll be revisiting nostalgic summer dread throughout this column. But I’m also interested in the minutia, those little details of the season that we all recognize but don’t quite recognize that we recognize them until a song points them out. Take “Suburban Beverage” from Real Estate’s debut album. That whole record pulls off a very difficult magic trick — the songs feel like being bored in the ‘burbs as a teenager who mostly sits around the house all day watching television. (Or, I guess, staring at a screen — sorry, my reference points stem from being part of the MTV generation.) This is challenging fodder to turn into entertaining indie-rock songs. Feeling dull without being dull, that’s the assignment here. But that’s what “Suburban Beverage” accomplishes. It’s a pitch-perfect depiction of pleasurable ennui. In the ’60s, The Beach Boys sang about root beer as a quintessential summer drink. In the aughts, it was “Budweiser Sprite, do you feel alright?”
37. Smashing Pumpkins — “1979” (1995)
Billy Corgan’s “Summer Of ’69.” Though the vibe of suburban anonymity is closer to the Real Estate record, except on an exponentially larger budget. (Real Estate is the Richard Linklater of suburban rock songs, and the Smashing Pumpkins are Steven Spielberg.) Like Bryan Adams, Corgan wrote about the experiences of older kids in the titular year. (Billy was 12 that summer.) And, yes, I am calling this as a song about summer, even though the lyrics don’t state it outright. I hail from the same Upper Midwest region that Billy was raised in, and what he describes in “1979” — teens aimlessly, awesomely wandering deep into the night — is a definitional summer experience for that part of the country. (Nobody is out there wandering in February. It’s too cold for any “Junebug skippin’ like a stone”-type activity.)
36. Pavement — “Summer Babe (Winter Version)” (1992)
Fair warning: A good number of the songs in the column approach summer from that Upper Midwestern point of view. This is my personal bias, though I would argue that this part of the country (along with the East Coast) is more fertile for songs about summer because summer means more here than it does in the South and West, where it’s warm year-round. I’ll make an exception for “Summer Babe,” which very clearly takes place in Pavement’s home of Stockton, California, given the references to levees and the nonsensical stoner lingo about plastic-tipped cigars and protein delta strips. At heart this is just a pretty pop song about a summer crush, the thinking-man’s “Summer Girls.”
35. Animal Collective — “Summertime Clothes” (2009)
Another summertime minutia song. Not that anyone was listening to Merriweather Post Pavilion for the lyrics. But if you clear your mind of all those leftover late-aughts acidhead cobwebs, you will hear a rather direct statement about how it sucks to be stuck in an apartment with inadequate air-conditioning when it’s a million degrees outside and you’re trying to sleep. “Sweet summer night and I’m stripped to my sheets/ Forehead is leaking, my AC squeaks/ And a voice from the clock says, ‘You’re not gonna get tired’/ My bed is a pool and the walls are on fire.” A very relatable condition. Though it can be a good excuse — shoutout to LFO — to walk around with an attractive person.
34. Bruce Springsteen — “Girls In Their Summer Clothes” (2007)
A zag from the more well-known Springsteen summer song, “4th Of July, Asbury Park (Sandy).” I actually prefer this deep cut from the later Bruce masterwork Magic. Here is another excellent tune about summertime sadness. Like Animal Collective, Bruce is out in the streets and contemplating seasonal wardrobes. But he’s not walking with anybody, he’s out there feeling sorry for himself and looking at everybody else having fun. Which only makes him feel lonelier. There’s nothing unsavory here about looking at the girls in their summer clothes. When he stares at them, he only feels himself getting older.
33. Soundgarden — “Black Hole Sun” (1994)
AnCo complained about heat and the Boss bitched about feeling alone in a crowd, but nobody loathed summer like Chris Cornell. In “Black Hole Sun,” he sings about the “summer stench,” the season of “boiling heat,” when “the sky looks dead” and “times are gone for honest men.” It’s a metaphor for clinical depression, but it’s also a literal description of heat and humidity wreaking havoc on mental health.
32. Eddie Cochran — “Summertime Blues” (1958)
Not all summertime sadness is rooted in emotional anguish. Sometimes the season sucks because of capitalism. Such is the case with one of the original classic rock ‘n’ roll songs about summer, later covered by a million other acts, from The Who to Alan Jackson to Rush. All this kid wants is some time off so he can go on a date. He even takes his case all the way to the United Nations, though it’s ultimately unclear whether labor issues experienced by rock legends who died tragically young falls under the organization’s normal purview.
