Pool parties and barbecues are soon going to be a thing of the past, replaced by fireside chats and hot cocoa sips. There’s still time to enjoy the last bits of summer, though, and the three songs below will help you do just that.
The Beach Boys’ “Surfin’ U.S.A.”
Though it was released in the spring of 1963, The Beach Boys‘ “Surfin’ U.S.A” is undoubtedly a summer anthem. The visions of a perfect Californ-i-a day are perfectly set against the music and lyrical structure of Chuck Berry’s “Sweet Little Sixteen”.
“I was going with a girl called Judy Bowles, and her brother Jimmy was a surfer. He knew all the surfing spots,” Brian Wilson once said, per James B. Murphy’s Becoming the Beach Boys. “I started humming the melody to ‘Sweet Little Sixteen’ and I got fascinated with the fact of doing it, and I thought to myself, ‘God! What about trying to put surf lyrics to “Sweet Little Sixteen”s melody?’
“The concept was about, ‘They are doing this in this city, and they’re doing that in that city,’” he continued. “So I said to Jimmy, ‘Hey Jimmy, I want to do a song mentioning all the surf spots.’ So he gave me a list.”
The song was one of The Beach Boys’ biggest successes, becoming their first Top 10 hit.
The Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun”
Before we enter into that “long, cold, lonely winter“, it’s a good idea to feel the sun and the joy it brings with The Beatles’ 1969 track. The song is all good vibes and summer love, a perfect soundtrack to the warmest days of the year.
George Harrison wrote the track at his friend Eric Clapton’s house. He did so when he was fed up with the winter months and the business side of his work.
“It seems as if winter in England goes on forever, by the time spring comes you really deserve it,” Harrison wrote in his autobiography, I, Me, Mine. “So one day I decided I was going to sag off Apple and I went over to Eric Clapton’s house. The relief of not having to go see all those dopey accountants was wonderful, and I walked around the garden with one of Eric’s acoustic guitars and wrote ‘Here Comes the Sun’.”
Led Zeppelin’s “Dancing Days”
In 1973, Led Zeppelin celebrated the arrival of summer when they sang “Dancing days are here again / As the summer evenings grow.”
Jimmy Page and Robert Plant penned “Dancing Days” after hearing an Indian song while they were traveling in Bombay. The result is a groovy delight that is sure to get even the most fall-loving person in a summertime mood.
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