Songs for Summer

Summer in music. A classic, played out in countless emotional shades.

It's not just the sun-drenched season of Californian surf and sunshine pop, of strolls along the shoreline and saudade. Beneath the blazing sun lurk psychedelic dislocations, mystical rituals, poolside dances, but also widespread nostalgia and melancholy. A theme that has captivated musicians of every genre and era. So, to wish you a happy Ferragosto, here's our monster playlist of fifty songs with the word "summer" in the title.

There's the endless summer of Sixties dreams, ideally embodied by the golden California of Beach Boys, The Doors and Love, as well as the warm wind of Frank Sinatra ("Summer Wind") and his daughter Nancy, who alongside Lee Hazlewood opens the collection with the aching "Summer Wine". Still in the Sixties, there were also artists reworking a classic like George Gershwin's "Summertime" in an acid-blues key (Janis Joplin), or others magically conjuring the concept of saudade to a samba beat, like the Brazilian duo Astrud Gilberto-Walter Wanderley, in their "So Nice (Summer Samba)".

But there's also summer as told in their own way by the great British rock bands: from the historic acts who dominated the Sixties and Seventies (The Who, Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, Electric Light Orchestra) to those of the following decade, under the banner of new wave, synth-pop and new cool (Simple Minds, The Stranglers, U2, Alarm, Eurythmics, Alphaville, Durutti Column, Xtc, The Cure, Style Council), all equally entranced by the allure of a season that is at once sunny and melancholic, whether painted in the dark electronic tones of "Someone Somewhere In Summertime" or in the rock-anthem colors of "Rain In The Summertime", whether German ("Summer In Berlin") or English ("English Summer").

A season that has also bewitched outsider songwriters like Tim Hardin and Elvis Costello, vibrant rockers from across the Atlantic — from the Blue Oyster Cult of "This Ain't The Summer Of Love" to the Bryan Adams of the eternal anthem "The Summer Of '69" — as well as magnetic chanteuses of every era, from Kate Bush to Aimee Mann, via the Lana Del Rey of "Summertime Sadness".

There's also a hefty black-music component, ranging from the funk of Sly & The Family Stone ("Hot Fun In The Summertime"), Isaac Hayes ("Summer In The City") and Kool & The Gang ("Summer Madness") to the disco-music allure of Chic's "A Warm Summer Night" and the immortal soul of Stevie Wonder ("Summer Soft"), right up to Prince, grappling — for a change — with "Sex In The Summer".

But summer is also the season of carefree pop anthems, like Abba's "Summer Night City", the evergreen duo John Travolta & Olivia Newton's "Summer Nights" from "Grease", and the irresistible Bananarama with their (summer, of course) earworm "Cruel Summer", which hypnotized the 80s generation.

It seemed like just another one-hit wonder, and yet the falsetto of ex-Eagles frontman Don Henley's "The Boys Of Summer" took on unpredictable significance, curiously becoming one of the chief inspirations for hypnagogic pop two decades later. The term was coined by Wire critic David Keenan to describe a frayed, hazy vision of the Eighties. "Music that bears witness to memories, to recollections of teenage summers spent around evening bonfires, blazing sunsets and episodes of Miami Vice on TV", as Antonio Ciarletta and Giuliano Delli Paoli put it in the feature published on this webzine.

Naturally, the alternative pop-rock strand is unmissable too: a sizeable crew of chroniclers of the summer season including newcomers Pavement with "Summer Babe (Winter Version)", the endlessly inspired Belle And Sebastian with "The Boy With The Arab Strap" ("A Summer Wasting") and the phenomenal Fiery Furnaces on their self-titled Ep ("Here Comes The Summer"), as well as bands like Blonde Redhead, Death Cab For Cutie, Yo La Tengo and Flaming Lips, not to mention later-period Rem and Big Star. And while Colleen's "Summer Water" ranges between folk and electronics, two gurus who sketch synthetic summer landscapes with their magic touch lean decidedly toward the latter: Christian Fennesz ("Endless Summer") and John Foxx, long since departed from Ultravox and joined by The Maths on "Summerland".

All these tracks have the word "summer" in their titles, except for one, which features the Italian word "Estate". But it's a necessary exception, being the classic song by Bruno Martino, one of the definitive meditations on the season we love and hate in equal measure.

All that's left is to invite you to listen, and to thank our writer Marco Bercella, the moral inspiration behind this playlist thanks to his monumental selection for the compilation "Hundred Ways To Say Summer".

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google

02/01/2026