Shortage Of Summer Songs

Some of the things I miss most about my more carefree days are summer songs. By
“summer songs,” I mean songs that dominated the radio and/or my stereo during that too-short window of time between when school let out for the year and when it started again. There were fewer commitments back then: Football practice and part-time jobs were the biggest demands on my time during high school. After graduation, only summer employment tied me down. Everything else was pretty much optional. Which left plenty of time for lazy afternoons and late nights spent listening to some of my favorite tunes.

There are some songs that I remember immediately, such as Bruce Springsteen’s “Born In The U.S.A.,” Dire Straits’ “Money For Nothing,” Van Halen’s “Best of Both Worlds” and U2’s “Desire.” The last few days of August 1990 (and weeks after that) were spent listening to a whole lot of Stevie Ray Vaughan after he was killed in a helicopter accident.

I can’t think of any current songs that I associated with summer. With each added year and responsibility, I have given up some of that leisure listening time. (Though after seeing Van Halen on that short list above, it occurs to me that my taste might have changed more than anything else in the past 20 years.) There probably are still a handful of really good songs released each summer, but depending how busy I’ve been at work I might not get them worked into any kind of heavy rotation until I’m sitting down to wrap Christmas gifts.

These days, I’m happy to get a little time to listen to an album after work on a long, hot summer day. Like on Tuesday, when I got to watch our 2-year-old daughter shake her little butt to the Allman Brothers’ “Southbound.” Adding that memory to the many brought back by “Born In The U.S.A.” and the like makes getting older seem a little bit cooler than I ever would have imagined.