Top 10 Summer Rock-n-Roll Songs

Summer is almost here, and I’m counting down my Top 10 favorite rock-n-roll songs about summertime.

This episode is about the many different sides of summer: childhood freedom, teenage romance, city heat, beach days, backyard cookouts, summer storms, golden-hour sunsets, nostalgia, and those memories that get polished over time until they feel bigger than they probably were.

So put on your flip-flops, grab a cold beverage, and join me for my Top 10 Summer Rock Songs, this week on the Rock-N-Roll Show Podcast!

You can also check out the Podcast Playlist, either on:

Apple Music
Spotify

===========================

Connect with us on social media!
YouTube
Instagram
TikTok
Facebook

Transcript

Speaker 0:00

Welcome to the Rock-N-Roll Show podcast. I'm your host Alex Gadd, and this week I've got another top 10 list for you. With summer just around the corner, I've put together a list of my favorite rock'n'roll songs about summertime. Summer always felt like freedom to me, getting out of the house more, seeing friends and family more, and seeing concerts outside. There are so many great songs written about this one season, so put on your flip-flops, bust out the shades, make sure you've got a cold beverage nearby, and please join me for my favorite rock'n'roll songs inspired by summer coming up right now. Putting together a playlist for summer is a big challenge because there are so many great songs about the summer. It sounded easy at first. Just grab a few Beach Boys songs, throw in School's Out, and maybe a song or two about sunshine and driving with the windows down, and call it a day, right? But that didn't really get me where I wanted to go. And don't get me wrong, I love The Beach Boys, but a lot of what they were singing about was really Southern California, and that's not exactly the same thing as singing about summer because it's always summer in Southern California, or at least that's how it feels to those of us who don't live there. I think summer is a thing best appreciated by people who live in places that actually have all four seasons. When you've had months of cold, gray weather, and then the days start to get longer, the air starts to get warmer, and everybody starts coming back outside, summer feels like an actual event. Also, I think that summer means different things at different points in your life. When you're a kid, it's freedom. It's no school, no homework, staying up a little later, sleeping in, riding your bike, going to the beach, summer romances, hanging out with your friends, and trying to make two and a half months feel like forever. When you're older, it can become something else. It can be vacations and concerts and cookouts and family road trips and warm nights outside, but it can also be nostalgia, regret, lost love, or the memory of some amazing summer you almost certainly didn't realize was that great while you were living through it, and rock and roll has always been good at capturing all of those things. So how do I whittle down the field to come up with a top 10 list that I can stand behind and that you can enjoy? I had to draw the line somewhere, so for this episode, I set some guardrails for myself. I'm limiting the list to songs that actually have the word summer in the title or some version of it, like Summertime. That means there are some obvious summer songs that don't qualify, so there's no School's Out by Alice Cooper, because as great as that song is, and as much as it announces the beginning of summer for every kid who's ever counted down the final days of school the way that Richard Linklater captured so perfectly in Dazed and Confused, it's really more about teenage rebellion than it is about summer itself. There's also no Soak Up the Sun by Sheryl Crow because, again, that's more about Southern California than it is about summer specifically. And so there are no Beach Boys songs even with those guardrails, I had to make some tough choices because there are songs with summer in the title that are about the end of summer, other songs that are about how much that artist didn't like summer. There are enough of those end of summer songs that I may do a whole separate playlist for those, so keep your eyes peeled for that in the coming months. For this list, I wanted songs that are directly tied to summer in the title and in the feeling of the song itself. I wanted a playlist you can turn up while you're at the beach, at a barbecue, on a boat, in the backyard, wherever you find yourself enjoying the warm weather and the season. So let's get into it. Starting our countdown off at number 10, I'm easing us into the playlist with In The Summertime by Mungo Jerry. This was released in 1970, and it's one of those records that sounds like it was made to be played outside, or at least with the windows down. It has that loose, bouncy skiffle blues groove, the jug band feel, and Ray Dorset delivering the whole thing like summer itself just wandered into the studio barefoot with a drink in its hand. It's not a complicated song. It's not trying to solve the world's problems. It's just about warm weather, having fun, driving around, and doing whatever you feel like doing because the sun is out, and life feels a little less serious. Basically, exactly what a song by a band called Mungo Jerry should sound like, and that's really the whole appeal of it, isn't it? It has that summer vacation mentality, but from an adult perspective. No heavy message, no big concept. Now, parts of the song haven't aged perfectly, especially the line about drinking and driving, which lands a whole lot differently now than it probably did in 1970. So I'm not nominating Mungo Jerry for the Public Safety Hall of Fame here, but as a record and as a piece of summer pop rock history, I think it still works. It's loose, it's sunny, it's instantly recognizable, and even if you haven't heard it in years, once the groove starts, you know exactly what it is. At number 10, Mungo Jerry's In the Summertime.

