After spending most of our younger years on summer break from school, this particular time of year has developed a strong association with feelings of freedom, excitement, and possibility. Even years or decades after our last year of schooling, summer still conjures nostalgic feelings of long, carefree, and steamy-hot days giving way to cool, lightning-bug-filled nights soundtracked by iconic classic rock songs like these four below.
Whether you want to feel nostalgic for that one perfect summer from yesteryear or are busy trying to create that season for yourself right now, these classic rock songs hit just as hard now as they did the first time you heard them.
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“The Boys Of Summer” by Don Henley
Don Henley’s 1984 track, “The Boys Of Summer”, is practically the blueprint for nostalgic summer songs. Steamy romances, listening to the radio in the car with the top down, the effortless days spent on the beach—Henley captured a summer vibe that, if we haven’t already experienced once before, we wish we could. Even four decades later, “The Boys Of Summer” still brings back wistful, melancholy feelings of summers gone by. “A little voice inside my head said, ‘Don’t look back, you can never look back’ / Thought I knew what love was, what did I know? Those days are gone forever.”
“Atlantic City” by Bruce Springsteen
Even if you didn’t grow up on the Jersey Shore, Bruce Springsteen’s “Atlantic City” makes you feel nostalgic for the seaside resort town. Like much of Springsteen’s music, there are darker undertones in the verses that eventually open up into more hopeful choruses. In this case, Springsteen encapsulates the bittersweet acknowledgment of the passing of time—and the hope for better times to come—in just a few lines: “Everything dies, baby that’s a fact / But maybe everything that dies someday comes back / Put your makeup on, fix your hair up pretty / Meet me tonight in Atlantic City.”
“The Last DJ” by Tom Petty
While it might not seem right to include a song from 2002 in a list of nostalgic classic rock songs, allow us to offer the unpleasant reminder that 2002 was over two decades ago. And besides, Tom Petty gets a pass regardless of when the song actually came out. “The Last DJ” is all about the disintegration of the music industry as it pertains to commercial radio. But there’s something undeniably nostalgic about the way Petty sings about “busting a move” to radio DJ sets that were creative, inspired, and unapologetic in their independence.
“Saturday In The Park” by Chicago
Chicago’s 1972 track, “Saturday In The Park”, plops the listener straight into a Fourth of July scene from the opening lines. From there, the song describes “people talking, people laughing, a man selling ice cream singing Italian songs,” elaborating on a summery day in the park to which all of us can relate in one way or another. Songwriter Robert Lamm later said that he wrote the song after seeing a similar scene in New York City’s Central Park. This song brings up memories of peaceful, joy-filled summer days that can sometimes feel too far away in the humdrum of daily adult life.
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