Investigation

Give or take the odd sudden thunderstorm or grey and drizzly afternoon, the UK summer should have arrived by now, and that means it’s time to spruce up your music listening with some sun-drenched, blue sky classics. That said, with hundreds of tracks to choose from, where to start?

As usual, this streaming-focused collection has been sourced, selected and researched by Hi-Fi Choice editor and ex-NME boss Steve Sutherland, always plumping for the highest-quality version – ie, 192kHz/24-bit – where available. You can sample the list and play along as you read by checking out our playlist on Qobuz.

Hot picks

This is perhaps not a conventional list of ‘Summer songs’, however, not least because there are already plenty of those to check out, filled with the usual suspects. Instead, our pick aims to introduce HFN listeners to some great but lesser-known tracks they may have missed, while taking in a wide range of genres, so don’t be surprised to see the hip-hop of DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince rubbing shoulders with Sly And The Family Stone and Nat King Cole. And, yes, some of the tracks here take a more melancholic view of the summer season than you might be expecting – but all are worthy of a listen.

So grab your Factor 50, fasten the woody to the roof rack and let’s roll. And if we’ve missed off your personal summer favourite, write in and tell us.

Wavves
King Of The Beach
(Fat Possum)

What, no Beach Boys? Come on, you know all those sun-kissed ’60s anthems by heart. Ditto, surely, the Ramones’ idyllic ‘Rockaway Beach’ from 1977. More under the radar is this bratty anthem from San Diego surf-punk band Wavves, the vehicle through which singer/songwriter Nathan Williams gets to air all his dreams and frustrations. The title track of the band’s 2010 album, their third, it mixes upbeat clean and distorted guitars, and places Williams’ reverbed vocals atop a relentless energetic groove. The seaside lyrics are a treat too. Altogether now: ‘You’re never gonna stop me!’.

James White And The Blacks
Off White
(ZE Records)

Written by Irving Berlin, ‘Heat Wave’ was originally recorded by Ethel Waters for the 1933 Broadway musical As Thousands Cheer. You can check out the 1998 revival’s cast recording, but our version, way more anarchic, comes from the New York-based ‘no-wave’ punk-jazz outfit James White And The Blacks. Also the leader of punk-funk band The Contortions, White’s conga-filled, groove-laden version of the song – now rechristened ‘(Tropical) Heat Wave’ – was a highlight of the disco-tinged Off White album he cut for hip indie label ZE in 1979. One does wonder what Berlin would have made of it, though.

Lana Del Rey
Born To Die
(Polydor/Interscope)

The hot holiday anthem of 2013, the magnificent ‘Summertime Sadness’ was released as a single off Del Rey’s Born To Die, her first ‘proper’ debut LP after the digital only (and now deleted) Lana Del Ray release of 2010. It’s a song of drowsy melancholy that simultaneously celebrates and mourns for the vicissitudes of young love, and blessed with an absolute earworm of a melody. Del Rey has written lots of great stuff since, but this has never been bettered.

The Vaccines
What Did You Expect From...
(Columbia)

Cursed at the outset by being nominated as the UK’s version of The Strokes, indie rockers The Vaccines still managed to pull together a neat debut in 2011’s What Did You Expect From The Vaccines?, an album which surely boasts the most self-aware title ever. ‘Wetsuit’, a summer plea not to grow up too fast and get all the fun that you can, is a Side 1 deep cut that starts off mellow, but builds and builds to a glorious conclusion, underwritten by thumping, cavernous drums.

The Drifters
Under The Boardwalk
(Atlantic)

We could easily have included The Lovin’ Spoonful’s ‘Summer In The City’ but this number, recorded by New York vocal group The Drifters and released in 1964, just about pips it for evoking a sweltering summer atmosphere. Extolling the joys of being ‘on a blanket with my baby’ in the shade on a hot day, the song was a Top 5 hit for The Drifters on the Billboard chart. It’s been covered many times since, including an (inferior) Stones take on 1965’s The Rolling Stones No. 2 album.

