The greatest summer songs of all time (2024)

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The Beach Boys practically invented the sounds of summer with their string of massive hits in the early 1960s. Where earlier odes to the sun and surf were filled with youthful exuberance, “California Girls” benefits from a slower rhythm and meticulous studio craft, where the harmonies are woven in a tapestry where both the beginning and end are hard to discern. There’s a slightly wistful air in the track’s romanticism, a longing for sun-kissed girls that can easily be seen as a yearning for the lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer.

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A flurry of guitars opens “Constructive Summer” on a note of reckless abandon that’s quickly colored by florid piano. It’s the Replacements as if fronted by Bruce Springsteen, or at least a singer-songwriter who recognizes it’s better to be sober when romanticizing boozing than to be wasted. In either case, the song is filled with hope and potential, as if this is the summer when the good times will finally arrive.

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With its burbling beats decorated with a mock steel drum, “Cruel Summer” doesn’t feel callous: it seems as carefree as a sunny day at a beach. The tension between the effervescent melody and production—each element arrives exactly at the right moment, as when the chicken-scratch rhythm guitar propels the initial chorus—and the forlorn tale of loneliness is the key to Banarama’s biggest success: the summer wouldn’t seem so unforgiving if it didn’t seem so bright.

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Not long into “Dancing In The Street,” the biggest pop hit she’d ever have with the Vandellas, Martha Reeves calls out that “summer’s here and the time is right for dancing in the street.” It’s a rallying call not for backyard barbecues but rather block parties: it’s a song for the cities, where people of all backgrounds unite to the sounds and sights of summer, the season where it’s impossible to while away the hours inside your house.

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The song that ruled the entire summer of 2017, “Despacito” is the first reggaeton song to top the Billboard charts and the first Spanish-sung single to reach that height since the fevered days of “Macarena” in 1996. Assisted up the charts by a remix featuring Justin Bieber and Daddy Yankee, it’s a deft nocturnal number, an anthem propelled by a booming bass that winds up surprisingly fleet on its feet. That nimbleness keeps it fresh summer after summer.

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“Hot Fun In The Summertime” arrived early in Sly & the Family Stone’s remarkable run: it was their third song to crack the Billboard Top 10, one of three non-LP singles of theirs to reach the charts in 1969. Where their other songs of the era were almost provocatively modern, there’s a deliberate undercurrent of nostalgia in “Hot Fun In The Summertime”: it’s the memory of summers past, seasons filled with county fairs and fleeting love. That sense of wistfulness is one of the reasons the song sounds better with each passing year: as the memories pile up, the song’s emotional resonance only increases.

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The song that launched a million memes in 2019, “Hot Girl Summer” is lighter than many of Megan Thee Stallion’s earliest hits, a synth-gilded groove that feels like twilight shimmering. The sleekness of the rhythm provides Megan Thee Stallion and Nicki Minaj plenty of room to roam; they don’t push the beat but lay back, accentuate the steamy, summery essence of the song.

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Mungo Jerry’s first single was their only stateside hit—they’d manage to stay on the charts in their native U.K. through 1974, by which time they were an oldies act in America—but it was an instant classic. A chugging modernized jug band tune, “In The Summertime” celebrates the days when everything seems possible but nothing seems better than having a drink or a drive, all in hopes of finding somebody to fall in love with for an hour or two. The incongruous hoedown of the rhythm—it’s a thoroughly British band mimicking American folk—adds to its appeal: this is a song that lives not in reality but in fantasy.

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The second single from Weezer’s pseudo-comeback The Green Album, “Island In The Sun” signaled how Rivers Cuomo was easing into craftsmanship: unlike the songs on Pinkerton, he’s indulging in daydreams, not exorcising demons. The loping guitar riff and singalong hooks help paint a picture of an idyllic beach, one free from worry and care—the very kind of longing that helps fuel a perfect summer day.

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The plasticine synth-funk bass line that drives “Long Hot Summer” has its own peculiar pull: the artificial vibrato on the keyboard winds up suggesting a heat haze, a misty quality that’s enhanced by the harmonies surrounding Paul Weller sighing “Don’t matter what I do, ’cause I’ll end up hurting you.” That sense of regret infuses the Style Council’s best single, giving its sumptuous new wave an emotional undercurrent: underneath its sophisticated surface is a deep feeling.

