SummerTime Radness

By Aiden Charles (they/them)

The summer song has been a music industry staple since Antonio Vivaldi published “The Four Seasons” in 1725.

Whilst not considered an ‘absolute banger’ summer classic by today’s standards, and unlikely to be viewed in the same light as something along the lines of Lana Del Rey’s “Summertime Sadness – Club Mix”, Vivaldi’s 1725 offering, “L’estate” (Summer) laid the groundwork for the subsequent summer anthems to come.

Basically, Vivaldi walked so Del Rey could run. That’s a fact, and not a baseless claim from a very tired music nerd currently stuffing apple into his mouth and listening to Nirvana.

Summer anthems are a given for a year’s music offerings. It’s expected that a handful will be released each year to coincide with that wonderful time where you can fry an egg on the bonnet of your car. These songs are (usually) upbeat, fun, good to listen to when at the beach or on a long drive to who knows where. A summer song doesn’t even need to be about the season, it just needs to invoke a certain vibe.

Summer songs are driving with the windows down, skating full speed down an incline before bailing onto the pavement, frolicking in the waves, eating an ice cream before it drips onto your sneakers.

Summer songs are an experience.

They’re capable of getting a bop outta ya in the middle of that gruelling roadie you all thought was a good idea before realising that holding your bladder too long is a struggle.

But alas, summer songs on their lonesome are crap. What is needed is a quintessential playlist, with only the best of the best summer bops being featured. But creating a playlist is hard; having opinions is dumb!

So instead of creating my own playlist for summer, I outsourced it to a chatbot AI -

Now aside from the fact that a chatbot cannot form opinions of its own, and therefore has just picked random songs including one by a very problematic musician (cough cough Kid Rock is the worst cough cough)… I’d say that’s a pretty okay list.

But why don’t we get some real opinions and song choices?

So, coming straight from the hearts of Massive Magazine staff, here is the OFFICIAL MASSIVE SUMMER PLAYLIST!