5:34

Sky. When the weather's fine, you got women, you got women on your mind. Have a drink, have a drive. Go out and see what you can find. If her daddy's rich, take her out for a meal. If her daddy's poor, just do what you feel. Speed along the lane. You can turn or return at twenty-five. When the sun goes down, you can make it, make it good and really fine. We're not grand people, we're not dirty, we're not mean. We love everybody, but we do as we please. When the weather's fine, we go fishing or go swimming in the sea. We're always happy, life's for living, yeah, that's our philosophy. Sing along with us, dee-dee dee-dee dee. Da-doo da-da-da. Yeah, we're happy. Da, da-da. Dee-da-doo dee-da-doo da-doo-da. Da-doo da-da-da. Da-da-da doo-da-da. All right, now. It's party time. Bring your bottle and wear your brackets. It'll soon be summertime. And we'll sing again. We'll go driving or maybe we'll settle down. If she's rich, if she's nice, bring your friends and we'll all go into town We go fishing or go swimming in the sea. We're always happy, life's for living, yeah, that's our philosophy. Sing along with us, dee, dee, dee, dee, dee. Da, da, da, da, da, yeah we're happy. Da, da, da, dee, da, da, da

Alex Gadd 8:34

Song nine is a song with one of the longest titles I've mentioned on this channel, perhaps ever. You Took The Words Right Out Of My Mouth, Hot Summer Night by Meatloaf. It gives us a very different kind of summer song than Mungo Jerry. In the Summertime is loose and carefree, while this one is dramatic, theatrical, and over-the-top in the best possible way. Meatloaf and company are completely committed to the idea that a hot summer night is not just a weather report, it's the setting for a full-blown Rock-N-Roll opera. Released on Meat's debut album, 1977's Bat Out of Hell, this is one of those songs where you know exactly what vibe they were going for before the band even kicks in, thanks to that spoken word opening dialogue between the boy and the girl, where he asks if she would offer her throat to the wolf with the red roses, and she says, ever so desperately, "Yes." Which is one of those lines that if anyone other than Jim Steinman wrote it, you might say, "What are we doing here?" But because it's Meatloaf and Jim Steinman, you remember the time in which it was produced and you go with it. And then there's the song itself, which explodes in this huge Phil Spector-meets-Broadway-meets-bar band rock anthem, all built around teenage desire, summer heat, and that moment when romance and melodrama converge, which is just like what I remember romance feeling like when I was a teenager. I also put this one on my summer song list because it captures the nighttime side of the season. It's not a beach song. It's not a backyard barbecue song. This is summer after dark, with the windows down, the radio loud, and hormones everywhere. Everybody involved is acting like what happens tonight might be the most important thing that's ever happened to anyone, and that's Steinman and Meat Loaf's whole genius. They take teenage emotion and make it oversized. Every crush is life and death. Every kiss is a movie scene. Every summer night feels like it belongs on a stage with a motorcycle, a thunderstorm, and a 47 backup singers. In fact, producer Todd Rundgren admits that he produced the whole album to sound like a spoof of Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run, because in his opinion, both were overblown melodrama. He even used Max Weinberg and Roy Bittan from the E Street Band to record this record to help capture that sound, which as you know, if you know me at all by now, means I'm not a big fan of Todd Rundgren's attitude at all. But I do love this record, so screw you, Todd. You mocked Bruce, and it just made me love this record all the more. Also, I was eight when it came out, and this one just blew me away and made me yearn for a girl to take the words out of my mouth because she was kissing me. At number nine, you took the words right out of my mouth, Hot Summer Night.

11:12

Hot summer night, would you offer your throat to the wolf with the red roses? Will he offer me his mouth? Yes. Will he offer me his teeth? Yes. Will he offer me his jaws? Yes. Will he offer me his hunger? Yes. Again, will he offer me his hunger? Yes. And will he starve without me? Yes. Then does he love me? Yes On a hot summer night, would you offer your throat to the wolf with the red roses? Yes I bet you say that to all the boys