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Despite its sunny demeanor, “Lovely Day” didn’t appear in the summertime. It was released at the tail end of 1977, reaching its peak—it was a Top 10 R&B hit, going no further than 30 on the Billboard Hot 100—in early 1978. It’s a testament to the song’s effervescence that it’s impossible to imagine it arriving at any time other than summer: with its smoothed-out disco beat and deep harmonies, it feels like the platonic ideal of a summer song.

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The song at the foundation of Jimmy Buffett’s mellow empire, “Margaritaville” goes down so smoothly, it’s easy to overlook the broken heart at its center. Of course, the narrator of the song does his best to ignore the fact that he’s whiling away his time at a resort all on his own, taking note of everything that’s happening around him before acknowledging his miserabilism is his own damn fault. Buffett expertly evokes the cool breezes of a beachfront community which makes “Margaritaville” an ideal summer anthem: that’s the one time when every small lake town could seem like its own “Margaritaville.”

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“Miserlou” was not a hit when it was released back in 1962, a fact that seems difficult to grasp in the years after its pivotal role in Quentin Tarantino’s 1994 masterpiece Pulp Fiction turned the song into a standard. Dick Dale’s muscular, echoing guitar sounded like waves breaking against the shore, a trick that helped to make this instrumental seem impossibly modern even though it was based on a traditional Mediterranean folk song. Nothing about Dale’s interpretation of this tune feels traditional: he batters it around so it seems like the pinnacle of surf rock.

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The sensation of 2019, “Old Town Road” rocketed its way to the top of the charts in April of that year then staying at number one for a record-shattering 19 weeks, eventually dropping out of the pole position that August. The phenomenal success of “Old Town Road” inextricably ties it to its year yet the single still sounds good in subsequent summers because its heavy, loping bass rhythms fit the heavy, hazy feel of the dog days of summer.

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Released in the thick of the summer of 1984, “Panama” is the sleekest song on Van Halen’s breakaway hit 1984, a tune that’s all the better for lacking the candied synth coating of “Jump.” “Panama” nearly is a throwback to the backyard party anthems of Van Halen’s first record but it’s been blown up for the drive-in screen: it’s an exploitation flick, filled with cheap thrills and lasting pleasures, the sound of many wasted summer nights.

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Always a bubblegum band decked out in leather, the Ramones emphasized their featherweight origins with “Rockaway Beach,” a song that offers an East Coast take on the SoCal inventions of the Beach Boys. Where Brian Wilson’s crew spun fantasies of convertibles and bikinis, the Ramones sang about a necessary escape, hitching a ride out to a beach with no hot concrete. It’s as breakneck as anything on the band’s debut but the heavy harmonies make it seem lighter, even infectious.

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The narrator of “Saturday In The Park” hedges his bets on whether his reveries came to him on the Fourth of July but really the exact date doesn’t matter that much. Chicago sketches scenes from an idyllic day spent in the sun, an afternoon filled with laughter and ice cream. There’s an undeniable trace of hippie hangover here—witness the bridge where slow-motion riders compete with a bronze man telling stories—but the brightness of the melody and Chicago’s horn help make the song seem like a summertime perennial.

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No other song has captured the invigorating freedom of the start of the summer like “School’s Out,” the 1972 single that gave Alice Cooper his first and only Top 10 hit. Filled with puns—“Well, we got no class/And we got no principals”—“School’s Out” teems with a defiant energy that presages punk. Years later, it still seems galvanizing, nasty, and exciting, a song that rings in the arrival of summer.

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Rob Thomas sings “Man, it’s a hot one” at the start of “Smooth,” instantly suggesting a summer filled with hours so steamy, they can seem smooth. “Smooth” was designed to be a hit and the end results exceeded anybody’s expectations: it spent 12 weeks at number one on the Billboard charts, a period of time that cemented its status as a contemporary standard. The key to its appeal is that Thomas delivers the vocal hooks and then gets out of the way of Carlos Santana and the band, letting the grooves and guitar keep things cooking until the song fades away like a hot summer night.

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Another summer perennial that appeared in the dead of winter, “Soak Up The Sun” in some ways is a perfect song for the coldest days of February: its bright beat and irrepressible harmonies suggest a warmer, happier time. As the years faded into history, “Soak Up The Sun” wound up finding its natural role as a beach anthem. Sheryl Crow never sounded as joyous as she does here.

