Once you graduate from your final level of schooling, summer instantly turns into something different. School’s out forever, so it’s no longer capital-S Summer, it’s now simply the time in which your commute to work is at its warmest and sweatiest. As a result, we need our culture to help remind us why summer is still special and how amazing 3 months of nothing used to be. To help us through, we have summer blockbusters, we have fireworks and most important to us at Noise Pop we have the song of the summer (herein referred to as S.O.S.). The S.O.S. is a tune meant to unify all the parties we attend and all the parties we overhear. An S.O.S. should be peppy, upbeat, easy and interactive — whether that means a pump of the fist or a twist of the hip. Ideally it talks about summery things: love, beach, water, sun, youth, but at its best it simply evokes these things. A great summer song makes one feel younger, in a visceral sense; it lets our brains, for three minutes, think: “I don’t have school tomorrow!”
A couple years back, Buzzfeed designated all the S.O.S’s dating back to 1940, seemingly based on each song’s chart position. The results were a bit wonky. Sure, 1964’s list had The Beach Boys, but six years prior they had “Purple People Eater,” a song so out of place it might as well have been “Monster Mash.” Flash forward to the late ’80s / early ’90s, and we see the type of definitive summer songs that we’ve come to associate with the term: “Summertime” by DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, “Baby Got Back” by Sir Mix-A-Lot, and, well, “The Macarena.” As things started to get real pop, a divide became clearer between the pop song of the summer and the indie song of the summer. In 2005, every party in the Marina played Mariah Carey’s “We Belong Together” while every party in The Mission played LCD Soundsystem’s “Daft Punk Is Playing at My House.” If you need more proof, just look at the difference between Stereogum and Vulture‘s list of recent summer songs. That said, these things obviously aren’t absolutes; depending on levels of irony and hipness, anything could be played anywhere. Last year there was some unity between the pop and indie worlds — both the pop S.O.S., Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep,” and the indie S.O.S., Foster The People’s “Pumped Up Kicks,” were likely both played at every summer get-together. These two songs may seem like they live in two different worlds, but they each hit some of the S.O.S precepts.
These two vastly different songs demonstrate the simple complexity of the S.O.S. Part of the beauty of an S.O.S is that there are clear forerunners, but number one is in the ear of the beholder. The S.O.S is about personal, not critical, experience. And there are plenty of great choices this year. In the pop world, let’s face it, “Call Me Maybe,” is probably the winner. It’s impossible to ignore the song. It’s damn near the platonic ideal of a summer song: it’s catchy, bright, escapist, earnest and a bit frivolous. There is an aw shucks quality to it and an utter void of seriousness that is perfect for reckless summer fun. But, that isn’t the end of the S.O.S story. “Call me Maybe” may be the pop ringer, but we’ve collected some well-matched contenders in the indie corner with a little more… depth.