31. Bob Dylan — “Summer Days” (2001)
Lest this column become too heavy on “older guys feeling bummed in the summer” songs, here’s an even older dude who takes a “smoke ’em if you got ’em” attitude toward his fleeting summer days and nights. It’s not that he’s ignoring reality — he can, after all, hear the girls calling him a worn-out star. But this hopped-up rockabilly number finds Dylan leaning into cragginess and reveling in his anachronistic existence. (Sounding like Eddie Cochran in 2001 was an act of rebellion against the time-space continuum.) “I’m short on gas, my motor’s starting to stall,” he sings as he fires up eight separate carburetors. (My car knowledge approximates my surfing know-how, but eight carburetors sounds like a lot.) The result is an anti-nostalgia summer song. Because he’s Bob Dylan, he’s convinced that something better lies ahead of this. He’s pushing forward no matter what and taking solace from a Great Gatsby quote. “She says, ‘You can’t repeat the past,’ / I say, ‘You can’t? / What do you mean, you can’t, of course you can!'”
30. Weezer — “Surf Wax America” (1994)
Surfing is synonymous with summer. I’ve already mentioned it as a quintessential summertime activity. But what do I know? I’m from Wisconsin. All I know about surfing is from songs and Point Break. After doing some cursory research, I learned that summer isn’t even the best season for surfing in certain parts of the world, including California.
So, what is “Surf Wax America” doing here? The “surf” part of the song is less important than the line “you take your car to work, I’ll take my board.” In every work situation I can think of, taking your board to work is an incredibly inefficient mode of transportation. How can one adequately plan to arrive in the office at 9 a.m. sharp? Will the waves not take you in the desired direction? What if the undertow doesn’t strengthen its hold? The logistical problems are endless. But if you surf to work in the summer, when bosses sometimes are laxer with office hours, it starts to make a little more sense.
29. Wreckx-n-Effect — “Rump Shaker” (1992)
Connoisseurs of ’90s rap songs about asses know this is superior to the overrated “Baby Got Back.” Just seeing the title will put “all I wanna do is zoom-a-zoom-zoom-zoom in a pum pum” in your head for at least a week. But is this really a song about summer? I acknowledge that my case is based mainly on the music video, where we see Wreckx-n-Effect extolling the virtues of backsides at a banging beach party (with occasional asides to an equally awesome boat soiree). Now, Wreckx-n-Effect hails from Harlem, and it looks like the video was shot somewhere (I’m guessing) in Florida. So, it’s possible that “Rump Shaker” takes place on a spring break vacation. Nevertheless, summer really is the top season for zoom-a-zooming, so this song stays right where it is.
28. DMX — “Ruff Ryders’ Anthem” (2001)
Again, I’m leaning hard on the music video, which depicts our hero and lots of other cool tough guys riding motorcycles, lifting weights, and restraining their very scary-looking dogs. Things I know about as well as I do surfing. I have lived next door to guys like this, though. Dudes who fire up their crotch rockets every summer at 6 in the morning and again at 10:30 at night, while their very scary dogs bark their damn heads off. And I never, ever complained about the noise, because I suspected they would say (as DMX does in this song) “Stop actin’ like a baby, mind your business.”
27. Queens Of The Stone Age — “Feel Good Hit Of The Summer” (2000)
Some people (not me) do a lot of drugs in the summer. (Might very well be the same characters featured in “Ruff Ryders’ Anthem.”) This song is for them. It’s not about taking drugs in the summer, it is taking drugs in the summer. The lyrics are literally just a list of drugs. (Not all the drugs, just most of the good ones. Not that I condone such things.) It’s like “Summer Girls” for dirtbags. And the music replicates the feeling of consuming different substances, starting off with an anticipatory guitar chug that explodes into a mind-exploding orgasm. (Again, not that I condone such things.)
26. Modest Mouse — “Truckers Atlas” (1997)
“Ruff Ryders’ Anthem” is associated with riding motorcycles, which I have not done. “Truckers Atlas” is about taking a road trip, which I have done. And this one of the best road-trip songs of all time. The lyrics don’t specifically mention summer, but it has big-time summer vibes. At what other time does it make sense to go to Colorado (to unload your head) and then to New York City (which is in New York, friends) and then all the way back west to Arizona (to have sex on the rocks, which sounds horrible in any season but especially in 120-degree summer heat) before heading up to Alaska (to get off Scot-fucking-free)?
