[Alyssa]
I second Isaac's thanks to Matt, and extend my gratitude to him for taking over basketball coverage for the week. Now I don't feel guilty about throwing a little baseball into the mix. But before I get all serious, I thought I'd wave goodbye to the hour left in the long weekend and welcome summer in with a few thoughts on summer jams.
Far be it from me to defend Will Smith’s rap career. My own tastes run a little more towards the Dirty South and a little less towards “Welcome to Miami.” But New York’s Vulture blog is running a search for the best new song of the summer, and none of the entrants so far are particularly...summery. Is there actually a better song about June, July and August than “Summertime”?
I’ve racked my brain and my iTunes playlist. And while “Summer of ‘69” and “The Boys of Summer” capture individual summer romances, and the entire early Beach Boys catalog is the best possible homage to surfing and driving, the former are kind of well…angsty, and the latter are more than a little dated. But no matter how passé Will Smith’s shorts and flattop are, I can’t imagine a time when firing up a grill and hanging out in the sunshine wouldn’t be more fun than, say, coming back to work after a holiday weekend.
If you need to procrastinate while you recover on Tuesday morning, throw your favorite summer songs in the comments and I'll put up a Muxtape of the most-mentioned ones at the end of the week.
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Heads in the Sand
Just off the top of my head, better songs with "summertime" the title:
-Summertime in the City, Planet Asia.
-For you non hip-hop heads, all versions of the "Summertime" standard, from Ella all the way up to sublime.
Posted by scythia | May 26, 2008 11:09 PM