Today in the Northern Hemisphere marks the Summer Solstice, the day on which the Earth has its maximum tilt towards the sun. It is known variously as Midsummer and the Longest Day, among others, though these can be slightly misleading. Today the solstice point is timed to be at 9.51pm, slightly after sundown at 9.22pm (don’t ask, I haven’t a Scooby). Looking at the weather charts tells us that today, tomorrow and Saturday all share the same sunrise and sunset times, so in effect we have three longest days. And despite the meme above, we are forecast to have a day of sunshine and 20 degrees, which is nice. The day has been marked in culture for thousands of years, and no doubt the tv news will be showing us the modern day druids getting as close as they can to Stonehenge. I’m marking the day in my own traditional way of culture by playing you a few songs about summer – what else would you expect me to do?
Let’s get going. How could I start with anything other than this:
Have I just planted an earworm? Sorry (not really!). What can I say about this one? The basic facts are that it topped the UK charts for seven weeks in summer 1970, for six of which it kept Free’s All Right Now at #2. I loved that Free record – still do – and feel that it deserved at least a week at #1, but when you’re contending with a juggernaut like this one I guess you just have to take your place in the queue! This song captured the summer spirit around the world: it was #1 in eighteen countries, reached #3 in the US – the band’s only hit there – and has sold more than 30m copies. Not bad for a bit of jugband music that it is claimed took ten minutes to write. And for anyone who doesn’t know, the band’s name was inspired by the poem Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer, from T. S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. The lead singer and band leader, who wrote this song, is actually called Ray Dorset. They had a total of nine hit singles here, of which three others reached the top ten, including the follow up, Baby Jump, which also got to #1.
Next up is one of my all time favourites. I’ve had trouble playing this in the past, given the record company’s protectionist policy over copyright, but this is a 2022 re-released official video, from Don Henley’s official YouTube page, so I’m keeping my fingers tightly crossed:
That newly remastered video was posted in December 2022 and has more than 34m views, so it seems that I’m not the only one who likes this song! Hopefully that video will have solved the copyright issues, but please let me know if you can’t watch it! As I have done before, in an attempt at pre-empting that eventuality, here is a link to an official live version. This was the opening track on Don Henley’s second solo album, Building The Perfect Beast, which was released in November 1984, reaching #13 in the US and #14 here in the UK. The song was released as a single the previous month, and got to #5 in the US and #12 here. It resonated with me: I was born and brought up in coastal towns which depended on itinerant workers for summer holiday staffing, which is also what I had relied on for holiday jobs in my schooldays, some fifteen years earlier. We were always glad to see the back of those guys: coming down here, stealing our girls!
One of our favourite summer pastimes has always been going to the beach and getting a tan – though nowadays I’d hope that this is done responsibly! I played this one last year in a Tuesday Tunes post but I think it fits well here as a song about summer:
Sheryl Crow released Soak Up The Sun as a single in February 2002, ahead of its inclusion on her album C’mon C’mon in April of that year. The single peaked at #17 in the US and #16 in the UK – maybe it should have come out in the summer? The album did much better, though, reaching #2 in both the US and the UK. I’ve always liked Sheryl’s records since she first burst onto the scene with Tuesday Night Music Club, and she has continued to give me music I enjoy: her most recent album, Evolution, came out in March this year and while it hasn’t done all that well in the charts so far I quite liked it. Her previous record, Threads, which came out in August 2019, is a series of collaborations with a wide range of artists, and there are some real gems on it.
How about a classic for summer? I can’t leave this one out, can I:
All too short, like Eddie Cochran’s life, sadly. Released in 1958, that reached #8 in the US and #18 here. There have been many cover versions, notably by The Who, but I don’t think the original has ever been beaten. Its description of teenage angst and frustrations is superbly captured in such a succinct fashion. Cochran was only 21 when he was killed in a car crash in Wiltshire on his way back to London in April 1960, having just played in Bristol. He was already a star and could well have gone on to become huge, though his posthumous legacy has done well and he has taken his place as an icon of rock and roll history. There is a tragic irony in that the final single he released in the US when alive had just come out before the crash that took his life: it was Three Steps to Heaven. It wasn’t released here until the month after his passing – we took it to #1 in his honour.
Moving from one of rock and roll’s greats onto a modern day troubadour now, another of my long time favourites:
Like the Don Henley one, that is a recently reissued video for the song, which will hopefully get round any copyright issues from previous uploads. The imagery of the song is a wonderful evocation of how love can pass on and how little things, like seeing girls in their summer clothes, can remind us of happier times: it is a collection of vignettes from life, very typical of Bruce Springsteen’s storytelling style of songwriting. Girls In Their SummerClothes was a track on his album Magic, released in September 2007, which peaked at #1 in both the US and the UK, as well as elsewhere. It was released on iTunes as a digital single in January 2008, and reached #98 on the Billboard chart. It is one of my favourites of his – something about it just gets to me. I think that may be because the album was released around the time my marriage was ending, and I played it a lot once I was living on my own, with plenty of time to think!
I’ve now reached my Tuesday Tunes quota of five songs but as this is a special extra I thought I’d play one more. There are so many I could have chosen, but again I’m returning to a previously played old favourite. Has anyone ever done ‘welcoming the summer‘ better than this:
As I’m sure you know, Here Comes The Sun was a track on Abbey Road, which was released on 26 September 1969, and this video was released to mark the 50th anniversary reissue of the album, on 26 September 2019. I think it’s rather lovely, and it just had to be my final choice for today. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you about the Beatles or this song and album: suffice it to say that it is a George Harrison song, written by him while in his friend Eric Clapton’s garden, and that John Lennon didn’t feature on the original recording as he was recuperating from injury at the time. The album was, of course, #1 in the UK and the US, and in just about every other country you care to think of. The 50th anniversary reissue? Also a UK #1. In the main US chart it was #3, though it made #1 in the Rock chart. It’s hardly surprising, therefore, that this video has over 150m views in a little less than five years!
That’s all for today, and my collection of songs to mark the solstice. If you celebrate I hope you have a great time, and if you’re going to Stonehenge try not to get arrested – getting stoned is fine, though 😉
