Contrary to popular belief, I really love the summertime (Yes, I could have started with excuses for why I have not written anything lately, but you probably do not care, so why bother?). And in contrast to spring, I do not feel ambivalent about this time of year. Why am I telling you this, well because I have made song countdowns before, and after me and my three fellow bloggers made our best of spring list, we agreed to make a “best of summer” list, when the summertime was here. And now; it is. So now it is time for the hipsters “A Hipsters Guide to… the perfect hipster summertime playlist (if you need the reasoning for me being allowed to pick the music on behalf of hipsters everywhere, go read the reason I give at the Springtime playlist blog post).
For me summer is a time for friends, and sitting outdoors drinking white wine or drinks, talking all through the night with blankets around you if it has gotten a bit chilly, and sitting around the campfire or somewhere else outdoors with people singing and playing the guitar. This is also obvious in my choices of song, since most of them is camp fire appropriate, and fewer of them are dancing hits. What they have in common is that they are hipster appropriate choices, and almost all of them can be played on a guitar, and they are not as “the world is doomed” mood wise, as the songs I usually present (some of them are genuinely happy). I have gone through much pain and trouble to choose these songs, and I have for one time sake, decided to include Danish songs, simply because half of my favorite summer songs are Danish. So, there is one list of English songs, and one list of Danish songs. Yes that is a lot of songs, and with around fifteen songs on each, there is a lot to listen to, but there is also much great summertime music, to be shared. So firstly is my list of English, and then follows a list of Danish songs, so if you do not speak Danish, just skip the Danish song part, or listen to them, some of them are pretty good, even if you do not understand the lyrics. As per usual, I do not want to rank the songs, so they are all an arbitrary number 7. And there is a lot of live versions of the songs, because, well nothing says summer than live music.
(Do I need to mention that this is challenge, and I am counting on Peter, Diana and Rikke in the least to follow up with their own versions of summer time playlists)
DISCLAIMER: Yes, I am well aware that I am cheating, so here is the card that allows me to cheat with both hands, and now quit your whining.
The perfect hipster summertime playlist – English edition
7. Blur – Parklife
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIEsmGzo2UE
Any song that starts with the line: “Confidence is a preference for the habitual voyeur of what is known as parklife”, should be on any good hipster playlist. And of course it is on mine. Blur were hipsters before it was hipster, and the English accent, the idea of park life as a thing, is just amazing. And it reminds me of my many summers in Birk, that was mostly spend outside sitting on a bench, “park lifing”, and saying hello to random people who dropped by.
7. Weezer – Island in the Sun/Buddy Holly
I tried so hard to find a weird medley where they played both songs, but youtube was just not my friend, so now I have just combined the two songs into one post. Ha! (btw. If you have never heard the songs before, the originals are probably preferable for a first time listen, but I really like the live versions).
Weezer is quintessential hipster, and both songs are perfect summer songs. Island in the sun, is just for the lazy summer afternoon, describing how to enjoy the summer in the sun, and Buddy Holly, is for jumping around and danicing like crazy, when you have gotten just enough white wine in your blood, that makes you feel like dancing.
7. Volbeat – Only Wanna Be With You
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ts19Nn-xyGs
Apropos getting in the mood for dancing and jumping around, well this is one of the best songs for acting crazy, and still being able to sing happily along, since it is a cover of a really well-known song. I am not a particular big fan of Danish Volbeat, but I must admit that this cover is brilliant and funny, and feels happy and unforced – Ohh and it is short for a Volbeat song.
7. Paco De Lucia, John McLaughlin and Al Di Meola – Mediterranean sundance
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cadbYIzhqQ
Yes this song is actually that long, and that is the short version. It is one of the most incredibly beautiful pieces of guitar music that I have ever come across, and it is best played by the three gentlemen in the video. I have loved it since I was a child and my father introduced it to me. To me this is an amazing summer night tune, that even though it is without song, is still just perfect.
Tim Minchin – Not Perfect
Yes, he is a comedian, but this is genuinely a good song, and even though it is funny, it is also strangely touching. And it is perfect for summer, because you can sing along to it after only a few listens, and it also has a very positive message. The lyrics are perfect, and the melody is beautiful as well. And it reflects quite well the philosophical discussions that will start during the summer evenings, where good food, good friends and plenty to drink has been perfectly balanced. And Tim Minchin is hipster, he has an ironic distance to himself, so he fits on the list – BASTA!
