Summer more than a season — it's a song list

LOS ANGELES - When it comes to the charts, summer is not just a season, but a state of mind: Some of the biggest hits with “Summer” in the title have peaked in the dead of winter.

The following are the top 10 “summer” songs, according to chart performance on the Billboard Hot 100. The list, based on a point system developed for the book “Billboard’s Hottest Hot 100 Hits,” is led by the most successful instrumental in the history of the Hot 100.

1. “The Theme From ‘A Summer Place,’ “ Percy Faith (No. 1 for nine weeks, 1960)
It’s not the heat of summer weather but the heat of passion that inspired Max Steiner’s music for the 1959 film “A Summer Place,” starring Richard Egan, Dorothy McGuire, Troy Donahue and Sandra Dee. The movie was pure soap opera, a steamier “Peyton Place.” Toronto-born orchestra leader Percy Faith recorded Steiner’s main theme and released it as a single. A review appeared in the September 28, 1959, issue of Billboard, but the song did not debut on the Hot 100 until January 11, 1960. Six weeks later it was No. 1.

2. “Summer in the City,” the Lovin’ Spoonful (No. 1 for three weeks, 1966)
Mark Sebastian wrote a poem about summer in the city and showed it to his brother John, frontman for the Lovin’ Spoonful. John liked the chorus but thought it needed a grittier opening with more tension, so Spoonful bassist Steve Boone added a piano piece that had not fit into any other song. John thought the finished product sounded like something George Gershwin would have written for “An American in Paris.”

“We hired an old sound man ... from the radio era, and he had old acetates of traffic jams and car horns,” John recalls. “We found a pneumatic hammer ... to provide the payoff.”

The song had a second go at No. 1 when it was sampled in “Stutter,” a 2001 chart-topper for Joe Featuring Mystikal.

3. “In the Summertime,” Shaggy Featuring Rayvon (No. 3, 1995)
Already a hitmaker in the United Kingdom, Shaggy had his first U.S. hit with “Boombastic” in 1995. After the song had spent 10 weeks on the chart, this B-side gained enough airplay to join it. Shaggy’s reggae remake of Mungo Jerry’s 1970 hit entered the chart the week of July 29, 1995, helping the single move from No. 8 to No. 4. Three weeks later, Shaggy’s remake peaked at No. 3, the same position achieved by the original.

4. “Summer Girls,” LFO (No. 3, 1999)
“Summer Girls” was a summer hit, entering the Hot 100 the week of July 17, 1999. LFO, a trio from Orlando, Florida, originally known as Lyte Funky Ones, relied on lyrics that bordered on nonsense: “Hip-hop marmalade, spic and span, met you one summer and it all began.” Along the way, the band name-checks everyone from Kevin Bacon to Paul Revere, along with Abercrombie & Fitch, Michael J. Fox, New Kids on the Block, Larry Bird and William Shakespeare.

5. “Hot Fun in the Summertime,” Sly & the Family Stone (No. 2, 1969)
Sly & the Family Stone performed at Woodstock August 16, 1969. Exactly one week earlier, the psychedelic funk/soul band’s fifth single entered the Hot 100. Although Stone did not sing “Hot Fun in the Summertime” at Woodstock, the single became the band’s second-biggest hit by that point, spending two weeks in the runner-up spot.

While the group had an album out at the time (“Stand!”), “Hot Fun in the Summertime” was not culled from the LP. It was strictly a single and did not appear on an album until a greatest-hits collection was released in the fall of 1970.

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