![]() Gershwin’s classic aria from “Porgy and Bess” has been recorded countless times, but it was Lady Day who first took it to the pop charts. Ray Davies turns a saga of an old-money scoundrel left in the proverbial poorhouse by British taxation into a decidedly non-rock hit with a vintage ballroom flavor. A street party slice of Latin-tinged soul that modestly yet profoundly encapsulates the groove of the season. The final hit of the veteran soul band’s ’70s hit parade for the United Artists label. These 20 songs aren’t presented chronologically, but rather, as a true playlist should, in an order that hopefully represents a well-rounded journey. The late John Prine’s “Summer’s End” adds a melancholy note to our summer music playlist. Some reflect all the joy you would hope for from the season, while others are a few shades darker – reality checks, if you will, examining a slightly more unsettling shade of summertime. The playlist covers music made every decade since the 1930s, running from pop to jazz to folk to Brit-pop to mambo. Well, maybe we included a few standards, but the idea here was to span the ages and well as sentiments. This one, though, doesn’t simply revisit popular summertime pop hits or obvious stylistic examples of surf and beach music. With that in mind, we’re offering a summer playlist as a soundtrack for the season. Ever since rock ‘n’ roll was accepted by mainstream audiences, songs – mostly, youth-oriented ones – have been concocted to bankroll the vivid but, for many, short-lived sense of celebration that surround those months when school has been dismissed and the sun beckons us. ![]() It’s also a time marked by some of the most expressive pop music ever designed. Here we are at the crossroads of summer, the unofficial half-way point of a season long championed for its sense of outdoor invitation, vacation-inspired escape and, in all senses of the word, warmth. ![]()
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