The song of the summer: a dreaded phrase when up and coming musicians promote their music online. With everyone focused on buzzword–filled lyrics, soulless catchy guitar riffs, and smashing drums, they forget about true songs of the summer. Songs that capture the warm haze, the dreamlike nostalgia, the nights blurring together with the smudge of daytime heat. These are seven must–have songs on your summer playlist.
Need Your Love so Bad — Fleetwood Mac
Slow dancing on the back porch with your lover. Two glasses of iced tea sit on the table, ice melting, lemons brilliantly yellow against the setting sun. The cicadas are humming, birds settling down for the night. You’ve just eaten a pasta dinner, the kitchen a mess. Flour streaks across your lover’s cheek like a shooting star. The moon is big and gold and your heart swells.
The Swimming Song — Loudon Wainwright III
Sitting on the dock of the local lake. Your friends’ slick seal bodies splash and tease each other. One swears he felt something nip at his feet. Your hair is drying in the sun, curled and tangled. You convince everyone to get ice cream after, the whole group shivering in the shop. Towels wrapped around your waists, you pad outside, taking over picnic tables. Your sun-kissed skin feels tight across your back as you laugh.
End of Beginning — Djo
Biking through the streets of your hometown at dusk. Neighborhoods and cul–de–sacs rendered foreign, basketball hoops loom silently in driveways. Ice cream melts on your tongue, sweet and sticky. You’re leaving soon. You’ve lived your whole life working to get out of this town and now that it’s nearing, you find yourself with an unfamiliar ache in your stomach. Something like homesickness. And you haven’t even left yet.
Harvest Moon — Neil Young
Driving down backroads for the last time, your lover’s hand tight in yours. The sun has just started setting. Everything in the valley melts a brilliant gold. A deer raises its head from the tall grasses of a nearby field. You know it can’t all last forever.
Name Something Better — Ray Bull
Standing in a crowded house party. Your attention is diverted from your friends’ conversation to the doorway. A familiar figure fills the frame and your heart squeezes. You know every line of their body, the freckles across their shoulders, their shoe size. You lock eyes. They look away first, smiling at someone else in the crowd. They used to look at you like that. You return to your friends’ conversation.
Summer Windows — Slaughter Beach, Dog
Sitting on your best friend’s front steps. You’re in love with her but you won’t say anything. You can’t. Your chest aches so much with love you could almost burst with it. It feels like the end of the world. She’s inside, filling a glass with sweet tea for you. Her cat nudges your hand with its head, tail curling as your fingers skate across its fur. It’s soft and light. The sun flashes across the horizon and you almost wish it really was the end of the world.
Keep Those Teardrops from Falling — Natalie Bergman
Driving away from your hometown. Leaving behind everything you’ve ever known and ever loved. Your friends left earlier in the week, tears kept hidden through laughter and promises to keep in touch. Hand gripping the steering wheel, this is the beginning of the rest of your life. It’s your grand finale.
