Summer (Song) Time

Happy Summer Solstice, everyone! Summertiiiiiiiime, and the music's breeeeeezy.

What exactly is the "Summer Song" of a given year, anyway? Is it the most popular song between June and September that infects or informs the mainstream masses? Does "summer" need to be included in the title? Does the song have to be released during the summer or can it be a song that just feels like summer? What summer 'feels' like to any given individual is entirely objective, though I believe a majority of music lovers would agree that a Summer Song should replicate the effects of Vitamin D given off by that big flaming ball of gas sitting up in the sky. A fun, joyful jam that gets booties shaking and sound systems quaking. Really though, we already have YACHT's "Summer Song." What else do we need?

Apparently, a lot, considering many sites have already proclaimed their front-runners for 2018's Summer Song:

NPR, Fader, Refinery 29, Esquire, and Rolling Stone are among those that have already named one or more songs that will dominate the summer. If they're to be believed, this summer is Cardi B's for the taking. Billboard (the industry bible of music charts) even has a playlist of their Top 100 Summer Songs of All Time, spanning over 60 years of genre-hopping, chart-topping, and sometimes jaw-dropping tunes.

For me, a given year's Summer Song is usually something upbeat and sunny that demands my attention more than any other between Memorial Day and Labor Day. It's usually nowhere close to what the mainstream music audience gravitates toward. I generally have different needs and tastes than the music-listening masses so, when I embrace a Summer Song that is high on the charts, it's got to be one helluva track for me to get on board with...something so catchy, ubiquitous or otherwise earwormy, like 2013's "Blurred Lines" by Robin Thicke, T.I., and Pharrell. I didn't want to like that song as much as I did, but it sounded enough like Marvin Gaye's forever funky "Got To Give It Up" that I couldn't resist it. Much like Gaye's family couldn't resist suing Thicke and company for plagiarism -  a suit they ultimately won and one that was upheld earlier this year.

My Summer Song better brighten my mood the second I hear it and sound dope af when I'm cruisin' 'round town, bumpin' it from the stock stereo of my three-year old Prius. So yeah, it has to be something I connect with and feel so deeply that any reservations I have about screaming its chorus with the windows down are quashed in an instant like that whole Drake / Meek Mill beef from a few months and few thousand news cycles ago.

I can't tell you what my 2018 Summer Song will be until the next few months are in the rearview mirror; however, I can share some of my Summer Songs past and make a few predictions about songs that may be contenders for this year's title.

UPDATE: Cancel all other contenders for 2018. Chic just dropped the first single off their first album in 26 years (coming out Sept. 16), "Till The World Falls." I think we may have a winner. Stay tuned...