I, like most rational people, love summer. But as my nitpicky wife (who I love very, very much) has been reminding me for the past month, “Summer doesn’t start until June 21st!” To which I always reply, “Yeah, but it feels like summer.” I work at a high school, so I’ve been off work. The air is heavy and potent with humidity and electricity. The days stretch out endlessly, yet there never seem to be enough of them. I don’t care what the official cutoff date is – it’s summer.
These songs aren’t about summer, per say, but they feel like summer, at least to me. Some are well known, some less-so, but they’re as summer to me as barbecue, baseball and beer.
Hit the Road
Summer is a time for travel, when everyone pulls up root and lets the wanderlust overtake them. There is nothing more American, for good or bad, than hitting the open road, nothing but petrol fumes and dust in your wake, leaving what was behind and searching for what will be. And nothing is more necessary to a quality road trip (aside from a vehicle and fuel) than quality tunes. Here are some of my personal favorite summer driving songs, especially playing loud with the windows rolled down. No matter where you’re going, with these songs playing, you’ll get there faster.
Common Rider was founded by Jesse Michaels, of seminal ’90s punk band Operation Ivy. Nowhere near as influential as his first band, they still released some catchy, immensely listenable albums. This was the first song I heard by them, and it remains one of my favorites. Not since Springsteen has such an honest and accurate song been written about aimless teenage nights driving nowhere in particular. There was never any destination – we were just driving to get away.
Yeah, we’ve all heard it, but have you really listened to it? Petty has become such a part of our musical vocabulary that I think we sometimes forget all that he could say with a quality two-and-a-half-minute pop song. Opening with a single chord played percussively in rhythm, the song tells the story of squandered potentials. Summer always seems “raised on promises,” but no matter how great it is, it will always let us down. Instead of lasting all night, summer will end too soon, and what we seek will always be just too far out of reach.
I can’t say much about this song that hasn’t already been said better here. I love how you can lose yourself in the middle of this song (it almost seems to get lost itself), but it still seems to be over too soon.
Wide Open Spaces
There’s something about playing a guitar around a fire. Summertime, with its cook-outs and camp-outs, is the closest our hyper-consumerist, technology-loving culture gets to regressing back to our early hunter-gatherer days. We used to stop everything with the setting of the sun, never moving far from our fire, and would bang sticks together and sing songs so that we could forget how afraid we are of what’s beyond the borders of the fire’s light. These songs feel like that – primal, almost religious, begging for comfort across a great empty expanse.
The production values on this song are why I love it, even more than the lyrics, melody, or any of those other integral parts of a song. Even coming out of my computer’s speakers right now, it feels like I’m hearing it from miles away, catching bits of it carried on the evening wind. Reverb used correctly is worth its weight in gold.
Classic Americana (the lyrics were written by Woody Guthrie) meets modern Americana (arranged and performed by Wilco.) Several things you should not attempt to do while listening to this song: work out, do chores, be productive in anyway.
As opposed to the Fleet Foxes’ acoustic distance, Against Me!’s Tom Gable sounds like he’s growling out this song right across from you. Hopeful and promising, but just like in “American Girl”, hints of our inevitable failings and defeats are woven into the song’s fabric. “Joy” is, at its heart, a lament for all that has yet to go wrong and all of the disappointments that have yet to crush us.
’60s R&B
I don’t know why, but mid-to-late ’60s rhythm and blues is the ultimate summer music. Something about the time’s relentless hopefulness in the face of what must have seemed like utter disaster. And horn sections. We need more horn sections these days. I don’t want to go to any cookout without these on the musical menu.
Those Were the Days
We are nostalgic for every summer, even those that haven’t happened yet. As I’ve discussed earlier, there are always diminished returns upon each new cycle, and we long for those perfect dog days of our youth. All the same, we relish each new chance to get it right, one last go at that perfect summer. These songs embody that perfectly.
This song makes me feel the same way I did after I read To Kill a Mockingbird for the first time – rejecting the flawed world that’s been handed to you, tearing it down, taking the pieces that work, and building a new one…but it’s still fun. Lots and lots of fun. The vocals, delivered almost child-like, and jaunty piano line sound like youth, and I remember lessons I l earned not in the classroom but down the block, in the muggy heat and endless days of those summers that never really happened. Dr. Dog is still a terrible band name, though.
