Another summer song is possible

BarcelonaBeyond the clichés, there are all kinds of songs related to summer. Some respond to thematic and sentimental expectations, but others propose more nebulous twists or acquire a summery dimension that the authors surely hadn't anticipated. At ARA, we've made a selection that we'll publish in several batches throughout the month of August. For now, there are a dozen songs that begin with a stroll through Rome and end with a hypnotic night in Benicàssim.

'Didi', by Khaled

Also included in the soundtrack of the film 'Dear Diary' (1993), by Nanni Moretti

Few things make summer more than Italian Nanni Moretti riding a Vespa through the less touristy Rome in the middle of the summer. ferragosto. He did it in the movie Dear diary, one of whose most iconic moments is when Moretti, who wants to learn to dance to stop being the man who watches others dance, makes the motorcycle dance to the rhythm of Didi, the song that Algerian Khaled released in 1992. Prodigy of rai, pop and funk music, Didi It's a lament for unrequited love, but expressed with joy rather than sadness. Moretti himself does this, imbuing a bitter journey through the Casal Palocco neighborhood in southern Rome with comedy, even booing a neighbor for leaving the heart of Rome to live in a characterless residential area.

Didi It is present throughout the entire route—also when Moretti recognizes the actress Jennifer Beals and overwhelms her with reflections on dance—and stops playing when the Italian director has the unfortunate idea of going into a movie theater to see Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer by John McNaughton, whose viewing provokes a delirious scene between Moretti and a film critic. In addition to Khaled's song, the soundtrack of the Roman Vespa rides of Dear diary also includes Batonga by Angelique Kidjo, I'm your man by Leonard Cohen and a version of Visa for a dream By Juan Luis Guerra. Two of the three are summery enough, at least in terms of pace.

'Summertime', from the opera 'Porgy and Bess', by George Gershwin, Ira Gershwin and DuBose Heyward

Performed by Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone, Janis Joplin, Ray Barretto, Lana del Rey...

From summer, you expect happy, carefree, sensual, or sexual songs. That is, with more sweat than tears and blood. What you don't expect is a lullaby like Summertime, those hazy chords, as musicologist Alex Ross says, that A minor where Billie Holiday incubated all the sadness in the version she recorded in 1936. Or the fatality with which Nina Simone's voice accompanied the piano melody in the 1959 version. That summer is invoked Porgy and Bess, when Clara cradles her son while the men prepare to gamble away what they've won fishing. The lyrics deceive the son. "In the summertime, life is easy. The fish jump and the cotton is tall [...] Papa is rich and Mama is pretty"... The music doesn't deceive. George Gershwin created a masterpiece and gave it away for the best performers to make their own. Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong elevated it to the status of immortal standard. Janis Joplin ripped it from the depths of the blues. Chet Baker transformed it into pure melancholy. John Coltrane acknowledged it as one of his favorites, frenetically wringing out its melody on the saxophone. Ray Barretto dressed it up as a guajira (country bumpkin). Lana del Rey dragged him through the hills of sorrow... A summer like you never imagined.

'Rezaca on its beach', by Maria Jaume

One of the gems from the album 'Nostalgia Airlines' (2024)

Summer loves that, in promise, bring disappointment. Memory recovers them with tenderness, but there are also those you'd like to forget: they are the burden that still simmers inside you because it wasn't the way you wanted. Mallorcan Maria Jaume recalls "high-voltage eves and a hangover on her beach," when everything is still waiting to happen and everything is possible. They both wanted that adventure to last forever, but life had other plans and "you left forever." She laments it, swinging to a subtle and delicate reggaeton, bloodless because they both knew what would happen "in September." One of the great love songs of recent years. Or of longed-for love.

'A Summer Without You' by Bad Bunny

The summer countersong

Pop is filled in vain with summer loves celebrated or yearned for. Bad Bunny, on the other hand, considers the drama of a summer without his lost lover. It's worth noting that he admits that he has surely lost her because he "maybe I'll grow up, but in another life..." The fact is, he can't bear the prospect. There will be no more afternoons in Ibiza. He will no longer be the one who makes her laugh. "A summer without you," he laments while licking his wounds with Broken heart by Alejandro Sanz and carries the grief to therapy... But he also assures: "I'm having a good time, I won't lie to you, but sometimes your name keeps me awake at night." In other words, the sadness doesn't last that long in the body of the Puerto Rican musician, who, brilliant by nature, makes the verses flow over a stubborn electronic base. A summer counter-song, a hidden gem that gives title to the album he released in 2022.