“Truckers Atlas” is also a period piece, set in a time before Google Maps. It’s just you and the atlas, so long as you don’t sell it by the freight stairs. The physical map will take you down through California and then straight-through to Florida in three days. Who’s down? The extended outro featuring the chopped beats of master drummer Jeremiah Green replicate the white-line hypnosis of such a journey. It captures the freedom of the open road, where you don’t know where you’re going and therefore have the ability to head anywhere.
25. Thin Lizzy — “The Boys Are Back In Town” (1976)
We’ve talked a lot about summertime sadness. That’s not what this song is about. It’s about the other side of the binary. Technically, it’s a song about looking forward to summer. Down at Dino’s Bar ‘n’ Grill, where the boys are dressed to kill and the jukebox is blastin’ out Phil Lynott’s favorite song, “the nights are getting warmer, it won’t be long / Won’t be long until summer comes.” But even if this song takes place right before the season, looking forward to summer is a big part of what summer is about. And “The Boys Are Back In Town” conveys the exhilaration of anticipatory summertime fun (flowing drinks, spilling blood, etc.) better than any song I can think of.
24. Steely Dan — “Reelin’ In The Years” (1972)
The flipside to “The Boys Are Back In Town.” In this song, “your everlasting summer” is fading fast. For Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, like Bruce Springsteen in “Girls In Their Summer Clothes,” the end of summer is a symbol for creeping mortality and the evaporation of youthful innocence. (Most Steely Dan songs are about those things.) Though the girl in her summer clothes from “Reelin’ In The Years” is an ex who has moved on to another guy. The Steely Dan guys tell us at the end of every verse that she values the wrong things. But when are their narrators ever reliable? The fact is that she’s grown up and he hasn’t, and that everlasting summer isn’t only fading for her.
23. Hüsker Dü — “Celebrated Summer” (1985)
An all-time “begrudging” song about summer. Plus, it’s rich with region-specific Upper Midwest details. Bob Mould begins by complaining about pollen and Daylight Saving Time. “Just when I’m ready to sit inside, it’s summertime,” he says, like every other crank from Minnesota at the start of June. Gradually, he talks himself into the upsides of summer — going swimming, hanging out with friends, getting drunk on the beach, etc. And he thinks about how crappy the impending winter is going to be. “Do you remember when the first snowfall / When summer barely had a snowball’s chance in hell?” A classic Midwestern cope on extra muggy days.
22. Wilco — “Heavy Metal Drummer” (2002)
Another hyper-specific Upper Midwest song about summer, about going to the stupid fair in your stupid little town and watching a stupid band play stupid covers. And absolutely positively loving each and every single one! Again, nostalgia plays a big part in “Heavy Metal Drummer,” and it’s another instance of a song about summer romanticizing the most banal aspects of the season. Nobody likes the stoned heavy metal band playing Kiss covers in the moment. It’s the sort of thing that makes you want to leave your stupid town. It’s only when you realize that the stoned heavy metal band playing Kiss covers is part of a world that only seemed permanent (and therefore oppressive) when you were young and now signifies how fragile and transitory all of this really is, that you start to “sincerely” miss them.
21. The Hold Steady — “Constructive Summer” (2008)
I’m sure Craig Finn also saw his share of stoned heavy metal bands as a teenager in Minnesota back in the ’80s. And like Jeff Tweedy, he responded by joining the local punk scene. The alternative was to “work at the mill until you die,” which only sounds like a line stolen from a Springsteen song if you never lived in a dead-end town. But this is no dead-end town. “Constructive Summer” has the same ecstatic energy of “The Boys Are Back In Town” — try not to punch the air when the guitar riff kicks in — only that overwhelming propulsive force is applied to building a utopian world for hard-drinking, idealistic punks who party on top of water towers and raise toasts to St. Joe Strummer. In the world of this song, maybe the everlasting summer never fades after all.
INTERMISSION: THE “IT WAS A GOOD DAY” CONUNDRUM
When I originally conceived this list, I immediately knew what would be No. 1: “It Was A Good Day” by Ice Cube. I would put “It Was A Good Day” at No. 1 on every list if I could. But it seems especially apt for a “songs about summer” list. Ice Cube describes the most perfect summer day imaginable: No barking from the dog, no smog, not a jacker in sight, being trouble on the court and getting a triple-double, watching Yo! MTV Raps, winning at dominoes, eating at Fatburger, seeing your name in the lights of the Goodyear blimp, etc.