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“Steal My Sunshine” gained momentum over the course of the summer of 1999, working its way from a featured song on Doug Liman’s cult favorite Go into an actual hit. The fact that it peaked just as the summer started to fade from view is appropriate: it’s a song about good times slowly fading into the horizon, a song designed for the heavy days of August.

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Taking its name from a Tennessee Williams play—a circ*mstance that songwriter Martha Davis chalked up to pure coincidence—“Suddenly Last Summer” almost unfolds like a heat mirage on the horizon: the insistent new wave rhythm and circular synthesized hook has a hypnotizing effect, broken only by Davis giving the song an earthy emotional underpinning. The feelings driving “Suddenly Last Summer” are elusive, which only adds to its allure. What matters isn’t the specificity but rather being caught in the ebb and flow of its melody.

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One of the original hollers of teenage rebellion, “Summertime Blues” captures the aimlessness of adolescence, the period of time where adult urges are undercut by the limits of circ*mstance. Everything is holding Eddie Cochran down: his job, his parents, his girl, even his congressman, all not allowing him to just get out for a good time. Cochran’s hit still sounds sinewy, a lean rocker driven by a tight rhythm and tighter guitars, its precision helping to convey the hopelessness of our hero’s plight.

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“Summer Breeze”—the first but not necessarily the biggest hit from soft-rock duo Seals & Croft (“Get Closer” eclipsed it in 1976)—captures a specific summer vibe: afternoons where the cool wind blows through a house or a field, stimulating a sense of stillness. Or, as the duo sang, it’s “blowing through the jasmine in my mind,” a sentiment conveyed through their harmonies and the glistening keyboards, all suggesting the sweetest sunset imaginable. “Summer Breeze” gets by on its sumptuous production as much as the song itself: the mellow contours summon an afternoon hour where all worries have suddenly disappeared.

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The “(Winter Version)” in the title separates the “Summer Babe” on Pavement’s debut album Slanted And Enchanted from its initial single release but the differences in the mixes are so minute, it suggests that the appellation is a knowing joke in tandem with the opening line “ice baby.” Those affectations swiftly fade away, leaving behind a gorgeous, melancholy lament to a girl who has gone away.

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“Summer Girls” never hides the fact that it’s absurd on its face but it’s also impossible to tell whether LFO is in on the joke. The boy band sings the song with the utter sincerity of a group hellbent on having a hit and their earnestness is why “Summer Girls” remains a bewildering confection. The marquee lines—“New Kids on the Block had a bunch of hits/Chinese food makes me sick”—obscures such gems as “Dad took off when you were four years old/There was a good man named Paul Revere,” which only means that even after all these years “Summer Girls” can serve up surprises.

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“Summer In The City” opens with a cinematic wallop: the wailing of car horns interrupted by the sweet slam of the Lovin’ Spoonful, all setting the stage for an intense verse. The group lightens the tone with the chorus, where everything becomes better when it’s time to “go out and find a girl,” but it’s that claustrophobic verse that gives the song its nervy energy.

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The centerpiece of Grease, the moment where we get insights into Danny and Sandy’s characters as well as the relationship that sets the whole story in motion, “Summer Nights” captures the depth of feeling and the fleetingness of a summer fling. By contrasting Danny and Sandy’s views of their brief romance, “Summer Nights” illustrates how a brief dalliance can have lasting effects, plus the song is filled with wit and verve, paying tribute to 1950s rock and roll while also sending it up.

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A pure invention—Bryan Adams wasn’t even 10 in the summer of 1969—“Summer of 69” nevertheless has the feeling of nostalgic truth: the details don’t matter as much as the overarching intention. Arriving in the summer of 1985, “Summer Of 69” provided steel-girded dose of nostalgia that suited Reagan’s America, particularly as it featured Bryan Adams expertly replicating John “Cougar” Mellencamp’s heartland appeal. Listening to the song, you’d never guess that Adams is Canadian: this is the sound of middle America during the dog days of summer.

