If you got to make your own greatest hits album of your favorite summer tunes, what would it include?
Mine would definately include:
Van Halen - Summer Nights
Rush - Tom Sawyer
Pantera - Walk
I just love the guitar lines to those songs.
U Can’t Touch This by MC Hammer
It’s not really a “summer song” I guess, but I’ve always associated it with summer because that’s when I heard it the most, summer of 1990.
Summertime by The Sundays - It’s a dreamy song that’s just relaxing to listen to, perfect for those summer days by the beach/pool.
Good choice, Skip! The Sundays are a very summery band. Along with that tune, I would pick “Hideous Towns.”
I always associate certain sets of chord changes with “summery”-feeling songs – major keys, lots of major and maj7 chords, really wide-open melodies. The kind of thing where you can just turn it on, get in the car and drive around for a long time. Some songs that would fit my list:
My Ever Changing Moods, Style Council
Streets of Your Town, the Go-Betweens
Show Me, the Pretenders
Any Other Way, the Posies
Bye Bye Love, the Cars
Probably a lot more . . . but you get the general idea.
Old fart checking in, with two summer-specific things from the mid-sixties.
The Lovin’ Spoonful’s “Summer in the City” has always seemed to me the greastest summer song of all time. It is so fucking DARK…capturing the sweatiness and desperation of the Big Town when it’s 97 degrees and muck-humid. And I’ve always read the “At night it’s a different world/Go out and find a girl” line as a rather chilling reference to sexual predation and stalking.
On the other side of the continent, The Grateful Dead’s “The Golden Road (to Unlimited Devotion)” for its call to drug-laced hedonism and pagan sexuality.
Jackson Browne’s (original) version of “Take It Easy.” Perfect top-down, summer time driving song. I don’t know if its worth a trip to Winslow, Arizona.
Summertime, from Porgy and Bess. Talk about lazy, hazy, sleepy stuff. This song makes me want to crawl into a hammock and watch the clouds go by.
“Hot Fun in the Summertime” - Sly and the Family Stone
“Summer Rain” - Johnny Rivers
“Summertime Blues” - Ediie Cochran (and Blue Cheer and the Who, etc., etc.)
A Summer Song" - Chad and Jeremy
The first and only time I ordered one of those “Only $19.95 plus Shipping & Handling!” CD’s off the TV. Sun Splashin! includes some of my favorites…
Hot Hot Hot, by Buster Poindexter
Montego Bay by Amazulu
Walkin’ on Sunshin by Katrina & The Waves
Summer Breeze by Seals & Crofts
And let me hasten to add a few others…
Beach Baby, the remake by Baha Men
and
Center Field by John Fogerty.
‘eye know’ by de la soul… it’s not exactly summer, but it sure sounds like it.
“Summer Wind Was Always Our Song” - The Ataris
“At The River” - Groove Armada
Easy.
Jonathan Richman.
“That Summer Feeling”
If you don’t know the song…ahhh, you know it. In your heart.
“…that summer feeling’s gonna haunt you the rest of your life…”
“Magic” by Pilot
“Beach Baby” by First Class
I know its a little cliche, but Lowrider is a good one. I also seem to get a lot of mileage from Ocean Pearl by 54-40.
“In the Summer Time”–Mungo Jerry
I always associate “Don’t Dream It’s Over” by Crowded House with summer, too, because I used to hear it all the time when I went to the pool.
Great question!
Best Summer songs? Anything by the Beach Boys!
96° in the Shade - Third World
In the Summertime - Deee Lite
Freddy Jones Band - In a Daydream
Lucky Dube - House of Exile
Alpha Blondy - Buy the Best of album
Bob Marley - of course
Perfect summer mix: 1/4 Beach Boys, 1/4 Jimmy Buffett 1/4 Harry Belefonte, 1/4 other summer oldies.