Fun
Let’s Cook Up a Summer Playlist
Hello everybody,
Slipping fast, these summer days. I want to catch them, hoard them, put them in a box by my bed to pull out when it’s February and we’ve all forgotten what it was like to complain about the heat.
Songs are a way to remember—what are the songs that conjure a summer day gone by? What do you crank once the temperature rises? Leave a comment below, so we can have a playlist for an ease-filled end of summer.
Here’s a playlist I’ve been letting roll in the background as I knit and pack up to take the lanky lad to his first year in college. By the time you read this, we will be loading him into his dorm on 15th Street, where I think he is going to have a big time.
These are all Nashville singer-songwriters, a completely eclectic bunch of styles. For anybody who hasn’t been paying attention, Nashville’s music scene is all over the place, with talented musicians everywhere you turn.
https://open.spotify.com/user/1227380329/playlist/1GOmuBk3petkrxGUXhovWF
I’d write more, but Kermit has flopped down on my left arm so it’s a fight for the keyboard.
HAPPY TO MAKE MY CONTRIBUTIN TO THIS MUSICL POST
FOODLADY YOU AR SO BEAUTIFUL
The Boys of Summer — Don Henley, and Cruel Summer — Bananarama. Apparently I like my summer music to have the word “summer” in the title!
This is a summer vibes sing-Artist-War Song-Summer.
How about Those Lazy Hazy Crazy Days of Summer, Nat King Cole
I love this song! It reminds me of popsicles ,hot summer days , and my mom, who had every record Nat King Cole made.
Do old ones count? For this old lady it’s Dancin’ in the Street by Martha and the Vandellas!
I gotta add Heat Wave by them as well!
Have you seen David Bowie & Mick Jagger’s music video?
They rock Dancing in the Streets! Check it out on you tube
Early Beach Boys. All of them. Nice to have you pop in, Kermit.
Me too!
Not the type of music you have selected, but every time I think of summer music it’s Mondo Jerry’s In the Summertime that plays in my head.
I think you need some Nova Scotia content for your playlist, so I’d suggest “Nowhere with You” by Joel Plaskett – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hljW9uOcFpM
YES to this from me in NB.
Loving Spoonfuls “Summer in the City” and reaching a long was back, The Jamie’s doo wop “Summertime, summertime”
Oh yes, to both of those.
Seals and Croft’s Summer Breeze. Have a safe and bitter sweet time taking the lad to school. I was pregnant with #2 and weeping to Golden Slumbers as we took #1 through the streets of Manhattan to her dorm. That gosh-darn umbilical cord never quite detaches, does it?
Signed Sealed and Delivered I’m Yours, by Stevie Wonder
Under the Boardwalk by the Drifters always conjures up memories of youthfull days spent at the Jersey Shore.
That is mine too!
The ultimate summer song on my playlist! Brings back great memories with friends and flirting with boys at the pool.
Definitely Under the Boardwalk!! And Summer in the City. And Carole King’s Tapestry album. Takes me back to summer between 8th and 9th grade 🙂 early Bowie too!!
Yes!
I too am en route to bring my boy to his freshman year in college…bittersweet but exciting!!! I can’t think of any summer time songs but I’m playing you list in the car today once we get on the road.
Ok, I get it i’m Old, I am still sick of this song that was played unceasing when I was 13. Summer in the City by the Rascals, they are too old to be called”Young” also! However, it always reminds me of summer.
Ok, wrong group!
I know I’ve said it somewhere already, but I love that photograph very very much.
Can’t add much on the music front…just that when all the noise in my squirrel brain gets in the way of getting the goats fed, I find singing Marley’s “Three Little Birds” works every time. The goats are used to it now, although they are perhaps wondering, “Where are these three little birds of whom you sing? All we see are the same two chickens.”
This is my message to you-oo-ou…
Hot Fun in the Summertime by Sly & the Family Stone, followed by Dancing in the Moonlight by King Harvest
Hot Fun in the Summertime for me too!
