#35 Madonna - La Isla Bonita

Album: True Blue (1986)

Lyrics excerpt:
Last night I dreamt of San Pedro
Just like I'd never gone, I knew the song
A young girl with eyes like the desert
It all seems like yesterday, not far away

Reasons to love this song:
True Blue was one of the first albums I ever owned. I remember I listened to it until the tape was all worn out. Decades later, I have completely forgotten some of the songs (Jimmy Jimmy? Where's The Party? Love Makes The World Go Round?), but the others, especially Live To Tell and La Isla Bonita, have stood the test of time wonderfully. Just hearing the first few bars of La Isla Bonita makes me imagine tropical islands, bright orange cocktails with ice cubes and little umbrellas in them, and palm trees outlined in the sunset.

I like to listen to this song in a playlist with:
The Beach Boys - Kokomo
Kaoma - Lambada
Chris Rea - On the Beach
UB40 - Kingston Town
(Other summery songs from the same era.)

YouTube link:
The official video, featuring an adorable short-haired and wide-eyed Madonna:

#34 k. d. lang - Summerfling

Album: Invincible Summer (2000)

Lyrics excerpt:
Early morning mid-July
Anticipation's makin' me high
The smell of Sunday in our hair
You ran on the beach with Kennedy Flair
Sweet, sweet burn of sun and summer wind
And you, my friend, my new fun thing
My summerfling

Reasons to love this song:
So many of my favourite summer songs are melancholy and nostalgic. Summerfling is definitely one of them. I suppose it is because summer and nostalgia are so firmly linked to one another. For a child, summer is a seemingly endless time of being completely carefree. As adults, although most of us cannot afford to be completely carefree, I think we still try to capture some traces of this feeling, and k. d. lang's song captures them perfectly, from the anticipation to the final bittersweet loss.

I like to listen to this song in a playlist with:
Lana Del Rey - Summertime Sadness
Madeleine Peyroux - The Summer Wind
Boney M - Still I'm Sad
Tori Amos - Indian Summer
Beautiful South - Everybody's Talkin'
(These songs do not resemble each other, but to me they all seem to share a summery/melancholic/nostalgic mood.)

YouTube link:
The official video:

#30 Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood - Summer Wine

Album: Nancy & Lee (1968)

Lyrics excerpt:
Strawberries, cherries and an angel's kiss in spring 
My summer wine is really made from all these things 
Take off your silver spurs and help me pass the time
 And I will give to you summer wine

Reasons to love this song:
The songs I have written in this blog are mostly performed (and written by) solo female musicians, but I will make an exception now and then -- starting with this song, one of my favourite summer songs. It tells the story of a man who is seduced and robbed by a femme fatale, but Nancy Sinatra sings her part in a sweet and dreamy voice, not even trying to sound "evil".
The lyrics to this song have made a friend of mine, who is very literal-minded, angry. "No, your summer wine is bloody well not really made of all these things, because you can't make wine out of strawberries, cherries and bloody angel's kisses!" When I told her the wine in the song isn't necessarily real wine at all, but a metaphor for the female character's love, she grumbled: "Even worse."

YouTube link:
I love Nancy's little laugh at about 2:10. Bizarrely, in the beginning of the video her head looks as if it were screwed on backwards.

#27 Kate Bush - Sunset

(summer playlist, #4)

Album: Aerial (2005)

Lyrics excerpt:
Who knows who wrote that song of Summer

That blackbirds sing at dusk?
This is a song of colour
Where sands sing in crimson, red and rust
Then climb into bed and turn to dust

Reasons to love this song:
Birdsong -- and the passage of one day -- are the subject of the second part of Bush's 2005 album Aerial, A Sky Of Honey. I chose to describe Sunset as a "summer song", but all the songs on A Sky Of Honey are actually summer songs, a celebration of life on a warm summer's day full of birdsong. If I say this album makes one happy to be alive it will sound horribly clichéd, but -- I'm sorry! -- it really does.

Link to Amazon preview:
An Endless Sky Of Honey
(The whole Sky Honey as one song)

YouTube link:
This video shows the album cover, which looks like a photo of islands in the sea, but is actually a waveform of a blackbird song.

#26 Cesária Évora - Sodade

(summer playlist, #3)

Album: Miss Perfumado (1992)

Lyrics excerpt:
Quem mostra' bo ess caminho longe?
Quem mostra' bo ess caminho longe?
Ess caminho pa São Tomé.
(Who showed you this long journey?
Who showed you this long journey?
The journey to São Tomé.)

Reasons to love this song:
"Sodade" in Cape Verdean Creole or "Saudade" in Portuguese is not a concept that can be translated in one word; I'm not a speaker of either, but I take it from good authority that "nostalgia" would be the closest one.
The song was written by Armando Zeferino Soares (also attributed to Amândio Cabral and Luís Morais), and describes the longing of Cape Verdean emigrants to São Tomé e Príncipe for their homeland.
For many listeners throughout the world, myself included, this song is tied to Cesária Évora, the singer who made the whole genre of morna internationally famous.

YouTube links:

A live performance by Cesária Évora in Paris in 2004:


Cesária Évora performing the song as a duet with Greek singer Eleftheria Arvanitaki -- I love how these two completely different voices sound together:

#25 Enya - Orinoco Flow

(summer playlist, #2)

Album: Watermark (1988)

Lyrics excerpt: 
From the North to the South, Ebudae into Khartoum,
From the deep sea of Clouds to the island of the moon,
Carry me on the waves to the lands I've never been,
Carry me on the waves to the lands I've never seen.

Reasons to love this song:
To some people, "Enya" has become not only the name of a single artist but also the name of a whole genre. Consequently, her name has also been used derisively by some people, as a synonym for bland elevator music. Well, I think these people are very silly and they don't know what they're talking about.
I still remember how I felt when I first heard this song in 1988 -- the video came up on MTV and I thought it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen and heard, unlike anything I had heard before. The fact that her music has been emulated so much has never, for me, cheapened its appeal.
Once, in the nineties, I was traveling by ferry to a Mediterranean island and they were playing Watermark (the whole album) on the ship's stereo. Listening to this album and looking at the blue sea what an unforgettable, dreamlike experience.

Link to Amazon preview: 
 Orinoco Flow

YouTube link: 
The official video

#24 Emiliana Torrini - Unemployed In Summertime

(summer playlist, #1)

Album: Love In The Time Of Science (1999)

Lyrics excerpt:
Let's get drunk on saturday
Walk on Primrose Hill
Until we lose our way
We''ll get sunburned on the grass
Playing silly buggers 'till I make a pass
And you laugh at my face

Reasons to love this song:
Do you remember how, when you were a child, summers would last forever -- a seemingly endless time without any obligations? And then, as you grow older, time starts speeding up and summers get shorter and shorter and much less carefree. But in your early twenties there is still something left of that superpower children posess: slowing down time. This song captures the feeling of a long, carefree summer perfectly.

YouTube Link:
The official video: