The Episodes late-summer playlist
Check out our list of songs that remind us of this lovely, melancholy time of year!
With July over, we (well, those of us in the Northern Hemisphere) have now officially entered late summer, one of the most evocative and artistically fruitful seasons of the year. As the days begin to get shorter and the occasional cool breeze cuts through the warm air, some people's thoughts turn to the melancholy of time gone by. Others party harder than ever, determined to get as much summer fun in as they can before autumn comes in.
To celebrate this time of year, the Episodes staff has put together a playlist of some of our favorite songs about late summer, both those that tell stories about the month of August and those that just have a certain late-summery vibe. Check the bottom of the piece for Spotify and Apple Music playlists!
"August," Taylor Swift
Unfortunately, the perpetually overexposed Taylor Swift, something of a minor villain in our current discourse, wrote a song called "August," and it's one of her best. It captures the beautifully overwrought feeling that is being a teenager in love as summer winds to its close, and even for a songwriter known for being great at writing bridges, the bridge on this one fucking rips, exceeding her already high standards. (Honestly, the song is so oddly constructed that it might as well be all bridges – which is why it's so good!)–Emily St. James
"Francis Forever," Mitski
This 0ne's on the list for a couple reasons! First, I am coming out of almost 30 years of being on the academic year, and the very late days of summer were always the peak time of year for me to sublimate my mounting terror at not knowing where my life was going into listening to a lot of very angsty music. (Keen-eyed readers will notice this in my picks for this list!) Second, I don't know if I've heard many songs angrier about autumn than "Francis Forever." After a gorgeous stanza about walking down a sun-dappled summer boulevard and suddenly missing your ex, Mitski turns to a loud, almost spat-out couplet about the turning seasons: "Autumn comes when you're not yet done/with the summer passing by." Summer can be hard, its glistening beauty offset by thorny emotions, but doesn't it always leave you wanting more when it's suddenly over? (No. Not really! I like autumn much better than summer. But this is still a good song!) —Lily Osler
"Nonbeliever," Lucy Dacus
I believe very firmly that the end of the summer is a great time to reflect on your own life. (More on that below!) That's gotta be why I find this song, which otherwise has little literal tie to the season, to be so quintessentially turn-of-the-seasons. It's about leaving home, town, and faith; missing someone you've got no idea how to define yourself against; and waiting for a sense of clarity about your own life that you just know everyone else has already found. Sounds like going off to undergrad to me! —LO
"The Senator's Daughter," Fountains of Wayne
The song I always think of when I think of the dog days of August is this plaintive album closer from Fountains of Wayne's 1999 masterpiece Utopia Parkway, which, yes, opens with the lyric "hockey teams have playoff dreams," but they could be doing that in August! Utopia Parkway is something of a concept album about high schoolers whiling away their time in suburbia. The album has great summer vibes throughout, and it culminates in this, an ode to something that seems to be evaporating even as you look at it. We can only assume the senator's daughter in question is Meghan McCain. –ESJ
"Little Death," The Beths
Is this song about le petit mort, aka an orgasm? Is it about the way it just sucks so much to talk to your crush? Or is it about the very specific feeling that is watching the calendar slowly work its way through August and knowing you only have so much longer to wallow in irresponsibility and pure fun? The answer is: all of the above. –ESJ
"Read My Mind," The Killers
This is the official song of driving around your tiny, small town on the last Saturday before school resumes and a wistful treat on an album filled with bombast. Bonus points: the terrific boygenius cover. –ESJ
"Summer Friends," Chance the Rapper, feat. Jeremih and Francis and the Lights
A very specific kind of summer feeling is missing someone you've known in summers past whom you haven't seen again. In a lot of cases, that's because of the transient nature of the season itself, but the third track off Chance's 2016 mixtape Coloring Book zeroes in on the ways that violence in Chicago has tainted even his happiest summer memories with thoughts of loss. Despite the heart-wrenching subject matter, it's an incredibly beautiful song, made all the more lovely by the Bon Iver-ish backing vocals by Francis and the Lights. –ESJ