The Pogues
Hell’s Ditch
(Pogue Mahone Records)

With holidays in mind, we’ll let The Pogues take us to exotic climes with this lovely, lilting lounge-jazz single from the group’s 1990 LP Hell’s Ditch, produced by Clash-founder (and future Pogue) Joe Strummer. ‘Summer In Siam’ features prominently in the star-studded Jean-Michel Basquiat biopic, Basquiat, but arguably as memorable is the music video which imagines The Pogues as the house band in a Bangkok club, complete with kickboxers and wandering chickens.

The Smiths
The World Won’t Listen
(Rough Trade Records)

This Top 20 UK single, released in 1986 and later included on The Smiths’ compilation album The World Won’t Listen, finds Morrissey ‘Spending warm Summer days indoors/ Writing frightening verse/ To a buck-toothed girl in Luxembourg’ and encouraging those more timid members of his audience to reach out and make the most of the opportunities life has to offer. In other words, ‘Ask’ is a true rarity – an optimistic Smiths song!

June Christy
Something Cool
(Capitol Records)

This seductive jazz number from the 1954 album of the same name, lusciously orchestrated by the visionary Pete Rugolo, finds June Christy – an alcoholic in real life – sitting at a bar during a heatwave and accepting a chilled cocktail from a gentleman intent on chatting her up while she unravels her unfortunate past. ‘I don’t ordinarily drink with strangers/ I guess I usually just drink alone/ But you were so nice to ask me/ And I’m so while she unravels her unfortunate past. ‘I don’t ordinarily drink with strangers/ I guess I usually just drink alone/ But you were so nice to ask me/ And I’m so terribly far from home’ – it’s like an entire Hitchcock movie within one song. Christy and Rugolo re-recorded the album in 1960 for a stereo release. Both versions are available to stream.

Jonathan Richman
I, Jonathan
(Rounder Records)

Richman, the one-time front man of New England punk pioneers The Modern Lovers, is in his finest sentimental form on this six-minute acoustic guitar jam from his fourth solo LP, 1995’s low-fi masterpiece I, Jonathan. Harmonised backing vocals give it a slight Beach Boys air, but lyrically this is far removed from the likes of ‘Little Deuce Coupe’. If Richman singing, ‘That summer feeling is gonna haunt you’, doesn’t touch you, you must have a heart made of stone.

The Isley Brothers
3 + 3
(Epic)

Starting out as a soft-rock ballad written and released by schmaltzy duo Seals & Crofts in 1972, ‘Summer Breeze’ was then given a brilliant psych-soul makeover by The Isley Brothers a year later for their 3 + 3 album. Showcasing Ernie Isley’s inspirationally stratospheric guitar playing and becoming a Top 20 hit on this side of the Atlantic when it was released as a single, it’s a fine example of a cover eclipsing its original. And the band? Still going in 2026, some 72 years after forming.

Virginia Astley
Hope In A Darkened Heart
(WEA)

Pastoral pop courtesy of Astley, a classically trained keyboardist whose debut LP, 1983’s From Gardens Where We Feel Secure, was a collection of mostly instrumental tone poems illustrating time passing through a summer’s day. That set, released through the artist’s own Happy Valley Records label, is out of print now, but this track was re-recorded with producer Ryuichi Sakamoto for her 1986 album Hope In A Darkened Heart.

Belle & Sebastian
The Boy With The Arab Strap
(Jeepster)

They don’t come much more slacker-ish than this lazy ditty from the Scots indie heroes’ third LP, The Boy With The Arab Strap. A musical justification for doing absolutely nothing with your precious time except flopping out of bed after lunchtime and aimlessly loafing around, ‘A Summer Wasting’ arrived in 1998 as an antidote to the up-and-at-’em energy of the fading Britpop movement. And, like many a good pop song, it barely scrapes past the two-minute mark.

