Sly and the Family Stone – Hot Fun in the Summertime
The unforgiving yellow sun, a trip to the beach, that sweet, cold respite of a dripping ice-cream cone. Somehow this 1969 classic, courtesy of Sly and the Family Stone, sonically captures the exact patina of summer, making it a quintessential part of the seasonal canon. Written and produced by Sly himself (with him and the entire group exuberantly taking on vocal duties), the funk jam scoops a lot into its brisk two and a half minutes. Kicking off with that unmistakable piano riff, it then starkly transitions into its main melody which boasts iconic horns that double as a bugle call for the season. “Hi, hi, hi, hi there” we hear, a breezy greeting mimicking summer’s laidback sensibilities. It’s a mood that later extends into scat-inspired lyrics like, “Boop-boop-boop-boop when I want to.” Despite being released over a half-century ago, Hot Fun in the Summertime is still cool as hell. Rob LeDonne
Donna Summer – State of Independence
There’s nothing to celebrate about living in our crumbling empire, but every Fourth of July, I have to give State of Independence a spin. Donna Summer’s Quincy Jones-produced anthem features bouncy synths, a slappy bassline, and a backup choir made up of all-stars like Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Dionne Warwick and Lionel Richie. Steal the aux and throw it on at your next backyard barbecue or use it to soundtrack your next hot girl walk. It’s an ode to transcendence and trusting that the vibes will pull through. Does America deserve such a banger? Absolutely not, but I’m thankful that President Donna Summer gave us one anyway. Alaina Demopoulos
Phoenix – Too Young
Everyone figured Phoenix were another emissary from the Parisian French Touch dance scene, based on the filtered disco-funk of 1999 debut single Heatwave. So they instantly baffled everyone the following year with Too Young, which put them in a class or more or less one: soft rock revivalists just as the White Stripes, the Strokes et al, were making garage rock cool again. Where those bands were scuzzy, Phoenix were clean; and where those bands operated through moderate cloud cover at best, Phoenix sat under bright sunshine. The synth chords on Too Young are like fat columns of heat rising off baked asphalt, and Thomas Mars’ vocals are full of the possibility that summer brings. He gabbles with excitement as he tries to untie romantic feelings, too young to understand them, as what sounds like the greatest garden party beckons him to let loose. It’s a song that totally encapsulates the joy and poignancy of youth and young love – as it is with even the longest summer’s day, there’s a pain in knowing it will not last for ever. Ben Beaumont-Thomas
Snoop Dogg – Gin & Juice
I can still remember walking into Tower Records in Pasadena, California, as a teenager in the ’90s and seeing the utter domination of Tha Doggfather on the wall up by the cash register where they displayed the bestselling CDs. Living in Southern California, Snoop Dogg mega hits like Nuthin’ but a “G” Thang and Who Am I? (What’s My Name?) were impossible to miss. Gin and Juice was the most laid-back of them all, as Snoop glides effortlessly through lyrics filled with chronic smoke, bottles of Tanqueray, and of course Seagram’s gin. The hook is as infectious as they come (just try to listen and not sing along), making this one a staple of summer BBQs and outdoor gatherings. The song’s continuing relevance is demonstrated in Snoop and Dr Dre’s recent (and possibly questionable) decision to launch their own line of canned alcoholic cocktails named – what else? – Gin and Juice. Veronica Esposito
Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong – Summertime
There is no more nimble vocalist in the history of American music than Ella Jane Fitzgerald. To hear her on Summertime is to be transported to a dusky veranda somewhere in the deep south with a glass of lemonade and a paper fan in hand. Only the First Lady of Swing could take a ballad meant for the opera Porgy and Bess and turn it into such a soothing lullaby that even subsequent performers can’t help singing just like her. When Ella coos about the jumping fish and high cotton, imagery brought to life by Gershwin’s lush string arrangements and Louis Armstrong’s scatting, it’s as easy to picture as my shirt sticking to my skin. And then, just when we’ve appeared to have transcended the situation by the song’s midpoint, in bursts Satchmo with his gravelly voice and great horn again to point out terrifically hot it is as if we hadn’t spent the past two minutes trying to reason with the humidity. Songs of the summer are meant to be airy and carefree. Summertime, though, ain’t that. It’s thick, it’s heavy – it’s the song that does as much to capture the season as offer a reprieve. Like an ice-cream scoop that runs across your fingers, there’s just something about its stickiness that remains so deeply satisfying. Andrew Lawrence
Stevie Wonder – Don’t You Worry ‘bout a Thing
There are some voices that just instantly sound like summer, even when heard on a cold day they’ll prickle the skin, from Lauryn Hill to João Gilberto to Frank Ocean. No one evokes this for me quite as effectively as Stevie Wonder, who provides such sky-clearing warmth that this slot could have been filled by any number of his tracks (Living for the City, For Once in My Life, Sir Duke and Master Blaster all come to mind). But Don’t You Worry ‘bout a Thing carries a particularly radiant carefree joy to it, that specific infectious optimism that a bright summer’s day brings with it, packed with comfort and confidence. It’s a song for the days when the heat and the happiness that follows feels like it’ll never go away and then for the darker months after when you need to remember exactly how that once felt. Benjamin Lee
