Songs of the Summer

by editor Michele Catalano

I hate summer. I’ve made that abundantly clear to everyone who knows me or has ever talked to me. I loathe the heat, dread the humidity, hate the endless days. It’s a three-month slog I have to get through in order to get to the delectable days of autumn, and I do it begrudgingly. 

The only redeeming thing about summer is music. Some songs just sound different when you’re driving with the windows down on Ocean Parkway. They sound better when you’re in the pool with your little Bluetooth speaker on the deck. They hit hard when you are walking or running, dripping sweat, exhausted from the heat, the music spurring you on.

I have my favorite songs of summer. Those are different from summer songs. Summer songs are songs that speak specifically about the season. “Beach Baby” or “Boys of Summer.” Songs like that. My favorite songs of summer are from a different realm. They transport me back to various years of my life, to humid nights and scorching days, to being a kid in love with the sprinkler in my backyard, to being a young adult driving the parkway at night while crying about my love life. Summer lovin’, had me a blast. You know the deal.

My songs of summer are as follows:

“Super Freak” by Rick James. It’s 1981, and I am obsessed with this 45. It will forever remind me of escaping the oppressive heat in my air-conditioned bedroom and dancing around to this song as if I were the actual super freak, even though I was nothing like the girl portrayed in the song. But for four minutes at a time, I was her. 

“In the Still of the Night” by the Five Satins. I’m young, probably nine or 10, and my parents are having a party in their backyard. It is midsummer, it is nighttime, and the fireflies are out. The kids run around the yard, trying to capture the lightning bugs while the adults are on the deck, paired off and slow dancing to this song. I stop running around the yard and watch them for a bit, caught up in the magic of the song, the lights shimmering in the pool, the couples dancing, the stifling heat that felt good at the time. A fairytale memory.

“Every Breath You Take” by the Police. I hate this song. Like, really, really hate it. But it was undeniably the song of the summer of 1983. It was everywhere. My friends loved it. My mother loved it. The radio stations loved it. It was everywhere. And as much as I don’t care for it, it was inextricably a part of the greatest summer of my life. If I played it for myself now, I’d be thinking of pool parties at my parents’ house when they were on vacation, of clinging to high school friendships that felt like they were passing their due date, of too much drinking, of going straight to my 6 a.m. opening shift at the deli after being out all night. 

“Philadelphia Freedom” by Elton John. This song was released in the winter of 1975 but didn’t reach fever pitch until the summer. We were a year out from the Bicentennial, but everyone was in a patriotic mood and this song just felt patriotic. I was a huge Elton John fan at the time and embraced the song hard, as if I were from Philly. I remember walking around with my portable radio, scanning various stations, hoping it would be on somewhere; just hanging out at the school playground blasting Elton John, as one did in 1975. Listening to it now makes me feel hot and sticky, like I’m wrapped up in summer.

“Santeria” by Sublime. My kids loved this song, and Sublime in general, when they were very young. I was recently separated, and when my ex took our minivan and left me without a car, my father generously gave me his 1993 Cadillac. I drove my kids around in that boat, which had a great sound system. They got so excited when “Santeria” came on K-Rock. We’d roll down the windows and let the heat in, even though the A/C was on. There was really no other way to enjoy that song except with the summer heat swirling around you.  

“Soco Amaretto Lime” by Brand New. I used to drive around on hot summer nights to get away from the chaos in my house. I had a mix CD I played, but this was always the highlight. Stay awake through summer like we own the heat really spoke to me. 

“Sweetness” by Jimmy Eat World. Everything about this song says summer. It’s breezy, it’s light, it’s uplifting, and it’s a singalong. It feels like what summer would be without the oppressive heat. It’s a song you sing loud and strong and maybe pump your fists in the air, and in the end you feel some kind of catharsis. Play it while at the beach, in the pool, lying on a blanket in your backyard, sitting in front of the air conditioner. It will feel good no matter what. A breath of fresh air on a stagnant, record-heat day. 

“Go With the Flow” by Queens of the Stone Age. The ultimate summer song. It feels like what I imagine driving through a desert (in a car with flames painted on the side) might feel like. The oppressive heat, the endless sand, the lonely cactus, the sweating through it. This song ignites the embers of summer. 

As much as I hate summer, I do love the feeling I get when I drive by the beach (never to the beach, just passing by) and can smell the ocean and hear the seagulls and see the dunes, and I put on one of these songs and feel a tinge of that sense of freedom I used to get when summer meant something to me. 

Michele is the founder and Editor in Chief of IHTOV

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