Y feature

watch each uniquely qualify. What distinguishes them as such, other than a release date, is precisely what they share in common with the Song of the Summer and beach reads: the promised ease that differentiates them from work.

After all, it isn’t difficult to imagine the origin of the “beach read” as a framework for Barnes & Noble advertising campaigns and seasonal efforts to pitch new-release paperbacks to the crest of the bestseller list.

The literary critic Michelle Dean, in an article for the Guardian last June, traces the history of the term to the summer of 1990, at which point it seemed to emerge from the trademagazine ether as accepted coinage and gained currency soon after among broadsheet writers in apparent desperation for a catch-all. Though Dean also suggests that there remains some ambiguity around the exact definition, despite the idiom’s common use: “Some people thought all thrillers are beach blockbuster in that way. Or a charttopping pop song whose anthemic bliss permeates the season.

“The Song of the Summer” differs from beach-reads and blockbusters in that it has a dimension of officiality: that title is bestowed formally by Billboard according to chart performance between Memorial Day and Labour Day weekend. But much like the United Kingdom’s long-time fascination with its annual “Christmas Number One” – the track that crests the country’s radio charts the week of Christmas Day, typically a novelty single or flash-in-the-pan holiday tune – there seems to be a kind of pop-cultural X-factor that distinguishes the glorydestined Song of the Summer from a popular song that merely happens to find chart triumph at the right time.

A true Song of the Summer ought to somehow embody the feelings and sensations of the season – not unlike the beach-read and blockbuster after all. What matters in all cases is simplicity. kinds of art with labour, and the summer with leisure.

But there is, I think, an element of danger in this mentality and a risk of conceding something in our ongoing war against apathy and laziness. One can hardly deny that the dire state of the multiplex this weekend is a symptom of lowered standards; a bid to please with the simple and familiar – not to mention the fear Hollywood obviously has of unknown quantities and precarious investments is the reason we’re resigned to endure three humid months of King Arthur: Legend of the Sword and Pirates of the Caribbean 5. We let it happen. The only relief lately has been how many of these utterly worthless entertainments have proven failures at the box office, which might at least suggest to the studios that audiences want more even in the dog days of summer from their blockbusters than the absolute lowest common denominator.