Every summer I associate songs with the season. This doesn’t happen in spring, fall or winter, for whatever reason. Sometimes the songs I hear all summer are songs I hate, sometimes they are songs I love. Sometimes they are songs I grow tired of because they are played too much. Back when things changed all the time–say when summer was a passing point between two different grades, or I had a different job every summer–it was easy to link specific songs with specific summers. But now that one summer isn’t much different than any other they blur. The summer of “We are Young” by fun (loved it!) and “Somebody That I Used to Know” by Gotye (hated it!)? Who knew when that was? (Yes, the internet could easily tell me.)
So here is my scrapbook of songs from the summer of 2015.
Note that I interacted with all of these songs through the radio when I was driving around. I’ve never watched any of the videos and until I was writing this post I had no idea who sang any of these songs, because radio stations rarely tell me, perhaps because the Shazam app can do that for them. And perhaps because even though there are still local (sometimes “local”) radio stations, most of them have cut back significantly on their on-air talent.
Walk the Moon’s “Shut up and Dance”
This song was all over the pop stations this summer. I find it vaguely rude and the slightest bit overly manufactured and obvious, but rarely changed the station when it was playing.
Elle King’s Ex’s & Oh’s
This was also all over pop stations and also 94.7, the alternative radio station. Plus KINK liked it. So basically every music station I listen to.
Vance Joy’s Mess is Mine
I think it was mostly KINK that loved this song. Maybe the alternative music station now and then.
The very wordy named Andrew McMahon In the Wilderness’s “Cecilia and the Satellite”
Another across-the-preset favorite. I liked singing along with this, while also finding it slightly cheesy.
It occurs to me I’m not really crazy about any of these, so I’ll add in one more that I adore, even though I started hearing it in the spring.
Vampire Weekend’s “Unbelievers”
I love the music, I love the words, I have watched this video and I like it also. I would like it to be longer, but songs seem to be very short right now. I think all of these are under four minutes.
This song is one that I also looked up the chords and figured out how to play on the piano. It involved figuring out some chord inversions, but I was successful in my inversions and I felt very smart.