Billboard.com this week celebrated Summer with a Top 30 Favourite Summer Songs, using the Billboard chart archives. The 30 tunes with summer-specific themes were ranked based on each track’s performance on the Billboard Hot 100 chart from the 4th August 1958, the inception of the chart, through the chart dated 28th May 2011. The chart was inevitably dominated by hit songs from the 1960s and 1970s, when vinyl record sales were much higher comparatively than CD sales and MP3 downloads in the last twenty years. As you would expect of a Chart produced by the US based Billboard, the Chart is also dominated by the eternal Summer sounds of the Beach Boys, with five entries!!

Early Summer in the UK normally offers so much hope in the populus of another fabled “Drought” like the one in 1976, but then rarely delivers!! Those of a certain vintage “recall” that the Summers in the 1960s and 1970s were hotter, drier and longer than they are now in the 21st Century. This is of course is total nonsense, but the myth may well be perpetuated by the proliferation of Summer themed hit songs in those two decades!! Which are your favourite songs, that are most synonymous with the summers in the 1960s and 1970s? Which ones would you select, regardless of chart position?

This is my Top 10 Summer Songs and Tanning Tunes –

1) Isley Brothers – Summer Breeze (1974).  This soul classic simply sums up and epitomises  the perfect Summer’s day.

2) First Class – Beach Baby (1974).  One hit wonders, First Class were session players assembled by Jonathan King’s UK Label. The song parodied the Beach Boys sound and lyrical themes.

3) Bobby Goldsboro – Summer the First Time (1973). This poignant tune tells the story of a 17 year old boy losing his virginity to an older woman on an unspecified beach, probably in California.

4) Lovin’ Spoonful – Summer in the City (1966). This song captures the oppressive nature of Summer in an urban conurbation, supported by traffic and pneumatic drill sounds in the background.

5) Alice Cooper – School’s Out (1972). This song perfectly captures the rebellious adolescence and feeling of euphoria that we all had on the last day of school, with the panoramic view of a two month Summer holiday stretching out before us.

6) Lou Reed – Perfect Day (1973). The song title and lyrics speak for themselves and say it all.

7) Bobby Goldsboro – Hello Summertime (1974). Originally the soundtrack to a Coca Cola TV Commercial, this optimistic tune charted briefly in the UK Top 20 in the final week of the Summer in August 1974, and by doing so caught the fleeting nature of the season.

8 ) Mungo Jerry – In the Summertime (1970). This ridiculously catchy song dominated the UK Charts in the Summer of 1970, like a black cloud on a sunny day, residing at No1 for an interminable seven weeks.

9) Bay City Rollers – Summerlove Sensation (1974). This teenybop tune, depicted a romantic walk on an anonymous beach, without any reference to tacky pier entertainments, amusement arcades, crazy golf, candyfloss or fish and chips. Probably not Blackpool then!!

10) Typically Tropical – Barbados (1975). These former session players maximised on their opportunity and had a No1 one hit wonder, cashing in on the fun to be had by the arrival of the relatively cheap holiday package tours in the mid 1970s. I wonder where Captain Tobias Wilcox is now? Probably enjoying his pension from Coconut Airways, living in a retirement bungalow on the South coast or in a beach hut in Jamaica, by his beloved sea!!

You can capture, preserve and re-live the memories of 1960s and 1970s Summers, by ordering your favourite Summer Song or Tanning Tune in a vinyl record or CD format, single or album, framed and mounted as a picture disc. ORDER NOW by clicking on…….. http://www.myfirstrecord.co.uk/

Alternatively this would make a unique present or original gift for a special celebration  ie a Summer Wedding, a 30th, 40th, 50th, 60th or 70th Summertime Birthday, a Silver, Ruby or Golden Wedding Anniversary, Father’s or Mother’s Day or Valentine’s Day!! THE PERFECT PERSONALISED PRESENT!!

If you want to see Billboard’s Top 30 All Time Greatest Summer Songs, click here….. www.billboard.com/#/features/top-30-summer-songs-1004101310.story