“Summerland”
by Everclear
from the album Sparkle and Fade
1995
Buy the album on Amazon

I’m not sure how I feel about Lance’s theme for the month, but that’s mostly because it’s been cold and miserable here the past few days, which made it feel like the awful winter is truly never going to leave. Hopefully throughout this month I can get into the right summer song mindset. Regardless, onward.

It’s a coincidence that my first pick also has summer in the title. I agree with everything in Lance’s description of what can make a summer song. But this is the first song that popped into my head. Santa Monica was Everclear’s big breakout hit from this album, and it’s a fantastic song in its own right, but Summerland… Summerland gets me every goddamn time. This is a song that was on every mix tape (or eventually CD) that I would make for a girl. This is a song that I would listen to every time I was lonely or bitter. This is one of the (relatively) rare songs that’s on the 5 star playlist. This is the song that reaches inside of me and squeezes my guts and says “this is how I already feel” while also screaming “this is aspirational. This is what I want. This is who I want. We can rescue each other.”

I was going to call out some of the specific lines in the song that really punch me, but there are too many, so they’re all here.

Let’s just drive your car
We could drive all day
Let’s just get the hell away from here
For I am sick again
Just plain sick to death
Of the sound of my own voice
We could leave behind another wasted year
Get some cheap red wine and just go flying
We could do the things,
All the things you wanted to
No one cares about us anyway
I think I lost my smile
I think you lost yours too
We have lost the power to make each other laugh
Let’s just leave this place
And go to Summerland
Just a name on the map
Sounds like heaven to me
We could find a town
Be just how we want to be
No one here really cares about us anyway
We could find a place
Make it what we want it to be
No one really gives a fuck about us anyway
We could live just like we want to live
No one here really cares about us anyway
We could be everything we want to be
We could get lost in the fall
Glimmer sparkle and fade
The sparkle and fade
Fall glimmer sparkle and fade
Forget about our jobs at the record store
Forget about all the losers that we know
Forget about all the memories that keep you down
Forget about them
We could lose them in the sparkle and fade
We could leave them behind in the sparkle and fade
Yeah sparkle and fade
Fall glimmer sparkle and fade