Golden oldies
SUNNY SONGS
As the rain tumbled onto the green Somerset hills, and coursed down the red-earthed track, my thoughts turned to this question: why it is that summer songs are grand but almost all Christmas songs except for hymns ghastly?
There’s something about summer – the toes-in-the-sand, warm breeze, cotton-light feel of it – that speaks pure golden pop. Songs about summer lovin’ in the city or surfin’ or dancing in the streets are like sun on the face or a long cool drink hitting the back of the throat on a hot day. Christmas music is waiting, footsore, to pay for an expensive present in a department store – an annual chore to be endured.
So here, pop-pickers, are a few of my favourite summer songs, as autumn arrives. This is what I would play if I was on the decks for your beach party.
Rome Wasn’t Built in a Day by Morcheeba. At the River by Groove Armada. La Bamba by Los Lobos. Into the Mystic by Van the Man. Sunny Afternoon by the Kinks. Anything by the Beach Boys or Abba (even the Mamma
Mia! soundtrack to which I am devoted). David Bowie and Mick Jagger Dancing in the Street. Hot Summer Day by It’s a Beautiful Day. Shake Some Action by the Flamin’ Groovies. Dancing in the Moonlight by Toploader. LDN by Lily Allen. Koop Island Blues by Koop (of which more next month).
Normally I wouldn’t include Leonard Cohen in my summer playlist, but hear me out. He bought a house on Hydra days after his 26th birthday, and he is having a moment. Polly Samson has written a novel about his life on the island, A Theatre for Dreamers, and Nick Broomfield recently released his Marianne and Leonard, a lovely film about the poet-singer-songwriter and his muse on Hydra. Sweet agony to see Marianne Ihlen looking so beautiful, sunlight streaming through her bleached blonde locks in the island sun, to the soundtrack of So Long, Marianne – and then to see her die in an Oslo hospice.
Anything by Leonard Cohen is on my playlist, as nothing says ‘summer’ and nothing says ‘holiday’ quite so sweetly as a Greek island, as the producers of Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again well understood. It’s true, though, that the dark-complexioned, growly-voiced singer himself brings to mind more ‘end of days’. As the late Christopher Hitchens noted after he contracted terminal throat cancer, ‘When you fall ill, people send you CDS. Very often, in my experience, these are by Leonard Cohen.’
I have one summer song that’s off the playlist for being as cheesy and annoying as Slade, and that’s Cliff Richard’s Summer Holiday.
Otherwise, my taste in pop and rock is one that Nigella would tick but C S Lewis not so much: for ever summer and never Christmas.