Jeff claims a Kid Rock song is the best summer song
Ten years later, and I still can’t stop trying different things, smoking funny things, and making love out by the lake to my favorite song, although now that I type it out and roll it around my tongue, the term “making love” is a skin-crawlingly weird way to say you were bumpin’ uglies, but whatever: Kid Rock’s “All Summer Long” has gone and become my all-time favorite summer song, the single ditty that does it for me, that immediately puts me in the summer swing. Sorry, “Summer Nights” by Van Hagar, you’ve been replaced.
Now, understand this: I’m not a Kid Rock fan. I don’t know the guy, but the vibe he gives off kind of creeps me out. He looks like the kind of guy you wish your step-sister didn’t bring to the family barbecue, amirite?
Furthermore, the song is a mashup of Warren Zevon’s “Werewolves on London” and Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama,” two classic songs written and performed by two deceased artists and Kid Rock’s appropriation of them for profit feels, at best, sacrilege and at worst, just downright evil.
On top of all that, I realize proclaiming my love for this song, in this public sphere, is opening me up to all sorts of backlash. People who thought they knew me might be surprised, and it might change their perspective of me. I mean, I’m loudly proclaiming my love of this should-be-a-disaster of a song. It’s like when it came out President Donald Trump eats his steak well done and beketchuped, even some of his most ardent supporters were shocked and disappointed. Really. Not making this up. There was a Public Policy Polling poll on this, and 52 percent of Trump voters disapproved of this culinary horror.
So if Trump fans would turn on him due to ketchup, I can only imagine what my “All Summer Long” love is going to do to me.
But I remain steadfast: There is no better rock n’ roll summer song that “All Summer Long.” I proclaim this as fact. And as long time readers might remember, I pumped up this song back in 2008 when it first dropped. It struck me then, and continues to strike me today. The music mashup, which should be disgusting, bops along like nobody’s business and the lyrics … well, the lyrics make me remember my teenage years in such a visceral way, despite the fact I never caught walleye by the dock. It’s timeless, the message he sends, and the message is basically this: Remember how much fun you had in the summer as a teenager? Like, the most fun ever?
It is such a good flippin’ song, I can’t take it. It comes on the radio, my windows are down and I’m air drumming and singing along and omigod what, Wikipedia? What? “All Summer Long” peaked at #23 on the Billboard chart?
That’s crazy. I just assumed it was a number one hit when I Googled it. I wanted to say something like, “... and I’m not alone, as it spent 15 weeks at number one and …” but nope. Number 23. Makes me want to pack my bags and move to Australia. Or Austria. Or Germany, Ireland, Scotland, Switzerland, or the UK, all countries where it went to number one. Or, for that
matter, Slovakia, where it hit #11. Heck, it even charted higher in the Czech Republic than in America, and not one Czech, last I was aware, ever sipped whiskey out the bottle. Becherovka, maybe, but not whiskey.
Seriously though: How does the most drippingly American song sung by the most drippingly American artist not hit #1 here, but does hit #1 all over Europe? Seriously? How? I feel like there’s a dissertation in here somewhere for some Princeton Woodrow Wilson scholar.
In the meantime, if you’ll excuse me, I need to hit that sand and play some rock n’ roll.