"Neon Moon," Brooks & Dunn, feat. Kacey Musgraves
One of the most mournful of '90s country ballads, from a perpetually underrated duo, gets reimagined and reinterpreted by one of country's modern queens. And it's all situated over a burbling synth track that gives the steel guitar a modern tinge. Brooks & Dunn themselves barely feature, popping in here and there as background vocalists, but that's almost better than a pure duet with Musgraves, suggesting the ghosts of summers past popping in for a quick drink and a chat. –ESJ
"Peace Piece," Bill Evans
It's 2 am on August 20, and you're hanging out in the shitty little apartment a few of your friends rented just for the summer, a few blocks from campus. Someone puts on some jazz piano and says, "Just listen: This is the good shit." This song is a great candidate for what they might be playing. –ESJ
"The Rhythm Changes," Kamasi Washington
A perfect song for a long summer's afternoon at the beach: soulful, often profound, with wonderful instrumental solos from a wide variety of performers. –ESJ
"Helplessness Blues," Fleet Foxes
Some more angst from me! This album came out right as I was entering a very high-pressure high school, which was a perfect time to get into Fleet Foxes. While "Helplessness Blues" isn't explicitly about the turn from summer to autumn, it's awash in the kind of earth-hued images that make up the season — "Gold hair in the sunlight/my light in the dawn," lots of lines about wanting to work in an orchard, that kind of thing. And, just as importantly, it's about the ultimate late-summer feeling: realizing that you're unsure of your life's purpose just as the year's sense of possibility is coming to an end. Good stuff! —LO
"Holland," Sufjan Stevens
All of Michigan, the first record in Suf's long-abandoned Fifty States Project, has the hazy, slow vibe of late-summer music, and no track exemplifies that more than "Holland." A woozy, almost elegiac ode to a late-summer hookup, the song's full of near-hallucinatory images ("Sleeping on Lake Michigan/Factories and marching bands") and melancholy, wistful melodic turns. There's a feeling of loss in it that's almost impossible to place, hiding somewhere in between the lyrics and the music, and what's more end-of-summer than that? —LO
"Mrs. Potters Lullaby," Counting Crows
When I asked Libby for her favorite end of summer songs, she said "A Long December" by Counting Crows, and while I will allow that it's technically summer for part of December in an entire half of the planet, I simply will not put a song with such clear wintry vibes on this playlist! But "Mrs. Potters Lullaby," which sounds like waking up with the sun when your apartment is already a little too warm and sticky? Totally counts! Consider this the honorary Libby pick! –ESJ
"4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)," Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band
Bruce Springsteen's second album, The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle, remains one of his best and a true demarcating point between his early wannabe Dylan years and the enormous wall of sound he started chasing with his third album, 1975's Born to Run. And, yes, this song is about the 4th of July – aka as close to midsummer on the Northern Hemisphere's calendar as you can get – but the sense of a beautiful carnival slowly coming to a close has big August energy. —ESJ
"Where You'll Find Me Now," Neutral Milk Hotel
I'm the most annoying kind of Neutral Milk Hotel fan — an On Avery Island lover — so take this rec with a grain of salt. But also, hear me out on this one! This track is absurdly catchy (for a Neutral Milk Hotel song) and has one of the most evocative images of late summer I've ever heard in it: "And out in the dark the world is still rolling/Kids in their cars, cigarette smoking/And all that they are just reeks with the sweetest belief." The nights are getting longer, the year is creeping back toward autumn, and yet for some people there's still a sense of possibility lingering in the air. —LO
"We're Going to Be Friends," The White Stripes
Yeah, yeah, I know it's cliché but I need at least one happy song! Let me have this! The end of summer is a time of melancholy and wistful reflection but it's also a time of childlike wonder, dammit! –LO
"September," Earth, Wind, & Fire
It's literally about the first day of fall. What more do you want??! –ESJ
A Good Song
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