Ever since I started writing The Sunday Magazine I wanted to keep a reminder of my favorite songs of the summer as it was happening. What that has meant is usually early in June I share my current playlist that is on repeat rotation. I’m not sure what happened this year, but it only occurred to me recently I hadn’t done the 2018 version. My problem is at this stage of the summer I’m down to two or three songs as I start dropping songs until I have only the prime earworms cued up. With all of that intro this is going to be a very short playlist, but it is the three songs by which I will indelibly remember the summer of 2018.
If there is one theme to the three songs it was that I had heard them well before the start of the summer.
It was in a Target commercial during the Super Bowl that the collaboration between country singer Maren Morris with Electronic Dance Music (EDM) duo Grey and producer Zedd which produced the song “The Middle”. In a 90-second commercial the song was an earworm which hibernated until the weather warmed up. It doesn’t matter what I seem to be doing this summer but whatever it is I’m meeting it in the middle.
The second song which has lasted all the way through the summer came from watching “American Idol”. Singer Bebe Rexha sang a duet early in the competition and then on finale night joined the three finalists in a rendition of the song “Meant to Be”. The recorded version replaces the amateurs with country pair Florida-Georgia Line. That version has more of a country twang to it, which I usually dislike. For this summer it is the lyrics “if it’s meant to be it’ll be” which have become the warm weather mantra I needed.
When I didn’t know the title or who did the song I kept asking for the John Wayne song. The fact that every DJ I asked knew what I was talking about shows why High Horse by Kacey Musgraves is my third song. The sad thing is I would have known who did the song if I had paid attention a few weeks earlier when Ms. Musgraves performed it on Saturday Night Live. But she was a country singer and I walked out of the room. One of the DJ’s even told me it was Kacey Musgraves and I thought I hadn’t heard him correctly. This is not country music it is almost a 70’s throwback which could’ve packed the dance floor then like it does today. High Horse is all beat suffused with lyrical attitude; that’s good enough to make a summer staple for me.
Those who know me, and my musical taste will have to smile that my three songs feature country music artists in all of them. Not sure what to make of it except my damn playlist keeps recommending the kind of country music I don’t want to hear because of it. That these songs are worth suffering through that is why they make up my very, very late summer of 2018 playlist.
–Mark Behnke
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