Summer sadness?

Well hold on a minute – summer is finally here! Socks are being discarded, car heaters are turned off (how does the air con work again please?) and cosy nights in with a DVD are making way for drinks in the last of the evening sun. But still there seems to be a hint of sadness in the air. Whatever happened to carefree summers? In the 1960s and 70s it was all ‘summer of love’ with The Beach Boys, Mungo Jerry’s ‘In the Summertime’ and the broody anthem ‘Summer Nights’ from John Travolta and Olivia N-J. The 1980s touched on it with the infamous Bryan Adams’ ‘Summer of ’69’ (Don’t act like you haven’t sung along with your air guitar) but then you have the completely conflicting Bananarama‘s ‘cruel summer’ full of angst and being left alone in the city while the love of their life (thats a big job, I think. Did you see Bananarama in the 80s? They could floor you with their ‘death stares’) was elsewhere. The mood was lifted briefly in the 90s – Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince singing about ‘Summertime‘, aimed to put a smile on anyone’s face…and it did! We had colourful clothes, colourful music and it seemed like everything was fun. Then the craziness of the millennium hit us and we thought everything would be completely different. Shock horror! nothing changed. we weren’t driving flying cars, robots didn’t do our housework, and we still had to go out to work. dammit! But surely, yes surely,the music had gone all ‘carefree and happy’! yes? Well, once we had all got over the crazy change(!) that happened at the millennium, women got feisty – think Christina Aguilera, Maya, Pink and Lil’ Kim with a cover of ‘Lady Marmalade’ and moody faced Avril Lavigne with ‘complicated’…but no jolly summer anthem. Nelly went sexy in 2002 with ‘hot in here’, Usher continued to dominate the charts with many including ‘burn‘ (in fact 2004 was basically Usher’s summer; he was EVERYWHERE) but where was our funky summer lovin’ song? The famous ex-of-Britney, Justin Timerlake, formerly of NSync turned a corner when he brought out the perfectly-titled ‘Summer Love’ in 2007…yay! But unlike Mungo Jerry’s fabulous ‘In the summertime’, a relaxed, breezy number, JT had to move with the times with a poppy, electronic tune. With a LOT of sexy. Most recently we have since been introduced to rainbow-haired Katy Perry, with her non-stop summer/beach/sunny pop hits. And yes, they DO make you feel good. They DO make you feel summery. But does an ickle part of you miss the likes of ‘Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini’ by Bryan Hyland? If you can believe it, that hit the charts in 1960. And you know what? We have to move with the times. We have to sing along to Katie in her jeep in sunny LA. Because no-one dreamed of how easy it would be to do just that nowadays, back in the swinging sixties. And at least we still have the memories. And our parents’ record collection.