Day 6 panelists predict this year's song of the summer
Welcome to July. School is done, the pool is full and the beach is calling your name.
Whether you're reading this from Lunenberg, Nova Scotia or Hamilton, Ontario or Swift Current, Saskatchewan, there's something we all share: a soundtrack for the hot days and long nights.
Day 6 asked Andrea Warner, Maura Johnston and Nate Sloan, our esteemed music panel, to discuss early contenders for song of the summer. But we didn't stop there. We talked about the very specific criteria that makes for an ideal summer jam, we debate whether music producers can replicate it at will and we wonder if Beyoncé's Lemonade makes the cut.
Plus, we go to the vault for our all-time favourite summer songs. Take a look and a listen.
Nate Sloan on Michael Jackson's 'Can't Stop 'Til You Get Enough"
"Michael Jackson's Don't Stop Til You Get Enough will always stand synonymous with summer for me. Growing up in NYC, Michael's effervescent anthem of—well, I'm not sure exactly what it's about now that I've finally paused to consider its lyrics...not stopping, I guess?—with its interlocking grooves and inexorable funkiness, served as the soundtrack to hot 1980s nights of playing on blacktop and running past uncapped fire hydrants, sprinklers and watching the city's diverse population get down to the same syncopation. The song encapsulates summer—fun, funky, uncomplicated, universal, endlessly repeatable, the perfect jam for when the temperature is risin' and you need to keep on with the force."
Nate is a musicologist and co-host of Switched On Pop.
Andrea Warner on Lizzo's "Good As Hell"
"Going forward, Lizzo's Good As Hell will be my go-to summer song. But in 2014, Tacocat gave us Crimson Wave and it was the song I'd been waiting for my whole life: a surf-punk ditty about menstruation. It's spikey and acerbic, funny and fearless, and totally feminist, "Crimson Wave" shines so hard it breaks the sky. And it does so with this wonderfully forthright way, destigmatizing a natural monthly inconvenience/derailment of the lives of half the population with jangly guitars, thrashed drums and cheeky lyrics."
Andrea is a co-host of the "Pop This" podcast and the author of "You Oughta Know: How Four Women Ruled The 90s and Changed Canadian Music".
Maura Johnston on Janet Jackson's "When I Think Of You"
"Janet Jackson's Control was an unstoppable force for most of 1986, but the song I'll always associate with that summer—and the summers that follow—is When I Think Of You Jackson's forceful, yet boundless exclamation of infatuation. Over an insistent beat, Jackson's bubbly soprano effuses about the feelings of goodwill brought forth by just being reminded of her lover; it's a great summer song because of the way it captures the season's head-rush feel and endless possibility. The breakdown, where Jackson sings deliberately "I'm… so… in… love…" while the beat continues ticking along, builds tension in a sublime way, and the way the feeling bubbles over when she sings the song's titular phrase one last time is one of the most joyful moments ever to exist in pop music, and it sounds even better on a hot summer night, Jackson's unbridled happiness reaching all the way to the stars."
Maura is a writer and Journalism Instructor at Boston College. Her work has appeared in the Boston Globe, on Pitchfork Media and in Rolling Stone Magazine.
Brent Bambury on The Everly Brothers
"I grew up listening to music on AM radio. Your personal choice was limited to the station you dialed in. You had absolutely no control over what was played, so while you waited for your favourite song, you heard the songs you'd later fall in love with. It was all up to the DJ. One summer when I was a kid, every morning at least once, the DJ would play this song by the Everly Brothers. It was infectious but haunting: the easy swing of the rhythm, the low end drums, the whistling winds. And of course the harmonies. But for me, it was the lyrics that glowed like summer"
Kentucky sunshine makes the heart unfold
It warms the body
And I know it touches the soul
The double rhyme of "lucky" and "Kentucky", the idea of lying down in a green field, the whole construct just seemed to be made for a hot summer day. And I guess the DJ thought so too.