Song of the Summer(s)

Music possesses the power to carry memories in melodies. Turn up your speakers and step into the soundscape of writer Nicole C. Kear’s curated playlist of warm-weather tunes, selected from her own scrapbook discography.

In the same way that soda tastes better on an airplane, songs sound better in summer. There’s a song for every season of course, but I would argue that there’s no greater pleasure than hearing the perfect song on a perfect summer night, blasting from a car cruising by, or blaring from the top of a stoop, or wafting out an open bedroom window. 

In homage to this pleasure, I offer my top songs of summer, in three acts.   

1) 1981: Sailin’ Shoes, by Little Feat 

In the summer when I was a kid, I loved to sleep over at my aunt’s place on East 87th Street. She was single and child-free and she worked with musicians so her small apartment was always full of jazz saxophonists and drummers and singers drinking wine and eating take-out and listening to music, including the album, “Sailin’ Shoes.” 

The “Sailin’ Shoes” album cover features a pert, anthropomorphized cake sitting on a child’s swing. Swirls of pink icing make up the cake’s hair and in addition to her long-lashed eyes and waifish arms, Cake Lady has got gambs that are pin-up-girl sexy. The painting captures her mid-swing and she’s kicking one shapely leg in the air with such vigorous delight that her high-heeled shoe flies off. But what makes the album cover genuinely intriguing is that Cake Lady has a slice cut out of her which allows you to glimpse her chocolate, double-decker insides. 

To a five-year-old kid, this album cover was utterly fascinating. 

Now, you may be thinking, how could any song deliver on the promise — the tantalizing, irreverent, vaguely disturbing promise — of a cover like that? To answer that question, you’ll have to head over to your favorite music streaming service. I’ll just tell you the first line of the song, equal parts rock, blues and funk, which goes: “There’s a lady in a turban, in a cocaine tree. ​​She does a dance so . . . rhythmically.”

When I’d sing it, my aunt would laugh and then she’d say, “Don’t sing that in front of your mother! She’ll kill me.” 

My mother, her younger sister, didn’t listen to songs about cocaine. My mother didn’t fraternize with musicians, who let’s face it, were probably partaking in plenty of cocaine themselves. Was there even a single jazz saxophonist in all of Staten Island, where we lived? 

My mother didn’t order in Chinese food, or Polynesian food, or Indian.  My mother didn’t have a vintage vanity from the 1940’s heaped with makeup that I had carte blanche to experiment with when I woke up early. When Cabbage Patch Kids came out, it wasn’t my mother who beelined to Gimbel’s and wrestled the very last doll out of some weaker shopper’s hands. 

My mother mothered. My aunt aunt-ed — doting, lavishing me with attention. I loved staying with her, loved the glimpse it gave me into another world, with different rules, different tastes, different sounds, including the twangy, twisty, off-kilter sound of “Sailin’ Shoes” on a summer night. 

2) 2011: Hit the Road Jack, by Ray Charles

Maybe it’s being a firstborn, or maybe we’re just divas, but for my son and I, a favorite summer pastime in childhood was coercing our kid sisters to serve as backup singers in our musical arrangements. After all, there were just so many Sweet Valley High books a third grader could read, so when I’d run out, I’d coax and cajole my sister to back me up on Madonna covers. 

One of the unique delights, and horrors, of parenthood, is witnessing your own traits emerge in your child. So I was not surprised when, the summer before third grade, my son, known in these parts as Primo, conscripted his sister, Seconda, as a backup singer. There were many duets rehearsed that summer, but one of my favorites unfolded during a car ride when the two kids workshopped a rousing rendition of  “Hit the Road Jack,” mercifully preserved for posterity via video.  

Seconda, 4, is strapped into the four-point harness of her car seat, offering Primo a captive collaborator. 

“Old woman, old woman, why’d you treat me so mean? You’re the meanest old woman I’ve ever seen,” Primo croons to his sister. “I guess if you say so, I better pack my things and go.” 

It’s Seconda’s line — “That’s right!” — but she’s forgotten it, so Primo prompts her again, and again and again. His standards of excellence are high, but he’s patient, seeming to understand the limits of a four-year-old’s working memory. Though Seconda’s reliability is spotty, she is selling the hell out of her line, furrowing her brow and pointing a tiny finger as she scolds, “That’s right!”

At long last, Seconda gets into the groove, as Madonna might say, and makes it to the second verse with nary a misstep. Now she’s supposed to sing: “You ain’t got no money, you ain’t no good.” 

Except what she sings, scowling ferociously, is: “You ain’t got no money, you taste no good!”

Primo, my husband and I succumb to helpless laughter, and that’s where the video (and the rehearsal) ends. 

And it’s why whenever I hear “Hit the Road Jack,” I think of cannibalism. 

3) 2023: Cruel Summer, by Taylor Swift 

My 17 year-old daughter was a Swiftie for a decade before the term “Swiftie” came into popular parlance. On Halloween when she was seven, in red lipstick, a bowler hat, and a “NOT DOING A LOT AT THE MOMENT” shirt, she was a dead ringer for Tay Tay. She learned how to play guitar picking out “Teardrops on my Guitar,” and spread the good word at open mics and recitals with performances of “Love Story” and “Trouble.”  Just a few weeks ago, she took a pilgrimage to Nashville and played an original song at The Bluebird Cafe, where Taylor is said to have been discovered.  

By the time the Eras tour presale opened, my daughter and her cousin, an equally obsessive Swiftie, had nailed down their concert outfits (Sec: Lover, Cousin: Reputation). Taylor had gotten the girls through the cruel summer of 2020, through the fear, confusion, boredom, and loneliness of Covid. Even my sister, who ranks “fun” very low on her priority list, was adamant we had to get tickets for the girls to go.

And so, applying the same New York hustle that makes it possible to find a parking spot in Park Slope on a weeknight— Stamina! Ingenuity! Persistence! — we nabbed three tickets to the Eras tour at East Rutherford Stadium in late May.. 

You’ll be spared a detailed accounting of the concert, because I didn’t go. David had dreamed of taking our kids to their first concert since they were zygotes, and though he’d have preferred Springsteen or Yo La Tengo, he was excited to introduce Sec to the thrill of live music. 

Since I wasn’t there, I didn’t partake in the “religious experience” my daughter later described. I just know that when she got home late that night, voice hoarse, mascara running from crying in helpless, breathless joy, she said: “It was the best night of my life.” And I believed it.