7. Otis Redding – Sitting on the dock of the bay
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTVjnBo96Ug
This is a placeholder song for my bad conscience. I cut quite a lot of blues/rock songs from back from the time, that my dad have taught me to love, but no summer without at least a little bit of blues, and for this we have Otis Redding singing sitting on the dock of the bay, because that song is just summer. If it is not summer to waste you time doing nothing, just because you are enjoying the weather and your surroundings, then I do not know what is.
7. The Mopeds – The Right To Be Unfunky
http://crunchyfrog.bandcamp.com/track/the-right-to-be-unfunky
Yes, this is a first, but the song is not on youtube, so I am providing a link where you can listen the song instead, on crunchy frog record labels homepage. I love this song. And to me, it is a summer song. When I was finishing secondary school, and the summer exams and parties was coming up I was a regular listener of a music radio program for youngsters (Called “Det elektriske barometer”) that thought themselves to be non-mainstream. This summer I wrote a letter, where I explained how this song made me feel, that it somehow enhanced my feeling of it being okay that I did not want to be as the rest of my class mates. The letter won me a very coveted t-shirt from the show, and I continued to vote for this song on the list, as long as I could. To this day it still makes me happy, and makes me think of summer. Furthermore, I still believe in the chorus, “I think I should have the right to be unfunky”.
7. Passenger – The wrong Direction
After haven finally gotten around to listening extensively to the latest passenger album (yes I am a hipster, it does not always imply first mover, do it?) I have fallen more and more in love with this song. Despite from the fact that I am in a very well-functioning relationship, and has been for many years, I really gets what he is talking about, and this ironic distance he keeps to himself, and how it ends up giving him all kinds of problems, is just brilliant phrased. Just look at lyrics like: “The first cut is the deepest, but the rest still flipping hurts” and “There’s fish in the sea for me to make a selection – I’d jump in if it wasn’t for my ear infection” is just amazing. And it is still so upbeat and positive in its melody, that is a nice summertune, and somehow the theme of the song is still very appropriate for summer, since even though everything looks nice on the outside, bad things can still happen in the summertime. Ohh and this live version is brilliant, because he also sings a bit of Haddaway. Ohh and if you need a summer album for lazy summer days in the sun, or evenings of philosophical discussion, the whole album that “The wrong direction” is taken from, is perfect for that as well.
7. Allan Sherman – Hello Muddah Hello Faddah
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jjiWS__Mp0
This is old, and it is just so funny, it is almost as good as Tom Lehrers poisoning pigeons in the park. This is a summer camp song. It was my boyfriend that years ago directed my attention to this pearl of a summer song. Again, I know it’s old, but I just can help but get a smile on my face every time I hear it, and it is a song about summer, how appropriate, and so old that no one except a hipster would know it. So it is just right for this list.
7. Oasis – She’s electric
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L98AsoTdlYo
One of the first individual choices of music I made in my life, was when I bought (What’s the story) morning glory, the Oasis hit album when it came out in the nineties. I love all the songs on that album, and would be sorely pressed to come up with a favorite, but this is one of the ones I would probably mention. The version from youtube, is with Noel singing, instead of Liam, because apparently Liam refuses to sing the song live (because he is an ass-hat), which just made me dead set on finding a live version of the song to use, because I really like it when Noel actually sing his own songs (most of Oasis songs are Noels, but Liam sings most of them, you have with all probability only heard Noel sing on Don’t Look Back in Anger, unless you are an Oasis fan)(But if you have never heard the song before, you may be better off with the original version). When all that is said, I think it is a very appropriate summer song, because it is happy, it’s got a text that most of all sounds like a nursery rhyme, and some nice guitar riffs as well. And it is fun, and makes me smile. Which for me is very summer.
7. The Kinks – Sunny afternoon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JJszWo8Aow
Then it got old again. The song is really just a summer stable. It is fun, because it is not your typical song about summer and sun, but is about a man who has done seven kinds of wrong, but still really want to live the luxury life, and cannot really figure out what he have done wrong. Brilliant. And who does not like the Kinks.
7. R.E.M. – Nightswimming
This was very difficult, I am the kind of person that thinks REM has a song for every occasion( meaning in equal measures that I think REM has quite a diverse song catalogue, and that I think that every occasion is an occasion for listening to REM). So I had a lot of songs to chose from, but when it came to it, it could only be nightswiming. A song that is almost painfully beautiful (If I believed in angels, I would proclaim that Michael Stipe has the voice of an angel, but since I am an atheist, the methaphor becomes a bit garbled, as in Michael Stipe has the voice of a mythical being that does not exist). Nightswimming is about summer evenings, about doing stupid things, about being young and growing older, and how you look different at things when you look back. And about nightswimming, something that belongs in the summertime. This version is a live version, just to show that Michael Stipe sounds just as amazing live, as in studio recordings.