Alex Gadd 16:09

Coming in at number eight is Summer in the City by the Lovin' Spoonful. This is one of the great summer records, and it captures a very specific kind of summer. This isn't the beach or the boardwalk. This isn't somebody sitting by the pool with a frozen drink and a little umbrella in it. Summer in the City suggests heat radiating from the pavement, where all the concrete buildings then hold onto that heat and make it feel even hotter, like an oven, where the air feels heavy and everybody is just trying to get through the day until the sun goes down. Released in 1966, Summer in the City was Lovin' Spoonful's only number one hit, and you can hear why. It has that pounding piano, the car horns, the jackhammer sound effects, and that stop-and-start feel that makes the song sound like traffic, humidity, frustration, and release all at once. And I really enjoy the way the song is structured around these two different versions of Summer in the City. During the day, it's brutal, it's hot, noisy, exhausting, and full of tension, and the verses of the song reflect that with the piano line that feels almost unpleasant on purpose and the traffic noise building around it, the people talking in the background, lots of chaos and tension. But at night, the whole thing changes. The city opens up. People come alive. The heat's still there, but now it feels exciting instead of oppressive, and the chorus of the song gives you the release that the verses have been holding back. That's a very real summer experience. I mean, for me, I vividly remember walking to work in New York City on hot summer days in my early 20s, sweating through my shirt, or even bringing a button-down with me and changing once I got to work. But after the sun went down, the whole vibe changed. The same city that felt like it was beating you up during the day suddenly felt like it was inviting you to come and explore. And I think that's why this song still works. It's not just about summer weather, it's about the rhythm of the season in a place where the heat has nowhere else to go. The days are rough, but the nights make up for it, and the song structure captures all of that perfectly, which is an achievement unto itself. So at number eight, I've got the Lovin' Spoonful's Summer in the City. In the seventh spot is Larkin Poe with Summertime Sunset. This is the most recently released song on the list from the 2022 album, Blood Harmony, and if you've been listening to this podcast at all, you know that I just love this band. Larkin Poe brings a very different flavor to the summer song, where In the Summertime is loose and carefree, Meatloaf's Hot Summer Night is this giant teenage melodrama, and Summer in the City captures the dichotomy between day and night during the hottest days of the year in the city. Summertime Sunset's all about that perfect time in between, The golden hour, where the air changes, the heat starts to break, and the music gets turned up just a little louder, I hope, and a whole different kind of fun begins. The track has more of a rootsy, bluesy Southern rock feel than the three predecessors on this list so far. It's not trying to blow you over with a massive chorus or turn summer into a soundtrack for a beverage ad. It's more about mood. Sunset is one of my favorite times of the day in general, and in the summer after work or the beach and at the end of cocktail hour as the sun gets low in the sky and dinnertime approaches, that's a good time to be alive. If you don't know Larkin Poe, get to know them. The Lovell sisters can play, they can sing, and they know how to make something feel old and new at the same time. So even though Summertime Sunset doesn't have the decades of cultural weight that some of the other songs on this list have, it's not the loudest song on the countdown, and it's certainly not the biggest hit. I think it still earns its spot by capturing a real summer feeling. Summertime Sunset at number seven Summer Rock-N-Roll song number six is Rain in the Summertime by The Alarm, and this one gives us yet another side of the season, something bigger, more emotional, and more anthemic. It's not a beach song again, and it's not a party song. It's one of those big, earnest, open-hearted rock songs that sounds like it was built to be played outside, preferably with a crowd singing along with their hands in the air. The Alarm came out of Wales in the early '80s, and they often get grouped with bands like U2, Big Country, and Simple Minds, yeah, other British Isles bands, bands that knew how to make rock music sound huge without making it sound hollow. There's a lot of that in Rain in the Summertime. It has that ringing guitar, big drums, wide open sky sound, and Mike Peters sings it with the kind of urgency that makes everything feel like it matters. I like the change of pace here, and maybe that's because I really like a good rainstorm in the summer. To me, it can feel cleansing, at least as long as it's not raining every day, and this song really brings that emotion. It captures that moment when a storm rolls in after a brutal hot day and suddenly changes the whole atmosphere. I think that's an underrated part of summer, not just the perfect beach day, but the sudden summer storm that rolls in and then rolls back out again just as quickly, giving you a break in the heat. I love that smell of rain on the pavement and the way the whole sky can open up in the middle of the season and rinse off the grime and sweat. This song has a good energy and an upbeat message, and it's just the right palate cleanser for me to put The Alarm's Rain in the Summertime at number six At number five is Y&T's Summertime Girls, and let me start by acknowledging that this song is not subtle. This track is big, glossy, loud fun, and seems completely committed to the idea that summer should come with guitars, beaches, convertibles, and good-looking people having a good time. It's pure mid-'80s summer fantasy. Y&T had been around for years by the time this song came out. They weren't some prefab pop metal band cobbled together to feed the MTV beast that needed more bands with guys who had big hair and wrote even bigger choruses. These guys started in the Bay Area in the 1970s, and they had serious hard rock credibility. But with Summertime Girls, they leaned all the way into the hair metal sound and the MTV-era version of fun that was taking place in the mid-'80s. It's also one of those songs where the title tells you everything you need to know. Summertime Girls, that's the premise, that's the plot, that's all of it. During the '80s, I picked and chose my way through the hair metal hits and enjoyed a bunch of those tunes unapologetically, this one among those. And besides, not every summer song