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Johnny Rivers released “Summer Rain” long after the summer of love had passed in 1967. He makes a reference to that celebrated summer by singing how the jukebox kept playing Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, a reference that winds up gaining bittersweet resonance as the years pass. “Summer Rain” is filled with 1960s signifiers—there’s the blue-eyed soul of Rivers’ lead vocal, the steady rolling acoustic guitars, and the lush orchestral arrangement—but that all helps the single seem slightly out of time, a song that conveys years gone by more than a specific summer that’s passed.

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Drifting along without any sense of urgency, “Summertime Rolls” is at its heart a love song: a fantasy of a love that has no start and no end. There’s a nearly narcotic undertow to the song’s slow roll but that’s a feint. “Summertime Rolls” is the rare Jane’s Addiction song to seem untouched by darkness, a genuine love song that feels all the more poignant coming from a group of cynics.

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The song that gave Lana Del Rey her first American Top 10 hit when Cedric Gervais remixed the 2012 original, “Summertime Sadness” captures a peculiar melancholy whether performed to a revved-up beat or amorphous atmosphere. By conveying what it means to feel out of phase with the sunniness of the season, Lana Del Rey winds up with a downbeat classic: the kind of song to play when the oppressive heat of August seems never-ending.

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It may be hard to hear now, decades after its release, but “A Summer Song” was ahead of its time. Where so many British Invasion hits were propelled by a driving beat inspired by Ringo Starr, Chad & Jeremy’s “A Summer Song” wafts along to a gentle breeze, one of the first pop/rock songs of the 1960s that takes no pains to disguise its sweet folky origins. Chad & Jeremy never seem indebted to the social consciousness of 1960s folk. Rather, they like the tender fingerpicking and the light sway of the melodies, making “A Summer Song” something appealingly gentle.

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A stroll down memory lane, “Summertime” provided the first indication that Will Smith could figure out how to mature his Fresh Prince persona. He’s still collaborating with DJ Jazzy Jeff here but the laid-back ’70s funk groove provides a multi-dimensional depth that makes it nostalgia seem sweeter with each passing year.

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Originally a German hit in 1965, Johnny Mercer reworked “Summer Wind” so it suited the American market. A few other singers got to it first but Frank Sinatra, wound up recording the definitive version of the song in 1966, working with Nelson Riddle to deliver a song that slowly gained momentum just like a gale of wind crossing an open field. One of the signatures of the song is how the organ complements the big band arrangement—nothing to overwhelm the arrangement but enough to make it seem lively, even modern, an aesthetic that still plays to this day.

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The narrator of “Sunny Afternoon” has his share of problems. The taxman has taken all his dough, he’s got a woman trying to break him, yet he’s just left lazing on this sunny afternoon, so beaten down by his travails he just wants to sit in the sun. The shambling rhythms the Kinks kick up convey this sense of decadence but it’s also kind of intoxicating: maybe he’s a curdled aristocrat but the narrator still sings with the wit and verve of Ray Davies.

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Plenty of country bands chased after the mellow rhythms of Jimmy Buffett’s “Margaritaville” but nobody captured its essential beachiness until the Zac Brown Band delivered “Toes” in 2009. Co-written with a bunch of other people, including Shawn Mullins of “Rockabye” fame, “Toes” feels as if no hands touched its melody: it seems as if the tune was always there, always waiting for the right tide to bring it to shore.

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Another quintessentially urban summer number, “Under The Boardwalk” celebrates stolen moments on the seashore, all conducted away from the glare of other people. The song feels of its time: the percussion and strings suggest a heightened reality. Maybe the romantic notions driving this song has faded but in this incarnation, it’s still potent.

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Playing with a bunch of musical and lyrical motifs from the surf-besotted early 1960s, the Go-Go’s wound up with a summer perennial with “Vacation.” There are hints of surf and beach moments propelling “Vacation” yet they’re there as inspiration more than sound. At its core, the song is driven by a rampaging melody decorated with countermelodies and harmonies, all making these three minutes as dynamic and unforgettable as a reckless day on the beach.

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Kimberly Rew was once a member of the Soft Boys with Robyn Hitchco*ck, but once Rew left those hard-anodized psychedelic rockers he wound up writing “Walking On Sunshine,” an irrepressible blast of cheerful pop. Equal parts Motown and British Invasion, the song became Katrina & the Waves’ biggest hit, as light as a breeze and as sturdy as any number of 1960s standards, a song that’s designed to generate good cheer and does so in abundance.