7. Axis of Awesome – Four Chords song
This is a weird placeholder song for all the popular music that belongs in the summer, that is not on this list, because it did not fit, and the list would become unbearably long. And it is a summer song in it’s own right. You can sing-a-long to all the tunes in it, and you are having fun while doing it, the definition of summer song right there. And the Axis of Awesome is just that – Awesome. Need I say more?
7. Bon Jovi – Blood Money
This is the best campfire song that I have never heard at a campfire (probably because I do not know any musicians that are also Bon Jovi fans), and it is really a shame because it is just perfect for that (I might take up playing the guitar at some point in my life, just to be able to play this song at a campfire at least once).
It is my boyfriend that has introduced me to the song, and I just love it. It is a bit sad, but sad in the “melancholy songs for around the campfire” kind of sad, and it has a feel of summer, evening and campfire, that is unmistakable, and for that reason it needs to be on this list.
7. Kenneth Bager – Fragment Eight (Sound of Swing)
This was the first number I was certain that I wanted on the list, despite the fact that it fits with nothing else on the list, and is both an (almost) instrumental number, and a number that is dance genre inspired. But Fragment eight is the sound of summer. Of walking down the street, in sandals and a short dress, and almost burning the tips of your toes that are sticking out of the sandals on the asphalt. For that reason, it needs to be on this list.
Extra 7. Red Hot Chili Peppers Californication
No summer list is complete without Red Hot Chili Peppers Californication. It is beautiful, it has lots of pop culture references from the millennia. It is a nice tune for a hot day, driving in a car with the window open and just enjoying life. And singing along way too loud. And the music video is still awesome.
The perfect hipster summertime playlist – Danish (and a bit Norwegian) edition
7. Kashmir – Svinget i Solrød
This one is without a song, because the internet will not let me find a version to listen to. It is a Gasolin cover by Kashmir, and it needs to be the Kashmir version, because frankly the Gasolin version is just not very good. To me this is summer. I sing it with my childhood friends, and we dance and act out to this song, every summer, making this a perfect summer song.
7. Kim Larsen og Bellami – Pianomand
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjzAQ1iIyDE
Yes I know I am not right in the head, a song about death, on a summer playlist? Yes, but it is a very summerlike song about death? I think it is actually very life-affirming (Can you say that? Google translate says that you can, but are they to be trusted?) song, that covers trying to cope with loss, in a way that is fitting, especially for summer. And it is just beautiful. So there it is, and it is the only Kim Larsen song on my summer playlist.
7. Rasmus Nøhr – Alderspræsident/Øl på Bryggen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wD6CilteAIY
Yes, Rasmus Nøhr is the Danish equivalent of Weezer, so he was allowed two songs. Alderspræsident might just be my favorite Danish summer song, encompassing how Danish summer makes everyone feel younger and happier, because the winter has been tough, and now it is finally over. Øl på Bryggen encompasses summer in Copenhagen, something that I still remember fondly, and actually, besides from what Rasmus would proclaim himself, it also encompasses somehow how much of summer is everywhere else in Denmark, just without all the namedropping of places at Christiania.
7. Klondyke – Hvis din mund gav kys
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lTpnIvNkIg
This was the only version I could find on youtube, but the song deserves better, so please go on Spotify and search for Klondyke and find the album Guld (And it has to be that album,because that is the one with the best version on), and hear the song there, it is better in that version. But in a tight spot this version will do. I love Klondyke. It is an obscure Danish band that the fewest have heard of, and even fewer have heard any music from, but there are great anyway. And this song is one of the songs that is closely connected with summer, and my relationship with my boyfriend as well, so especially this song just says summer romance and summer and happiness to me.
7. Lasse og Mathilde – Alle mine venner
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lk1QPXi4iJw
When I was a kid my dad only knew very few child appropriate songs in Danish (Long story short, my dad is german, he came to Denmark when he was in his twenties, got together with my mom and had me and my sister). But this song, that I have later learned is from Lasse og Mathilde, he did know. And it is almost child appropriate. It is about children playing outside in the summer and having fun with each other. It has the sentence from a song that was my favorite when I was a child – “Børge har en blodtud, for han si’r jeg tror på gud”. Nuff said. A song that is here because it means singing songs with my dad playing on the guitar in the long summer nights.