has to feel like or look like Don Henley staring wistfully at the ocean in designer wayfarers. Sometimes it can just be a band turning up the amps and writing a song that sounds like suntan lotion, Aquanet, and the boardwalk. That's why I'm including Summertime Girls. It's not trying to say something profound about the passage of time, memory, or lost youth. It's just a fun summer party song about sunshine, attraction, and a chorus that sounds like it was written specifically to be blasted out of an '85 Camaro. At number five, Y&T with Summertime Girls. Song four is Summer by War, and right away I appreciate the contrast here because the band is called War, but there's no conflict in this song at all. It's about as peaceful and easygoing a song as it gets. In fact, it sounds like everybody decided to put their petty grievances aside for a while, step outside, and enjoy the day together. War released this song in 1976, and it has that easy, rolling, warm weather groove that the band did so well. They always had this incredible ability to blend rock, funk, soul, Latin rhythms, jazz, and street corner looseness into something that felt completely natural. Nothing here feels forced. It just moves and grooves. The song feels like a whole neighborhood settling into the season. You can almost see the scene unfolding, people outside, kids playing in the street, cars going by, music coming from somewhere down the block, somebody firing up a grill, and everybody just a little more relaxed because the days are longer and the weather is warmer. I appreciate that Summer doesn't try to oversell the season. It's not trying to be the song for a summer marketing campaign, and it's not shouting at you to have a good time. It just finds the groove and lets you enjoy it. There's something very cool about that. Summer doesn't always have to be wild. Sometimes summer is just sitting outside, letting the day stretch out, talking with friends, watching people go by, and feeling like the world has loosened its grip on you for a little while. That's the feeling War captures here. It's laid back and observational without being boring in any way. It's joyful without being frantic. It sounds like the soundtrack to a block party that started in the early afternoon and kept going all evening because nobody wanted to leave. And after moving through city heat, sunset moods, hair metal fantasies, and summer rain, this song brings us back to something simple and essential: summer as a groove. At number four, War gives us Summer Third on our list is Kid Rock with All Summer Long, and let me get this out of the way up front. I'm not a fan of Kid Rock's public personality. I don't find him appealing at all, but I always try to separate the artist from the art whenever I can, and this song is just undeniably great. Now, to be fair, if you build your song around the main melodies of Werewolves of London and Sweet Home Alabama, you've given yourself a pretty good head start. Those are two great songs with two instantly recognizable hooks, and Kid Rock and his production team were smart enough to use them as the foundation for a big summer nostalgia record. It's not trying to hide its ingredients at all. It wants you to hear Warren Zevon, and it wants you to hear Lynyrd Skynyrd. It wants all of that built-in recognition working on you before Kid Rock even gets to his lyrics. All Summer Long came out in 2008, and it's basically one big cliché about being young in the summertime. It's like one of those formulaic country songs about good times and back roads, but with better music underneath. It has the lake, the friends, the drinking, the music, the first love, and that whole feeling that you were having the best time of your life before you were even old enough to know it. Kinda like a Bob Seger song, and I think that's why it works. It's not subtle, but it's effective. summer in this song is half real memory and half myth, which is usually how our happiest memories live in our heads anyway, I think. So whether that makes it clever, lazy, or some combination of both, the end result is hard to deny. All Summer Long became one of those songs that immediately sounded like summer vacation, especially the version of summer where everyone's sunburned, a little buzzed, and convinced they're gonna remember this weekend forever. Even with my reservations about Kid Rock himself, this song belongs high up on the list. It's catchy, it's nostalgic, and it does exactly what a big summer song is supposed to do. At number three, Kid Rock gives us All Summer Long Song number two is Summer of '69 by Bryan Adams. I'm sure this is one of the most obvious songs on this list because for a lot of people, it might be the first and only song they think about when you say summer rock song. It's another nostalgia fest to be sure, filled with guitars, first bands, first love, youth, and a giant singalong chorus designed to be shouted by a crowd full of people gloriously recalling their own youth and desperately trying to hold onto whatever part of that that they still can. Released in 1985, Summer of '69 is Bryan Adams' signature song, and it works so well because it's not really about a specific summer. It's about that point in your life when everything felt possible. That's how it feels to me anyway. You had your friends, your music, maybe someone who loved you, and dreams of all the great things waiting for you in adulthood. But then adulthood arrives. Uh, Adams built that right into the story. As the band falls apart, people move on, and real life starts getting in the way. And that's what I think gives the song its emotional pull. It remembers the excitement of being young, but it also knows that feeling doesn't last forever. Now, Bryan Adams has admitted that the title is not literally about the summer of '69, which is good, because he was maybe nine years old in 1969, but you can figure out what that means. All of that almost doesn't matter, because the song has taken on a life of its own. For most listeners, Summer of '69 became shorthand for the summer you look back on as the best days of your life, literally written into the chorus, and that's the genius of it. It's not just a summer song, it's a memory song. It captures the strange way we turn our youth into mythology, where ordinary moments get polished over time until they become bigger than they probably were, and you really only remember the good times. I only left it out of the number one spot because I wanted the top song to feel a little bit more like summer itself, but Summer of '69 is absolutely one of the greatest Rock-N-Roll songs about summer in the world, and it certainly belongs near the top of my list. So at number two, this is Bryan Adams with Summer of '69.