Porches – I Miss That
If I have a hankering to listen to I Miss That, it probably means that the weather is warming up and I feel like spending the day in a park with my friends. This song, from Porches’ equally summery 2021 album All Day Gentle Hold!, sounds like it’s playing off a cassette that melted in a hot car: the synths that run throughout the song warp and flicker, and the song itself is brittle and dry, like a T-shirt that’s been left to dry in the sun a little too long. Aaron Maine’s lyrics might point to pure nostalgia – “I miss that/I miss that/I miss that/I like that/I like that/I like that” goes the song’s perfectly simple earworm of a hook – but there’s something fitting about that, too: don’t all the best summers feel like they’re over before they even began? Shaad D’Souza
Talking Heads – This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody)
On occasion, I will hear The Talking Heads’ This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody) at a bar, in a restaurant or, worst case scenario, while shopping, and think: nope, turn it off. This song, with its electronic trills and vaguely tropical ostinatos, should not be played indoors and most certainly not when it’s under 75F. On a sonic level, the track is a warm breeze, sunbaked patio stones and a cocktail sweating in your hand. Lyrically, David Byrne’s parade of loving non-sequiturs and his cathartic, primal “awooo” is the jolt of gratitude for 2-3 gin and tonics, an hour in the sun and your best friend’s laugh. Every version of this song – the sweet original 1983 track off Speaking in Tongues, the shimmering Stop Making Sense live version, the cover by a not-yet-famous MGMT at what appears to be a sparsely attended spring semester dorm party in 2005 – is a slightly different temperature. And yet they’re all a summer’s day. Adrian Horton
kd lang – Consequences of Falling
My ultimate summer song doesn’t just me give something I can hear. It gives me something I can see. Every sound in kd lang’s The Consequences of Falling glows with the soft light and warm haze of the magic hour – that time of day that always feels like summer. The song is a dream sequence in sound, dappled by an insinuating stroke of bass, an evocative flicker of strings and a vocal that smolders with possibility and consequence. The plot of the song, which kicked off lang’s full-scale 2000 salute to the season, Invincible Summer, nails the central irony of the warm months: summer isn’t only about the pleasures at hand, after all, but also the dreams out of reach. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking/does your pulse quicken like mine?” a doubting lang asks a potential lover in the lyric. The need she expresses runs so deep, the simple act of feeling it holds as much bliss as ache. The arc of the song’s melody brings it all home, tugging at the heart so hard it leaves the listener in a mise-en-scène of beauty and longing. Jim Farber
Bruce Springsteen – Girls in Their Summer Clothes
Nothing makes me feel older than taking a form traditionally associated with literal and figurative hotness – the summer – and selecting as its ambassador a Wall of Sound-ish, orchestrally-arranged throwback appearing on a later-period Bruce Springsteen album, recorded when the Boss was in his late 50s and released in January. But, look: every summer of your life will be spent getting older, just like any other season, and it’s exactly that wistful, not quite explicit sense of time’s passage that churns underneath this song’s every immaculately produced second. To a series of vaguely folksy warm-weather images – a kid bouncing a rubber ball, bike spokes spinning, buzzing signs of diners and grills – Springsteen keeps appending the refrain: “And the girls in their summer clothes / in the cool of the evening’s light/ the girls in their summer clothes / pass me by.” The narrator is experiencing all of the breezy, warm comforts of summer and also, in a way, just observing them. That’s what summer feels like as I get older: I notice the signifiers, I participate to some degree, but inevitably, they pass me by. Girls in Their Summer Clothes barely cracked the Billboard Hot 100, probably in part because it doesn’t feel like a contemporary song of the summer; it feels like every summer. Jesse Hassenger
Lana Del Rey – Venice Bitch
This song reminds me of the end of the summer of 2018, when I watched a lot of sunsets on the chilly, beautiful beaches of San Francisco. The cold cresting waves would spray foam into the orange sky as I drove along Ocean Beach on the way to the most beautiful Taco Bell in the world, which sounds like a locale in a Lana Del Rey song but is, in fact, a real place. Released as a single almost a year ahead of her masterpiece Norman F**king Rockwell!, Venice Bitch is long (9 minutes and 37 seconds), soft and moody, the perfect soundtrack to the darkening end of a warm day spent outside. The singer described the track in an interview as “end of summer, some people just wanna drive around for 10 minutes get lost in some electric guitar”. Exactly. Blake Montgomery
