BEST OF SONGS
Stereotypical summer hits tend to burn out, not fade away, sometimes dragging whole careers, and dance crazes, with them (“Hey, Macarena!”). This list celebrates a few that have managed to stick around. It mostly covers summer hits from the MTV era because videos have become so integral to the concept of the summer hit. It also focuses on songs that actually conjure up the season. Ballads are notably absent because, let’s face it: “Summer of 69” trumps “Everything I Do (I Do It for You)” every time.
10. NELLY – “HOT IN HERRE” (2002)
(Editor’s note: Mr. Doherty is incorrect in ranking this at number 10. “Hot in Herre” is the best summer song of all-time, ever. - DP) This horny hip-hop hit offers a checklist of summer-song characteristics, including a fantastically silly video (the club gets so hot, the roof literally catches fire), immediately out-of-date pop culture references “Vokal tanktop”), a gruff/sweet boy/girl duet, an irresistible beat (courtesy the Neptunes), an immediately identifiable catchphrase, and an indelible hook.
9. BLACK EYED PEAS – “I GOTTA FEELING” (2009)
This hit became ubiquitous by offering a pleasure so guilty, it should be condemned; it’s so determinedly big and dumb, you can feel your IQ ebbing away with each repetition of that nagging chorus, and with every whoop and toast (“Drank!”). But it’s the most benign of earworms, defying you not to smile when you hear it.
8. DJ JAZZY JEFF & THE FRESH PRINCE – “SUMMERTIME” (1991)
Just as George and Ira Gershwin’s “Summertime” was the ur-summer jam, this is the prototype summer pop smash, advertising its own seasonal-specific utility: “it’s cool to dance / But what about the groove that soothes, that moves romance?” Will Smith was the master of the smooth, soft sell, back when he was fresh and the living was easy.
7. DAFT PUNK FEAT. PHARRELL – “GET LUCKY” (2013)
Robin Thicke may have won the battle for Song of Summer 2013 with “Blurred Lines,” but the robots won the war – with a little help from Pharrell, and Nile Rodgers’ chic guitar. This slinky ode to being “up all night to the sun” is destined to be reborn in summers to come: The legend of the phoenix lives on.
6. BANANARAMA – “CRUEL SUMMER” (1983)
Leave it to the Brits to gripe about the weather, even when it’s hot (“I sit around / Trying to smile / But the air is so heavy and dry”), but the London trio offsets their glum lyrics and minor-key hook with a jaunty attitude, a jangly beat, and a video full of Dukes of Hazzardinspired hi-jinks. What’s more, in great summer-hit tradition, this song climbed the charts after soundtracking a summer blockbuster: in this case, The Karate Kid.
5. LEN – “STEAL MY SUNSHINE” (1999)
An encyclopedia’s worth of Genius. com annotations couldn’t make sense of the verses. What is a “gleaming tare / In a staring under heat?” But nonsense lyrics fit summer hits, and the beat is seductive. This Toronto one-hit wonder’s one hit was wondrous.
4. BRYAN ADAMS – “SUMMER OF 69” (1984)
Few rock hits encapsulate summer, but Adams’ defiantly triumphant celebration of a time when “it was now or never” breaks the mold. How else to be nostalgic about 1969 than with guitars? (Except that Adams has said the song is really about sex, which makes it even more of a song of the summer.)
3. RIHANNA FEAT. JAY-Z – “UMBRELLA” (2007)
Robyn Fenty has graced many a summer chart--including this year with Kendrick Lamar on “Loyalty”—but she delivered her coup de grace while singing in the rain. The beat lopes; Jay-Z struts; Rihanna stutters and offers shelter from the storm, reminding us, “When the sun shine, we shine together.”
2. THE SUNDAYS – “SUMMERTIME” (1997)
“Two peas from the same pod, yes we are / Or have I read too much fiction?” sings Harriet Wheeler, as her husband David Gavurin’s guitar whirls giddily through. The lyrics describe the uncertainty inherent in a summer fling, but it’s hard not to fall head-over-heels for the winsome chorus, about how “the sunshine banishes the dark.”
1. PUBLIC ENEMY – “FIGHT THE POWER” (1989)
This galvanizing hip-hop anthem doesn’t so much celebrate summer as evoke an overheated powder keg: the summer of 1989 in New York, just after Donald Trump took out a full-page newspaper ad to claim the guilt of the Central Park 5 – a group of black and Latino men who were accused of rape and attempted murder, but later exonerated. If feels just as urgent now.