51:53

Can I first realize

Alex Gadd 55:00

Before I get to the number one song on my list, I wanted to acknowledge the other songs I considered for the list. There were other songs with summer in the title, like Billy Joel's Summer, Highland Falls, Summer Days by Luscious Jackson, Sinatra's amazing Summer Wind, Summer Nights by Van Halen, and Summer Nights from the soundtrack to the movie Grease. I even excluded Bruce's Girls in Their Summer Clothes, which it was hard for me to keep off the list if you know me at all. I also considered a bunch of songs that are set in the summer, like Hot in the City by Billy Idol, Bob Seger's Night Moves, Soak Up the Sun by Sheryl Crow, Len's Steal My Sunshine, and School's Out. There were also a bunch of songs that I mentioned in the intro that are about the end of summer, and again, I think I'm gonna save those for another episode to bring on fall. But I'm sure I missed some. Were there others? Let me know. That brings us to number one, and that number one song for the summer playlist is Hot Fun in the Summertime by Sly the Family Stone. Not only is this one of the greatest bands of all time, this is a song on the list that feels most like summer itself to me. Even more than the War song that I put at number four, this is the ultimate communal summer song to my ear. Released in 1969, Hot Fun in the Summertime came out right after Sly the Family Stone played at Woodstock, and it captures so much of what made that band special. They were rock, soul, funk, pop, gospel, psychedelic, and really whatever else they wanted to be all at the same time, and somehow they made all of that feel natural. This song is warm and easygoing with a palpable sense of joy in it, but there's also a little bit of reflection. It sounds like people getting together, enjoying the moment. But it also feels to me like somebody's already looking back on it, remembering how good it was gonna feel in the future, and that's what separates it from a lotta summer songs. While some songs are about summer as escape or summer as youth or summer as nostalgia, this one seems to hold all of that at once. It has the celebration, the community, the warmth, and the sense that all these moments matter because they don't last forever. You don't listen to Hot Fun in the Summertime and picture one person alone in a room. You picture people outside together, everybody sharing the same air, the same weather, the same music, and maybe the same feeling that life has loosened up at least for a little while. It's also beautifully understated. The song doesn't need a giant guitar riff or a massive drum fill to prove it belongs at the top of my summer song list. Sly the Family Stone bring it home with Hot Fun in the Summertime So whatever summer looks like for you this year, concerts, cookouts, vacations, ballgames, beach days, road trips, backyard nights, or just opening the windows and letting the warm air in, I hope you'll have the chance to make a few new memories that you'll carry with you, and I hope you've got some great music playing all summer long. That's it for this week's episode. I hope this summer is a good one for all of you. for all of us. Thank you for joining me. If you like what you heard today, I'd appreciate it if you would like and either subscribe or follow this channel to make sure you get notified about each new episode, and please tell your friends. Also, a reminder that I release a playlist for every episode, so look for the Rock 'N Roll Show Podcast playlist on Spotify and Apple Music every week, this week featuring all the songs that I mentioned here today, so please check that out. Finally, I wanna know what you think, so please leave me a comment. I'll try to respond to every one of them. The Rock 'N Roll Show Podcast is a World Highway Media production. I'm your host Alex Gadd, and until next time, remember that life is short, so get those concert tickets