A Season of Joy: Songs of Summer 2024

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I feel silly for feeling nostalgic about Summer 2024 and its adventures—feeding the giraffes and a bison at the Elmwood Park Zoo; ziplining for the first (and last) time at Urban Air; watching our crepe myrtles release their blooms the color of cranberry sauce; listening to the songs that would form the summer’s soundtrack.

It’s September.  The calendar tells us there are 20-some-odd days of summer left; yet we all know—Summer draws its last breath each year at midnight on Labor Day. School buses are back on the roads, tangling traffic; college campuses are buzzing with activity; people are closing up their shore houses; radio stations are rushing to name the songs of summer 2024. The latter has made me decide to name my own songs of this summer. More on that in a minute.

Perhaps it’s a sign of getting older, but time seems to be passing lickety-split. June marked ten years of us being legally married. My brother and his wife will celebrate their tenth wedding anniversary this week; our nephews are now nine and six; dad will be gone seven years, in November, mom three in October.

 September has always been my favorite month, kicking off a season of hope. When I was in school, the start of a new academic year always filled me with hope: perhaps I’d learn something new; discover a new favorite teacher; maybe the bullying would stop; maybe I’d meet a boy who would love me.

This September, like all the Septembers before it,  fills me with hope but there is an added dimension: joy. Think Kamala Harris at the top of the Democratic ticket with her endless million-watt smile and the sheer joy of her manner, and her VP pick Tim Walz who seems to radiate an organic down home joy.

As I was reviewing my picks for songs of summer 2024, I realized they seem disparate in that they fall into different genres, but as I listened and read the lyrics, I realized their common denominator is joy. I collect things—disparate things: globes, rocks, watches, dragons, books, art. It’s a collection that on its face seems disparate, eclectic, diverse yet they share a single commonality—they all bring me joy.

And now, without further ado, here are my declared Songs of Summer 2024:

Bar Song (Tipsy) by Shaboozey

Someone pour me up a double shot of whisky
They know me and Jack Daniels got a history
There’s a party downtown near Fifth street
Everybody at the bar getting tipsy.

I have to admit I don’t drink Jack Daniels—I prefer a single malt Scotch Whisky, preferably an Islay, but a Highlands will do, thank you very much. And an older, post covid era me would never go to a street party.

 Miles on It by Marshmello and Kane Brown

Girl let’s go put some miles on it
Back of the Chevy with the engine running
Just you and me in a truck bed wide like a California King
We could break it in if you know what I mean
Put some miles on it

As I sing, loudly, badly and off key, the chorus, I want to change “truck bed wide like a California King to “wide as a California King.”

The pronouns of the song aside, the fact that it is two men singing inflames my imagination and reminds of my youth when I and the boy I was mad about at the time would come together not in the bed, but in the cabin of my little black Isuzi pickup, parked along the banks of the Schuylkill River off Kelly Drive. That, too, was a season of joy. 

 

Photo by BriceCooper on Unsplash

 

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