Here’s the problem: It’s already been convincingly deduced that this song takes place on January 20, 1992, based on the weather (no smog) and the fact that the Lakers really did beat the Supersonics that day. I considered ignoring this evidence, as “It Was A Good Day” feels spiritually connected to summer. Alas, it would be journalistically irresponsible for me to do that. I’m so disappointed. It is not a good day.
Back to the list.
20. Lana Del Rey — “Summertime Sadness” (2012)
LDR gave the subgenre of depressed songs about summer a name, so naturally she appears in the upper reaches of this list. “Summertime Sadness” naturally checks all the boxes for a summertime sadness song: (1) It’s about getting dumped; (2) It has a sexually charged vibe; (3) It references nostalgic signposts (in this case two Bruce Springsteen songs); (4) It sounds best when played outside with at least 70 percent humidity.
19. Japandroids — “The Nights Of Wine And Roses” (2012)
In “Constructive Summer,” it’s unclear whether Finn is writing from a contemporary perspective or a retrospective one. The lyrics are written in the present tense, but the action seems to take place in the ’80s. (Also, Craig Finn does not sound anything like a teenager.) “The Nights Of Wine And Roses,” meanwhile, feels like it was written as it was being lived. Which means it is less artful but more urgent than the Hold Steady song. It’s the sound of Brian King and David Prowse staying up all night, getting loaded, and having the best damn time. (The firework explosions add to the verisimilitude.) In the process your own best damn times are evoked as well
18. Snoop Dogg — “Gin & Juice” (1994)
“The Nights Of Wine And Roses” except it’s set in Long Beach, with loads more weed, women, money, and bullets. Also an example of a summer tradition we haven’t covered yet: The “My Parents Are Away And I’m Throwing An Insane Party” song. The key to this being specifically a song about summer lies with the mention of gin, a type of alcohol that is tolerable when the weather is warm and disgusting when it is not.
17. Nelly — “Hot In Herre” (2002)
Unquestionably one of the great songs of the summer ever. In 2002, this was the No. 1 track in the land from the end of June to mid-August. (If you want to make a compelling case for cultural devolution and increasingly sexual indifference, start with the charts going from “Hot In Herre” to “Ordinary” in just under 25 years.) But “Hot In Herre” is also a classic about the most primal summer element of all: heat. It’s getting hot in here, so take off all your clothes — I don’t know if that’s one of the laws of science, but it ought to be.
16. The Kinks — “Sunny Afternoon” (1966)
I love a good summer party jam. You love a good summer party jam. We all love a good summer party jam. But let’s be honest: We are not party animals. We’re all sitting on the internet right now. In reality, we are big fat stumps chained to our devices. We’re like Ray Davies of The Kinks — broke, beset by the world, and simply trying to just sit here with a beer while “lazin’ on a sunny afternoon.” As much as I love Nelly, Snoop, and the Japandroids guys, I accept that this song is a more accurate depiction of my actual life in summer.
15. Bananarama — “Cruel Summer” (1983)
Before I say anything about this song: I want to issue a formal apology to the Swifties for not including Taylor’s “Cruel Summer” on this list. Please do not look up my house on Google Maps and toss Molotov cocktails through my front window. Thank you, I appreciate it, don’t hurt me, I beg you.
Back to Bananarama: Is this the original summertime sadness song? It’s the first one I remember hearing. In the original Karate Kid, Daniel gets bullied by the blonde-haired rich kids while this song plays on the soundtrack, like a heckling Greek chorus. It’s an underrated needle drop. The sing-song vocals have a mean girls insouciance that suits the brutish sentiments of the chorus. The lyrics are about romantic heartache, but the music feels like being left out of the cool crowd in high school.
14. Jonathan Richman and The Modern Lovers — “That Summer Feeling” (1983)
I could tell you about why this is one of the definitive summertime sadness songs, but I wouldn’t be as eloquent as Jonathan himself. So, I’ll just quote him at length:
“When the cool of the pond makes you drop down on it
When the smell of the lawn makes you flop down on it
When the teenage car gets the cop down on it
That time is here for one more year
That summer feeling’s gonna haunt you
The rest of your life.”