'The Sea', by Charles Trenet

Included in the film 'El Topo' (2011), by Tomas Alfredson, in the version by Julio Iglesias

The Thau pond, opposite Seta, inspired the French Charles Trenet to write this ode to the summer sky, the sea, love and life in 1946. The lyrical simplicity walks on a melody reminiscent of that of Heart and soul (1938) by Hoagy Carmichael. Everything is joy when "the grouper" opens the verses, and that's how all summers should be, predictable and comforting like a horchata. There are versions in abundance, also in English, and the one Julio Iglesias made in French at the Olympia in Paris in 1976 took a special flight when the Swedish filmmaker Tomas Alfredson The mole, the adaptation of John Le Carré's novel. In a masterful sequence, the flashback choreographs the betrayal of the future at a party for British secret service personnel. He feels like Julio Iglesias, full of swing, stretching all the vowels of The grouper As the action moves toward the story's bittersweet conclusion, the film ends, and it's impossible not to hum the song for a couple of hours.

'Tour de France' by Kraftwerk

In summer, every cyclist lives (or suffers)

The geography of summer is that of the Tour de France. Tour de France in 1983. Fathers of techno and almost everything related to electronic music, this song synthesized what Kraftwerk had proposed in the albums Die Mensch Maschine / The Man Machine (1978) and Computerwelt / Computer world (1981). After all, a professional cyclist is the most refined version of the human-machine. The Tour de France is also present in Manel's songs like Boomerang, which commemorates the massacre of July 16, 1996 on the slopes of Hautacam: the day Bjarne Riis defeated Miguel Indurain, the man-machine who had dominated the Tour from 1991 to 1995.

'August', by Els Pets

The perfect metaphor

August It's not a song. Or it's not just an excellent pop song with those narrative elements that Lluís Gavaldà learned from Elvis Costello. August (2004) is the perfect metaphor. "Let August arrive, vital and sticky, to take our minds off our rush and recover the tenderness of the world." Summer as a yearning for peace, like that half-hour without a stopwatch or an owner at work, like the pause in the park while the kids boo each other for the greatest photo in the world, like the restorative caress received without asking for it, like that distraction to just look around. August, the summit of Els Pets, was born from a loan in Prades, when Gavaldà, browsing through Joan Reig's notebook, found a nearly blank page on which he had written only one sentence: "May it be August all year round." I wish.

'Baba O'Riley' by The Who

For Spike Lee's use of it in the film 'Summer of Sam' (1999)

You would never say that Baba O'Riley It's a summer song. It opens the album. Who's next (1971), by The Who, and builds tension and a strange hope mixed with verses about youthful desolation. The minimalist insistence of the synthesizer riff, the foreboding of violence in the electric guitar, and the final frenzy of the violin led Spike Lee to choose it to occupy two prominent moments in the film. Summer of Sam (1999). Because summer can also be hellish, as it is in this film set in 1977 in New York: the summer of the great blackout and the final crimes of serial killer David Berkowitz, of punk fighting over the night and sex in disco music, and of the intolerance of some Italian-Americans from the Sopranos, an Italian-American woman from the Sopranos, trying to understand how one of their own (played by Adrien Brody) had turned out to be a punk and resorted to male prostitution to buy a guitar. Right in the middle of the film (and then at the end), Baba O'Riley It plays to accompany a montage that perfectly describes everything: the neurosis of a city besieged by violence and heat in a hellish summer.

'Estate', by Bruno Martino

Hating summer with the elegance with which Ornella Vanoni hates it

"I hate summer." In short. It repeats itself like a furious mantra in the lyrics ofEstate, Bruno Martino's song, one of Italy's notable contributions to the world of jazz standards. Everyone who approached maintained a nonchalant tone when firing off their hatred for "the summer that created our love... to make me die of pain." It's the perverse logic of hating what one had loved the most. That sentiment has been sung by Jimmy Fontana, Eliane Elias, Joao Gilberto, Vinicio Capossela, and others. But perhaps no one has hated summer with such elegance as Ornella Vanoni in the version that can be found on the album. And poi... tu bocca da baciare (2001). May summer hatred catch you well perfumed and better dressed. Evidently, as the canon of the greatest Italian singers dictates, Vanoni sings as if she lived in the song.

'Rid of Me' by PJ Harvey

A memorable performance in Benicàssim on August 5, 2001

Beyond the seasonality, summer is above all the things that happen during the summer. On August 5, 2001, an exceptional summer happened at the Benicàssim International Festival. Those who were there can say they experienced one of the best, most exciting, and most impactful musical moments in history. And there's a video testimony that backs up all the praise. British singer PJ Harvey decided to perform solo. Rid of me Surrounded by darkness. Energized only by the light from a spotlight. She strums the strings, holding the chord. She sings with her mouth pressed against the microphone. She sets the rhythm with her left leg. You can feel the disruption in her breathing as she begs to be left alone and, suddenly, steps away from the microphone to shout: "Lick my legs!" The audience is mesmerized, silent, until the pedal changes the guitar sound and PJ Harvey unleashes a historic catharsis. All this, with one singer, one guitar, and a circle of light. An unforgettable summer.