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What’s your summer jam? Help build our party playlist!

Let's ask the Beach Boys what they think.

Maybe you heard we’re having a party? A summer camp party? And what’s more summer camp than awkward 13-year-olds making out at the camp dance to “Everlasting Love” or looking up and seeing your summer crush doing that with someone who’s not you? Ah, anyway… We need some music for this party, dammit, and so we want to know: what’s your summer song?

It doesn’t need to be a dance floor banger, but it should be upbeat and full of the energy that you’ve been storing up all winter and whatever it is that’s replaced spring in the Northeast. It also doesn’t necessarily need to be brand spanking new, although that helps, because summer is a season of forgetting anything else happened in the months preceding it. “Call Me Maybe” has wormed its way into the American consciousness like only Canadian piffle can and is the early contender for song of the summer, but time will tell if it’s got the staying power of “I Get Around” or “Hips Don’t Lie.”

Here are the nominations I got from Brokelyn staff: “Summertime” itself, from Porgy and Bess, covered by Janis Joplin or spun into life by HRH The Fresh Prince and DJ Jazzy Jeff. There’s country-fried summer courtesy of The Judds (“Rockin’ With the Rhythm of the Rain“) and Irish pop punk from The Undertones (“Here Comes the Summer“). And it stretches from the east coast (Brooklyn’s own Caveman, “Easy Water“) to the uh, Best Coast (“Last Year“). For some reason Tim suggested “Save Tonight” by Eagle-Eye Cherry. That guy. But as the sexiest, most whip-smart bunch of blog readers in Amercia, I know you guys can help us fill out our playlist, so get to it in the comments!

And don’t think you aren’t doing God’s work here. Summer is the only season where people give a damn about a song to carry them through the season. There’s Christmas music, but it’s a point of pride for people to hate that shit. And no one outside of the Amish (and maybe Mennonites) have any kind of fall/harvest songs they really look forward to. It’s finally hot enough to eschew most items of clothing, there are ice cream trucks EVERYWHERE, there are outdoor concerts and everyone is driven just a little nutso by the previously mentioned lack of clothing.

And if you care, my song of this summer is and forever will be Japandroids’ “The Nights of Wine and Roses.” Which, come to think of it, is also by Canadians. It’s urgent, driving, begins by asking the question we all ask ourselves during the winter (“Don’t we have anything to live for?”) and immediately answers it the most appropriate way I know how (“Of course we do/but until it comes true/we’re drinking”). While it doesn’t exactly describe my life (“The Nights of AmeriCans and More AmeriCans” would be more appropriate), it comes close enough. Plus, it starts with the sound of fireworks, which is a sound that will forever be associated with the summer, no matter what the jerks at Slate say.

What are you, still reading?? Give us some songs and then g0 outside! Don’t you know it’s summer?

Tags: brokelyn summer campmusicsummer jams
David Colon :

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