Summertime, DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince
Steal My Sunshine by Len sends me right back to a summer I was a camp nurse and the song was in heavy rotation with the councillors.
Elton John, Someone Saved My Life Tonight, Philadelphia Freedom.
Many of the above. Also for late summer, the melancholy “Got the Urge for Goin’ ” as sung by Tom Rush but written by ??? Joni Mitchell, maybe.
Dog and the butterfly by
Freshman fist bump from the DC suburbs. We’re packing up our tiny daughter (“not short,fun-size!”) for her first year too. We have already picked out the sweater I’ll be knitting for her during first semester cuz she’s going someplace cold.
Kermit, did you take that picture? It is so beautiful.
Stone Soul Picnic
Fortunate Son
Me and Bobby McGee
Rolling in the Deep
Harper Valley PTA
Ode to Billy Joe
Walk On By
Any Dionne Warwick actually (we played the Burt Bacharach songbook in Jr. High Summer Band one year so all those songs sound summery to me)
A Boy Named Sue
Several of my favorites have already been named, incl. Mungo Jerry’s In the Summertime, but how about Palisades Park – Freddy Cannon, See You in September – The Happenings, & Up on the Roof – the Drifters.
V-A-C-A-T-I-O-N in the summertime/we’re going to have a ball. (Connie Francis?)
I want to listen to every one of these. So many good feels just reading the titles.
Sealed With a Kiss, Bobby Vinton, 1964, because it played all day at the public swimming pool the year I was old enough to notice music. Signed, Older Than Dirt.
Also Up on the Roof (Drifters).
Ditto to Up on the Roof
Yes, Up on the Roof, too!!
The Atlantic R & B canon from the 60s, anything by Aretha, Otis or Sam Cooke
So many of my summertime memories listed here. A great playlist in the making. Seems like we are all “of an age”.
Oh there are so many and they all bring me back to very specific moments in time.
Boys of Summer–In the kitchen and Wings Point in East Hampton. Watching the sous chef, Betsy, softly singing along while she was chopping.
Pulling Mussels from the Shell–laying on a towel at our apartment buildings pool while reading The Godfather. I felt very grown up.
Telephone Line–Summer love, so long ago. Lovely memories.
Ahh…nostalgia.
For early summer, it’s got to be “School’s Out” by Alice Cooper paired with “I’m Free” by the Who. Otherwise, “Summertime Blues” by Eddie Cochran, “Vacation” by the Go-Gos, “Sunny Afternoon” by the Kinks, and “Suddenly Last Summer” by the Motels.
Thanks! Congrats to Lanky Boy! He’s gonna have a blast !
First – I just LOVE Kermit. I want him to come live with me!
Second … I grew up in the tropics where it is ALWAYS summer, so the only summer song I remember, which you Americans may not have heard, is Clif Richards’ V A C A T I O N … Got it running through my head now. (One person may have mentioned it but attributed it to Connie Francis … don’t think she did a cover of it, though.)
Sly and the Family Stone — Hot Fun in the Summertime
Girls Just Wanna Have Fun/Cyndi Lauper; anything by the Go-Gos, especially We Got The Beat
And also Rock Lobster/B-52s
YES to Rock Lobster. Let’s add Love Shack to the list. It always makes me think of summer road trips and get togethers with friends.
Yes, yes!
Also, most Bob Marley…
Dancin’ On the Ceiling by Lionel Richie, Fins by Jimmy Buffet, and Lively Up Yourself by Bob Marley. Toes are tapping, shoulders bopping, time to run errands blasting summer tunes. Thanks, Ann, I need the smiles today.
“Up on the Roof” – the James Taylor version….actually almost anything by James. (Absolutely nothing against the Drifter’s version;I just know this version better) I spent many summers at James Taylor concerts….great memories…. Also “Margaritaville “ and “Cheesburger in Paradise” by Jimmy Buffet. I have hosted many Jimmy Buffet parties in February-when it is cold and snowy!
