Top Twenty Summer Songs

One of the greatest pleasures of summertime is being outside at the beach, pool, or park listening to music. Summer songs provide the soundtrack to some of the most glorious days of our lifetimes, and even in the dead of winter, hearing one can instantly bring some sunshine to your day. Some of the greatest summer songs mention summer directly, while others merely allude to it, but all great summer songs have a couple of things in common: an air of youthfulness, restlessness, romanticism, melancholia, or exuberance, and unforgettable choruses that make you want to sing along. Following is a highly subjective and eclectic list of the top 20 summer songs of all time:

1. "Under the Boardwalk" by the Drifters. Seriously, I think you could poll everyone in the United States and not come up with a single person who doesn't love this song. The town I vacation in over the summer has a mini-golf course on the boardwalk that blasts this song continuously all day long, and the fact that I'm not sick of it yet is saying a lot.

2. "The Boys Are Back In Town" by Thin Lizzy. This song happens to mention summer directly in the lyrics, but I'm including it because the mood of the song is anticipatory'"the boys are back in town and the fun is going to start, which is just how we all feel at the beginning of summer.

3. "Are You Ready For The Summer?" by "the Camp Northstar Kids Chorus." This song is from the soundtrack to the movie Meatballs, and anyone who was a kid or teenager in the late 70's can sing the opening lines of it to this day.

4. "Boys of Summer" by Don Henley. This is bar-none the greatest broken heart song of all time. Summer's waning and the love of your life is driving into the sunset in a convertible, leaving you in the dusk.

5. "Boys of Summer" by the Ataris. Okay, I know it's completely unorthodox to put two versions of the same song in a list like this, but it has to be said. I am philosophically opposed to cover songs of all kinds, but when I first heard this version it knocked me over. The punk arrangement adds an extra layer of poignancy to a song that was already a tearjerker.

6. "Right Here Right Now" by Jesus Jones. This song ushered in a short era of optimism about the fate of the world by celebrating the end of communism and the Berlin Wall coming down. It was a staple at the Jersey shore bars in the summer of 1991 for its uplifting mood.

7. "Saturday In The Park" by Chicago. "Every day's the Fourth of July" says it all.

8. "Cruel Summer" by Banararama. This is a classic 80's song, and despite the title it's bouncy and upbeat.

9. "Seasons in the Sun" by Terry Jacks. This song doesn't quite fit in with the other songs on the list because if you listen to the lyrics carefully, it's a dying man saying goodbye to the people he loves. Nevertheless, it does celebrate the joys of summer.

10. "Rockaway Beach" by the Ramones. The best known punk summer song, it's one of the catchiest songs of all time.

11. "Rio" by Duran Duran. Though the lyrics of this song don't make a whole hell of a lot of sense, it's clear that it's celebrating a beautiful woman who "dances on the sand," and it has that carefree summer feel to it, so it fits.

12. "Last Dance With Mary Jane" by Tom Petty. This one makes it for the deceptively simple but brilliant lyric, "I feel summer creeping in and I'm tired of this town again."

13. "Take Me Home Tonight" by Eddie Money. While his song "Ticket to Paradise" might seem to fit the theme better, the soaring backup vocals by Ronnie Spector and the cool sax in the background earn it its spot on the list.

14. "Rain in the Summertime" by the Alarm. This song is refreshingly different from other summer songs in that it concentrates on the element of water rather than heat.

15. "Rudderless" by the Lemonheads. Here's a summer song that mentions "the lake" rather than "the sea" for all of you who live in the middle of the country.

16. "Merrittville" by the Dream Syndicate. The refrain of this song is "there's a game they play in summer time; there's a game they play when it's hot outside," and the story it tells is straight out of American Gothic.

17. "Beach Baby" by the First Class. A sixties surfing megahit. Most lists of the Top 20 summer songs will mention "Summer in the City" or "Summertime Blues" but this one seems to be a forgotten classic.

18. "It Must Be Summer" by the Fountains of Wayne. This song earns points for its amusing juxtaposition of a typical bouncy summer melody with lyrics from a killjoy ('˜The sun is beating me senseless, I feel defenseless like a dying lamb. I don't want to lie by the oceanside, don't want to play in the sand, can't you understand?").

19. "Pulling Muscles from a Shell" by Squeeze. This song depicts a seaside scene on a hot summer day and won't fail to put a smile on your face.

20. "Bel-Air" by the Church. This is a song from one of their earliest albums with a dreamlike, melancholy quality. It starts off, "A palm tree nodded at me last night..."

To purchase one of these songs, try Rhapsody, iTunes, or Tuneflow.com.