The definitive summer song, according to Jarvis Cocker
Like many millennials, I thought the existential questions of my early 20s could be answered on the east coast of Australia, bouncing between hostels and working bit-part jobs to fund it. It was my great adventure, so to speak, and while cliché, it certainly made up for the formative moments of my youth.
After buying a beaten-up Honda CR-V for a worryingly low price, I set off on this coastal journey with a shoddy tape cassette to AUX converter as my only source of music. It became clear that on these endless Australian roads, I needed a summer soundtrack to highlight this memorable moment in my life.
Naturally, I thought that song might come from some of the country’s best contemporary bands, who have all bottled up the sunshine into a healthy dose of indie. Think Babe Rainbow, King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard or more obviously, Tame Impala. But no, somehow my soundtrack came from the rural world of Sheffield and one of its most beloved bands, Pulp.
While the lyrics do nothing to create a feeling of escapist bliss, ‘Babies’ somehow became the track we duly dubbed ‘the coast song’. Probably its catchy melody and sun-kissed reverb had a lot to do with it, and most definitely the fact that it was already positioned as one of my favourite songs of all time, but nonetheless it went on to soundtrack moments of tropical sunshine and coastal drinking.
What I didn’t know then was that it was a rather apt choice. Because my first summer working at Far Out, their comeback single ‘Spike Island’ became the song of my summer once again, and suddenly, on a group holiday in Portugal, I found myself dancing to the dulcet tones of Jarvis Cocker into the early hours with a caipirinha in my hand.
So, given that Cocker has woven his way into every core summer memory of mine, you would think that maybe he is writing songs deliberately for the season. Maybe, but he clearly shares the same affinity for it as I do and holds one song, just as dear in his heart and saves it for those long, warm nights.
“When you get to May, you start thinking, ‘Yeah, summer is not that far away’. OK, climate change may have changed now. But I am old, and so I’m clinging on to that thought, that belief as hard as I can,” he said, musing on the blissful ignorance of summer.
He continued, labelling Foxy Brown’s cover of ‘Fast Car’ as the one song he always returns to at that time, “And this kind of music that I play now reminds me that summer is not that far away. I imagine listening to this very loud, in the open air”.
Sounds great, Jarvis, but have you ever let your song ‘Babies’ drown out the noise of a failing engine on a Honda? I honestly can’t recommend it enough and would feel confident in saying that it might just become your summer anthem if you gave it a chance.