I have been listening to a WIDE variety of new and old music. here we go
Sit Next to Me by foster the people
All we do by Oh Wonder
Edgeland the album from Kim Richie
Can’t find my way home by Steve Winwood
Feed the Tree, Full Moon, empty heart by Belly
Odyssey by the Accidentals the whole album
Feel it still Portugal, the man
Speed of sound, clocks, magic, by Coldplay
Royal by Lourdes
Respect
Think, (from the blues brothers featuring Aretha Franklin)
This is a great list of songs! If you’re not moving while Feel It Still is playing, you might be dead!
The B52s are go-to Summer music, particularly Love Shack and Roam.
Sounds of then (This is Australia) by GANGgajang
What do I play? The Summer Oldies Playlist that y’all shared last year or the year before! And judging by the songs in the comments, I need a new playlist with more of these.
Best wishes to you on getting the lanky one off to school. Does this mean you’re empty nesters? Our FB feed reminded us that 7 years ago we were setting up our youngest in Orlando at UCF. It was traumatic, sending the youngest across the country. He came back to the left coast, eventually.
New cat Yadi helped me with my blog post today. He’s creative in his spelling, too.
Summertime by George Gershwin
The Girl from Ipanema and the Waters of March (English and Portuguese versions). Bossa Nova just says summer to me.
Vacation by the GoGo’s!
I grew up an Army brat, then an Army wife so summer usually meant moving or traveling cross country to visit relatives. Get Out The Map by The Indigo Girls conjures up road trip memories as do musical soundtracks (The Sound of Music, The Music Man, Mary Poppins…) because for some reason that was what all 5 of us kids could agree on and sang at the top of our voices until the ‘rents needed a break and declared a Quaker contest. Or played Feed the Birds (tuppence a bag..) or Edelweiss which always induced a quiet (although generally short lived!) melancholy mood. For my kids it was James Taylor, Carly Simon, ABBA, Queen and Disney movie soundtracks.
Brown Eyed Girl, Up on the Roof, She Was Just 17, anything from the Tapestry Album, plus..Joni singing Cary.
I left off too many.. so…il Mondo by Jimmy Fontana, Save it for Later by the English Beat, Black Coffee in Bed by Squeeze, Kimberly and also Gloria by Patti Smith
And…..Charles Trenet singing La Mer, and also Boum!
Smooth (1999) check out their video – Santana and Rob Thomas
Peter Frampton’s Baby I Love Your Way is summer nights to me.
California Girls.
And everything else by the Beach Boys.
Summertime Rolls by Janes Addiction
Magic by Pilot… Reminds me of a summer when I was a teenager.
Twisting by the Pool-Dire Straits. The 80s were so fun.
As a Brit it has to be Lazy Sunday by the Small Faces and Walking on sunshine by Katrina and the Waves
Summer Breeze by Seals and Croft
How do I make a playlist? Must listen to all of these!
Your IG posts about taking Tall Kid to New York brought back memories of 2003, when we did the same for our son but a few blocks south to NYU and his dorm on Washington Square.
John Cougar Mellencamp – Jack and Diane
I’m not sure if anyone brought up this song but “Summer” my Calvin Harris is my guilty pleasure song in the summer. I don’t listen to it any other time except in the summer
I do wish someone would make a Spotify playlist! It would be excellent.
Night Swimming by REM, because yo I can only night swim in the summer, right?
…deserves a quiet night
Summer wind by Sinatra
Growing up in the ’70’s, on the days we went to the swimming pool I always remember hearing Nazareth’s “Love Hurts” and Foghat’s “Slow Ride” at some point. To this day when I hear those songs, I smell chlorine. And by the way, remember listening to the radio as we sunbathed and heard the DJ say, “Turn so you don’t burn!” Good times our kids will neve know (and hopefully less skin cancer).
“Get Out the Map” by the Indigo Girls.