13. Loudon Wainwright III — “The Swimming Song” (1973)
Jonathan Richman writes directly about warm-weather melancholy in “That Summer Feeling.” He describes sensations that last for a handful of seconds in real life and linger in the mind to your dying days. In “The Swimming Song,” Wainwright writes about that summer feeling from a more oblique angle. Superficially, he’s talking about different strokes he learned over the course of the summer — the backstroke and the butterfly and the Australian crawl, whatever that is. He swam in a public place and at a reservoir, and he did swan dives, jackknifes, and even a cannonball. And yet, when you listen to “The Swimming Song,” you can tell there’s more going on than just the jaunty banjo lick and all the descriptions of aquatic activity. It’s really a song about all the things we do to keep from drowning in life.
12. Stevie Wonder — “Never Dreamed You’d Leave In Summer” (1971)
Forget what I said earlier: This is the original summertime sadness song. Stevie describes a relationship with an emotionally distant woman whose affection turns cold as the weather heats up. Frankly, she sounds exactly the type of person you’d predict would leave in summer. But Stevie is nothing if not a romantic, and the anguish of his vocal in “Never Dreamed You’d Leave In Summer” is genuine and overpowering. At around the two-minute mark, he shifts into the gear I like to call the “Stevie Tearjerker Pitch,” where it sounds like he’s weeping as he’s singing his ass off (which makes us weep). He does the same thing in all his ballads. (The most lethal application, in my experience, is “Lately.” But “Never Dreamed You’d Leave In Summer” is up there, too.)
11. The Lovin’ Spoonful — “Summer In The City” (1966)
If you can get past a band who called themselves “The Lovin’ Spoonful” writing a song about urban unrest, this really is one of the enduring “songs about summer” classics (confirmed by its appearance in Die Hard With A Vengeance). Though the part of “Summer In The City” that sticks with me is when John Sebastian describes the back of his neck “feeling dirty and gritty.” Is this really a sign of summer heat or just poor hygiene?
10. Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers — “Even The Losers” (1979)
I could have easily put “Mary Jane’s Last Dance” in this spot, the Tom Petty slot, a place of honor on any “songs about summer” list. In that one, Tom talks in the chorus about “summer creepin’ in” and how it’s making him tired of this town again. But I already have a lot of summertime sadness songs on this list. So, I opted instead for “Even The Losers,” which only happens to be one of the best rock anthems ever written. Like “The Boys Are Back In Town,” it is technically a pre-summer song. But it’s the pre-summer songs that end up being the most hopeful songs about summer. You can hear that promise in the opening lines, which amount to the best open to any Tom Petty song, the highest praise I can imagine:
“Well, it was nearly summer, we sat on your roof
Yeah, we smoked cigarettes and we stared at the moon
And I showed you stars you never could see
Babe, it couldn’t be that easy to forget about me.”
9. Ramones — “Rockaway Beach” (1977)
Speaking of classic opening lines: “Chewing out the rhythm on my bubble gum / The sun is out and I want some.” You don’t get more poetic than that when talking about summer. The Ramones were four leather-jacketed knuckleheads from Queens who represented the grit and grime of New York City at the start of punk. And “Rockaway Beach” has an appropriately urban feel for what is essentially an East Coast update on the surfing songs of the early-’60s Beach Boys. Most of the Beach Boys didn’t surf, and the Ramones definitely did not surf, but “Rockaway Beach” is more fantasy than reality anyway.
8. Seals & Crofts — “Summer Breeze” (1972)
A staggeringly beautiful song written by two sweetly dumb hippies. “Summer breeze makes me feel fine / blowin’ through the jasmine in my mind.” Oh yeah, dude, the jasmine in one’s mind and how that warm air blows through it, who can’t relate? Actually, I think the first verse in particular is the best summation of “that summer feeling” I’ve ever heard: “See the curtains hanging in the window / In the evening on a Friday night / A little light a-shinin’ through the window / Let me know everything is alright.” But it’s ultimately how this song sounds, that sepia-tinged soft-rock glow and the guitar lick that floats along like actual summer breeze, that makes “Summer Breeze” feel like the embodiment of seasonal nostalgia.
7. Sly And The Family Stone — “Hot Fun In The Summertime” (1969)
Another “embodiment of seasonal nostalgia” song, only way funkier. (Ditto that for the Isley Brothers’ cover of “Summer Breeze,” which puts some serious stink on that brain jasmine.) When Sly says “hi, hi, hi, hi there” to “them summer days,” only the worst kind of summer Scrooge can keep from smiling. The Family Stone then chime with their summertime favorites — school is out, the county fair “in the country sun,” and the overall cloud nine-ness of it all. And they do it over music that sounds like how warm lake water feels on your feet on the longest day of the year. The worst part of “Hot Fun In The Summertime” is that it’s only about two-and-a-half minutes long. Soon enough, Sly is saying “bye, bye, bye, bye” to them summer days, and “boop-boop-boop-boop” to the end of temporary utopia.