Nat King Cole
Those Lazy-Hazy-Crazy Days Of Summer
(Capitol)

This cheekily nostalgic jazz-pop title track from Cole’s splendid 1963 LP is jam-packed full of bikinis, cool beers and smoochings at the drive-in cinema – the quintessential American summer, you might think, if it wasn’t actually a cover of a German-language song from the year before. Track down the original, by Willy Hagara, if you must, but you’ll likely find Cole’s version easier to sing along to.

Billy Stewart
Unbelievable
(Chess Records)

Composed by George Gershwin for the 1935 opera Porgy And Bess, ‘Summertime’ has been sumptuously covered by pretty much all the greats – Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald, Janis Joplin, and Big Brother & The Holding Company to name a few. But our pick is Billy Stewart’s vocally acrobatic and super-soulful exhibitionist take on it from 1966. The lead track off his second Chess Records LP, Unbelievable, it’s total joy unbound, from its brassy instrumentation to its oh-so-wide stereo presentation. Stewart died in a car crash four years later, aged 32, on his way to a gig in South Carolina.

Art Brut
Art Brut Vs. Satan
(Downtown Music)

In this slice of supreme indie defiance, Art Brut’s oddball singer Eddie Argos has had it up to here with wasting his precious youth working for a pittance while his mates are all out getting up to no good. Lurking on the band’s 2009 Art Brut Vs. Satan set, and benefitting from slick production from Pixies’ Frank Black, it’ll strike a (jangly guitar) chord with anyone who’s summoned up the courage to down tools and hit the road/beach/beer garden.

Eddie Cochran
The Wild Wild Rocking World Of...
(Revola)

Covered by myriad artists, and notably given a heavy pounding by both The Who and Blue Cheer [see p122], Eddie Cochran’s original snotty teen-rebel version of ‘Summertime Blues’ from 1958 is still the best. A testament to his supreme talent, Cochran was just 19 years old when he wrote, sang, produced and played all the guitar parts on this Top 10 Liberty Records single. Since his death in 1960, the song has been reissued on countless compilation albums.

Pink Floyd
Ummagumma
(Harvest)

One of the studio tracks on the 1969 double LP Ummagumma (the first half is made up of live catalogue performances), this chilled pastoral ode to the hippie Cambridge hangout was penned entirely by Roger Waters. The other Floyd members contributed their own solo compositions, an approach since criticised by the band, but whatever – this is a blissfully understated, untroubled acoustic trance that many a headphone head has drifted away on.

DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince
Homebase
(Jive)

It’s easy to forget that actor/musician Will Smith earned his stripes in his teens and early 20s as the latter half of the prolific rap/hip-hop act DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince. Indeed, this breezy hit, sampling Kool & The Gang’s ‘Summer Madness’, was the lead single from the duo’s 1991 Homebase album, their fourth in five years. It’s a perfect showcase for the profanity-free, melodic rap style that Smith was perfecting, and would eventually turn him into one of the world’s biggest stars.

Jane’s Addiction
Nothing’s Shocking
(Warner Bros.)

Another track on Jane’s Addiction’s debut LP, 1988’s Nothing’s Shocking, might have made this roundup, but we’ll bypass ‘Summertime Rolls’ in favour of the gargantuan drama of ‘Up The Beach’. The Godzilla of surf anthems, it features Perry Farrell’s wailing vocal echoing into eternity while Dave Navarro’s guitar lines break time and again like a tidal wave. If you’re ever in need of being healed by the power of rock, listen no further.

Sly & The Family Stone
Greatest Hits
(Epic)

At his creative peak, everything Sylvester ‘Sly’ Stone produced sounded like stardust and ‘Hot Fun In The Summertime’ is no exception. This was released as a single in 1969, the same year that Sly and his bunch of funk renegades wowed the crowd at the Woodstock festival and pretty much stole the whole show – the following year it deservedly found its way onto the band’s Greatest Hits collection. An uncharacterisable dapper doozy, it might initially sound as if it’s been carelessly tossed out, but the lyrics (‘End of the spring and here she comes back’) and arrangement are the work of a genius.