As we get older, the summer days are often slept away, while a single night out with the right (or wrong) company can seem to last for weeks. No one tells stories of debauched spoiled rich kids with nothing to do but abuse controlled substances and stumble clumsily into messy relationships like The Hold Steady. They know that the summer’s humidity is as much due to the sweat on our palms, the sex in the air, and the liquor on our breaths. Also, bonus points for the horns.
These Will Be the Days
Ironic that the songs about looking hopefully into the future are from my childhood, with songs about blossoming romance and rebuilding a new life. Also ironic? These bands, which started out with incredibly promising careers, have devolved into sad shadows of their former glory. Consider that while basking in the unbridled joy and buoyancy of these songs.
The Ultimate
Who am I kidding? The perfect summer song has already been recorded: twice!
“Louie Louie” is best remembered for its unintelligible lyrics as performed by the Kingsmen (and later in the movie Animal House), and even though we don’t know what it’s about, it sounds like fun. (That’s what Mr. Holland taught me, at least.) It also sounded subversive, apparently, because the FBI had a case file open on the song. Seriously.
Recorded again almost a decade later, it is yet another ideal summer song. Where the earlier version (not the original, though – that was recorded in the 50s) is propulsive with it’s simple but driving chords, this one is pleased to take its time going almost nowhere at all, just enjoying it’s limited time here.
(I’m considering turning this into the first of a four-part series. We’ll see if I can make a distinction between autumn and winter songs (All Nick Drake, all the time?) and spring and summer songs.)
So, what songs define summer for you? I hope this list more than doubles in the comments.
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Evan Mather lives just outside of Chicago and is a full-time student with hopes to eventually earn his Masters in Library Science. He spends his limited free time with his wife and cats, subjecting them to his cinematic, musical, literary and culinary interests. Sometimes this is a good thing, and sometimes it is not.
My list would include “Dashboard” by Modest Mouse. That’s a good one.
A really good summer evening album is Neko Case’s Middle Cyclone, especially driving at around 8:30 with the windows down. Really, I’ve seen most of her music as necessarily summer evening/night music, but especially MC.
I agree with both of you. “Dashboard” is a great driving song, and Neko is great on summer evenings OR on lazy Sunday mornings for when you read the paper and drink endless cups of coffee.
I’m gonna go back to my college days here and say that I spent the whole summer of 2002 listening to Yankee Hotel Foxtrot with the windows down driving home from my job at Famous Dave’s BBQ late at night.
Recently, I had a great time speeding down 41 to “Love Bomb” from the Grinderman album. There was no way I was slowing down while that song was blaring through my speakers.
Grinderman has a summer-y feel, but since it’s basically a mid-life crisis in rock and roll form, and it dwells on such dark issues, I think it seems more autumnal or winter-y to me.
As for Wilco, I consider their middle period (Summerteeth, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, and A Ghost is Born) to really be more winter music, all cold and withdrawn, about alienation and the such, with a few noted exceptions. Heavy Metal Drummer, especially, almost made this list, but I want to save up my Wilco for another write-up. You’ll just have to wait a few months.
For me, by association at least, the White Stripes will probably always be hard to unseat as a great summer band. Somehow on those languid days where I don’t even feel like listening to music I’ll throw on De Stijl with it’s heavy delta blues influences and it just seems to fit.
I also love Iron and Wine as summer music. Very strong memories of listening to The Creek Drank the Cradle for the first time at dusk, and weeks later of singing the songs around the campfire.
I just remembered this mix I made before I had an iPod. I was driving from Green Bay, Wisconsin to Casper, Wyoming to get a job on an oil rig, no joke. I have vivid memories of listening to Mates of State, Wolf Parade (“I’ll Believe in Anything” is still one of my favorite songs), Sufjan, and the White Stripes while driving through the incredible northwest part of Nebraska in a 1990 Chevy Lumina I had gotten two or three months previous.