6. Martha And The Vandellas — “Dancing In The Streets” (1964)
The quintessential Motown song about summer, so it obviously belongs in the Top 10. And, along with “Summertime Blues,” it’s also the most covered song about summer. The Grateful Dead made it jammier, Van Halen made it rock harder, and David Bowie and Mick Jagger made it way campier. But the original stands alone as one of the great civil rights anthems, with the feel-good text about how “summer’s here and the time is right / for dancing in the streets” given a political subtext by activists taking to real-life streets for the fight against racial equality. More than 60 years later, this song still sounds like an invitation to join up with like-minded folks around the world and laugh and sing and swing.
5. The Beach Boys — “Good Vibrations” (1966)
A crowning musical achievement by the late, great Brian Wilson. The compositional genius of “Good Vibrations” — the way Brian was able to fit so many micro-sized experiments together in the shape of a pop song, while revolutionizing the theremin in the process — has been so thoroughly discussed that I probably can’t add anything original to the conversation at this point. Instead, with a heavy heart, I’m afraid I must highlight the contributions of (cue “The Imperial March” music) the one and only Mike Love. I don’t like it any more than you do, but it must be said that the lyrics to “Good Vibrations” are what transformed an otherwise avant-garde art rock into one of the most famous and popular singles in rock history. And Love did this by steering “Good Vibrations” into the Beach Boys’ usual “songs about summer” lane. No matter how weird the music sounds, he keeps the song in normie “LFO/”Summer Girls” territory: Guy sees girl, girl gives guy a vibe, guy feels something called “the excitations,” and you can figure out the rest.
4. Warren G — “Regulate” Feat. Nate Dogg (1994)
Possibly the greatest song of the summer ever. As for being a song about summer, “Regulate” sounds surprisingly innocent for a song about a guy who is robbed and nearly killed during a dice game. That’s due to Warren’s laid-back delivery as well as Nate Dogg’s infectiously smooth sidekick vocal, which makes the violence less scary than it probably should be. But those guys are just emphasizing the “summer fun” aspects of “Regulate,” which involves driving around in search of female-related action. I imagine the LFO guys imagined that they sounded like Warren and Nate when they did “Summer Girls.” But nobody has ever really replicated the cool of “Regulate.”
3. Don Henley — “The Boys Of Summer” (1984)
This is, in my estimation, the greatest summertime sadness song. Which means that I have now complimented Mike Love and Don Henley in the Top 10 of this column. Not something I want engraved on my tombstone! But credit must go where it’s due: Don’s line about seeing “a Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac” is a definitive statement about boomer hypocrisy, written by one of the definitive boomer rockers. And the overall vibe of already feeling washed in your 30s is extremely relatable no matter when you were born. (The Ataris’ pop-punk cover was a hit in 2003 for a reason.) Let it be known that this is also the second song in the Top 10 to feature Mike Campbell from The Heartbreakers, who wrote the music. That is something I want engraved on my tombstone.
2. Public Enemy — “Fight The Power” (1989)
A masterpiece for many reasons, though in this context, I must point out the genius of rhyming “summer” with “funky drummer.” Otherwise, “Fight The Power” is here because it does a lot of things at the same time, brilliantly — it’s the rare protest song that also works as a piece of exciting music, apart from the message. It’s a song about summer that feels like the atmosphere of summer, where the heat and the crowds that heat attracts signify excitement, fear, transformation, and destruction. Also: If you can hear this song and not instantly think about Rosie Perez, it’s been too long since you have seen Do The Right Thing.
1. DJ Jazzy Jeff And The Fresh Prince — “Summertime” (1991)
The only choice. Even Chris Rock would agree that this is the best song about summer. Back in the ’90s, Will Smith was just a chill, likeable guy who wanted to give the world a “soft subtle mix.” (He also took a decisive stance against “hardcore dance,” which must have upset Ian Mackaye.) Like a lot of songs on this list, “Summertime” is rooted in nostalgia, but it’s more sweet than sad. Will and Jeff are here to celebrate all the best parts about summer. The lyrics are incredibly thorough in that regard. All the activities I mentioned at the start of the column — except surfing and, of course, seasonal depression — are accounted for. Factor in the excellent sample of Kool & The Gang’s “Summer Madness” and you have a perfect song about summer that is impossible not to love.
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