ten songs to get you hype for c sharp minor summer
You know how Pantone announces the Color of the Year every December? And we’re all just like, “Sure, Pantone, whatever you say,” and then immediately forget about it until next year, inadvertently squandering our enjoyment of Very Peri? Let’s do that! Except not with colors, because Pantone seems to have that covered, and I don’t really know how to celebrate a color. Music, on the other hand, is easily consolidated into themed playlist that you can blast in your car or at the beach or at weddings if the DJ takes requests.
I have abstained from being weird about key signatures for almost three months now, so I have to assume none of you will get mad at me for semi-arbitrarily declaring it C! Sharp! Minor! Summer!
This isn’t a totally novel concept; I just didn’t have a platform last year on which to observe B Minor Summer. Or the year before that. B Minor Summer was really a two-year event — in 2021 we had “Levitating” and “Beggin’”; in 2022 we had “Skin of My Teeth”. (I also spent a lot of Summer 2022 listening to No Doubt’s “Just A Girl” FOR SOME REASON.) Those songs are still fun, but I think it’s time to modulate up a step.
So here are some songs, old and new, that I’ve been celebrating C# Minor Summer with!
#1: “CRUEL SUMMER” - BANANARAMA
Obviously. Almost forty years before Taylor Swift yearned in A major for Joe Alwyn, Bananarama wrote an ode to the much more universal experience of being hot and miserable and lonely. And they fucking nailed it?? They made marimba sound gloomy. Maybe that’s just the key signature — I find C# minor has an inherent menace to it that warps every song it touches into a deadly serious affair. Regardless, every time I had to venture out into the Canadian wildfire smoke blanketing the east coast (and, you know, Canada) last week, I held my breath and put this on. It almost felt like an obligation.
#2: “OWN MY MIND” - MÅNESKIN
B Minor Summer 2021 codifiers Måneskin saw this shit coming back in January.
#3: “FORGET YOU NOW” - BIG TIME RUSH
I’m gonna put a pin in this one, which I will remove in a future post, but know this: Big Time Rush understood the assignment. (And they understood last year, too, with “Honey.”)
#4: “HAUTE” - JANELLE MONÁE
The Age of Pleasure, Janelle Monáe’s reggae-influenced new album is really good. (Also, check out the coda, “Oooh La La”, featuring Grace actual Jones propositioning a couple for a threesome in French.)
#5: “RAIN ON ME” - LADY GAGA FEAT. ARIANA GRANDE
Sure it’s three years old, sure it’s probably inextricably linked to COVID in your memory, but what else was I supposed to listen to on Monday while I watched a torrential downpour finally end my local air quality alert?
#6: “PAID IN PLEASURE” - JANELLE MONÁE
IT’S A REALLY GOOD ALBUM.
#7: “BARBIE GIRL” - AQUA
As usual, Dua Lipa’s contribution to the upcoming Barbie movie soundtrack is perfect… for B Minor Summer. So I’ve defaulted to this classic.
#8: “SUCKER” - JONAS BROTHERS
Have you guys heard this one I think it’s pretty good
#9: “MARS” - PINKSHIFT
This is just an excuse for me to get more people into Pinkshift a really good rock song about going to Mars! We need more of those!
#10: “SUMMERTIME SADNESS (REMIX)” - LANA DEL REY AND CEDRIC GERVAIS
Everybody say happy tenth birthday to one of the most misplaced dance remixes in recent memory! The original “Summertime Sadness” from Lana’s 2012 album Born to Die is straightforwardly melancholic in a way that never particularly captivated me, but Cedric Gervais’s 2013 intervention launched the song squarely into Bananarama territory. Because summer and gloom are fundamentally incompatible. You can be in the throes of your worst ever depressive episode, as I was in the summer of 2013, but you still feel compelled to have fun, lest you squander the best season of the year (don’t @ me, it IS) by failing to appreciate it. The tension between these fundamentally opposite states of being is what makes the song. When morose 2012 Lana sang, “Oh/My god/I feel it in the air/Telephone wires/Above/Are sizzling like a snare,” I did not buy it. When Cedric Gervais goaded the track into performative happiness seemingly against its will, I did.
Here is a convenient playlist for you to put on at your pool party or whatever and see if any pedants notice that they’re all in the same key! And in the incredibly likely event that no one does, here is an extended cut! Happy C# Minor Summer!