7. Inside the Whale – Lørdag nat
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4twT5BBTaxE
I rediscovered this band (and how it is to be teenagedrunk) last summer, when they held reunion concert in Herning. One of the few things that stands clearly out (and that is not many things) from that night is this song, that I had totally forgotten. It is brilliant. And it is a perfect hook up summer tune. If not very sentimental.
7. Folkeklubben – Tænker tit på
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugFkfAPEf-c
This was a band I discovered last year while writing my master thesis. I absolutely adore how they have gone back to the style of Danish bands of the 60-70’es, and makes the style work for them today. And it just says summer to me, because it is prototypical the sort of nonsense philosophical discussions that you will have, when drunk a summer night. I had never seen the video before though.
7. Ufo Yepha, BliGlad & Natasja – Hængekøjen
This should have been Løven kommer with BliGlad, but it was not to be, so instead I found hængekøjen, which may also be one of the great summer anthems in Denmark, or if it is not, it should be. Nothing says summer, like chill out music, and lyrics about barbequing and drinking beer and maybe smoking a bit.
7. Carlas – Kaptajn Amerika
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoFm3cl_loc
This is the song they had on youtube, and it is a great summer song, but I first wanted Louises mavedans with Carlas, and then På Kanten af sommer with Carlas, and only when I could not get those two, I ended with Kaptajn Amerika. But despite this fact, this song is a nice summer song. Carlas is a band that few heard, and fewer remember. But Kaptajn Amerika is a nice song, that is still relevant today, and the melody is nice and has a summerly feel to it.
7. Thomas Buttenschøn – dårlig sex
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jr0H5YR9lX0
I love this song, it is funny, it is bitter, but it is still in the style of summer and fun. Thomas Buttenschøn is definitely best when he is a bit bitter. And this song is the perfect example of this. If you like Thomas Buttenschøn you will love this song. It is not exactly summer, but it makes me happy, and I love singing along to it, and it is perfect for summer evenings of fun and talking and pretending to be clever.
7. Shaka Loveless feat. UFO – Dans din idiot
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyJrFmtuVNs
This is one of the few tunes on my list that is really good to dance to. I have loved it since it came out, and can hardly sit still when it is played, which is high praise coming from me. It is just a perfect song for dancing the whole night long.
7. Teitur – Syner
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIUGjHB2bjs
This might take a bit of explaination. This song is from a concept album, where different artists was told to try and make a song that fitted with something H.C. Andersen had written. This is the Teiturs take on H.C. Andersen. And Teiturs rendition is basically so over-pretentious in such an over the top way that we both in my household, finds this song so immensely funny, that we will dance and sing to it all the time, because it is just so involuntarily funny. This makes this a perfect summer tune, since it is good to sing along to, laugh along to, act out like hell to, and dance funny to.
7. Peter Belli – Lyset forsvinder
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeg0aEUpxRE
I am a sucker for old Danish rocker Peter Belli, I love almost everything he has done through the years, and I always hear a lot of Peter Belli in the summertime, because I like it, and most of my family likes it as well. The reason I have choosen this song is because this is one of my favorite songs to sing. It is just such a nice and easy blues tune, that renders itself perfectly to a bit of over the top singing.
7. Bik Stok Røgsystem – Delerium
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgblt10i6Bs
I love everything Bik Stok Røgsystem has made, especially for summer. Dancehall just fits summer, like milk fits coffee. And this song like all the other, are just funny, cleverly made, and this one talks about drinking great amounts of beer, which is a very summer type of activity.
7. Eaggerstunn & Blæs Bukki – Armagedion
This is two of the guys from Bik Stok Røgsystem, so it is not exactly hard to understand why I like this as well. This is even more weird in the text, and a bit more reggae than dancehall, but it is still fastpaced, fun to sing along to, and just at it’s core, a typical summer song.
Extra 7. Kaizers Orchestra – Resistansen
Talking about weird texts. This is an extra song, and it is not in Danish – welcome to Norwegian polka rockers singing a song about Norwegian mafia that tries to be more Italian like. This is a song that I love. I can sing along to the entire text, knowing it by heart. I am not sure it is very summer like, but it is up beat, it is fun, and if people gives it a try it lends it self quite well to sing-along. And I will not have a summer list without Kaizers Orchestra.
Well that’s all folks, see you around to hipster some more
-The Hipster
– I am having some trouble with the embbeded video, in my preview it looks like only some of the youtube videos are embedded, if this is the case, then I am sorry…
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