Ain’t No Such Thing As No Summertime Blues

A couple years ago I experimented with a kind of musical journaling. I figured at the end of every month I would create a playlist of ten songs that defined my attitudes and listening habits over the month. The only rule was no repeating of artists. Anyways, the experiment lasted a few months, but then two things happened: I lost interest (I’m not the journaling type –even by way of music), and I realized that these were playlists I would probably never ever listen to. You see, normally I’m an album guy. I like to listen to them all the way through. Or at the very least put one artist on shuffle.

The experiment was totally forgotten until a couple days ago. I was walking to class in the morning and listening to the Stiff Little Fingers on my iPod. They are an early punk band who I admit I don’t listen to very often. But it was a nice day and I was relatively excited for it to get going, so I figured why the hell not a little punk rock? And as I walked quickly to the beat of the fast and crunchy songs, I got to thinking about those playlists and the sun finally out and how much I was enjoying the singer yelling at me and I realized that maybe these things are connected.

It may not be revolutionary but my theory is as follows: our listening habits are seasonal. Lately I’ve found myself more inclined to punk and rocking type stuff and less towards the softer, folksier, more country singer-songwriter artists. Less Bob Dylan, more Rolling Stones. Less Willie Nelson, more Social Distortion. It only took a minute for me to realize that my theory is correct. In spring and summer, I lean more towards electric guitars and in the colder, grayer months, more towards acoustic. Hardly a revelation, I know. But where I grew up in LA the cold months don’t exist, so it took me a while to get there. So I guess if I can say one good thing about the crappy Seattle weather, it’s that the clouds have probably broadened my musical tastes

Why are my musical tastes different by season? Well maybe it is as simple as the weather. Life in Seattle is more subdued in the winters. Night comes before dinner and the rain prevents much prolonged outdoor activity. I sit in coffee shops and watch more TV and don’t go out as many weekend nights. The walk to the bar or the party isn’t worth being cold and wet. Maybe it’s just that I listen to mellow music for a mellow lifestyle. Or maybe it’s that my temperament is different and I don’t have the energy or bounce in winter I do in summer. I never felt like the cloudy days affect me much; I prefer sun, but don’t find myself wallowing in depression when it isn’t out. But maybe they do affect me on a more subtle level.

And of course all this got me thinking. What other habits are different seasonally (besides the obvious ones like barbequing or swimming). Does consumption of all media change based on the time of year? In the film industry, studios intentionally withhold certain movies for release at an appropriate time. The big fluff movies, comedies, action films, cartoons, tend to get released over summer; these last two summers for example, have seen massive amounts of massive sequels (Pirates, Indiana Jones, Spiderman, Bat Man, etc). Fall and winter are generally the time for horror flicks and important seeming dramas. Remember a few years ago Spielberg put out War of the Worlds in the summer time, and Munich in the winter. Part of this has to do with building hype before awards seasons, and part of it has to do with the tendencies of audiences. That’s why the first months of the year, January through April are often a wasteland as far as good movies go.

So does the music industry do the same thing? If a studio has a big single ready in March, do they say no, we wait until June to release it so it can become a summer hit? Do they figure outgoing songs will be better received in the summer? Were songs like Outkast’s Hey Ya and Gnarls Barkley’s Crazy actually ready to go earlier but withheld until the summer time intentionally? Were they released earlier and just didn’t catch on until summer?

I don’t know. As for my own tastes, a quick search of the iTunes library informs me of the following: Zero songs with the word winter in them. Six songs with the word summer in them. Zero songs with the word fall in them (at least in the seasonal sense), and one song and one artist with the word spring in them. The artist is Bruce Springsteen and right now my windows are rolled down and my speakers are blasting Thunder Road out across my porch. And right now all the questions and seasons and overly complicated theories are right where they belong -taking a back seat to the song itself.