As the title suggests, “Summer of ’96” is steeped in nostalgia, and if you are of a certain age and lived in the UK, it’s a song that will resonate clearly. Britpop is in ascendance, Chris Evans is on every channel and media form, Cool Britannia is kicking in, the charts, as they always do when we remember our formative years, would never be bettered, and all there was to concern yourself with, if you were full of the joys and energy of youth, was living for the moment.
But out of all those memories, the fairgrounds and football, the pizza and the PlayStation, the music making, the freedom of those heady days before adulthood raised its ugly head, it is that one girl, the one that got away, that looms large through the song.
And if lyrically “Summer of ’96” is a dream of a more innocent and chronologically specific past, musically it takes the sonically appropriate form of a hazy, Britpop-infused anthemic ballad, one drenched in lush harmonies, neat guitar motifs, acoustic grooves, and cinematic sonics.
There is nothing wrong with nostalgia; fond memories are there to be dwelt upon, and rose-tinted glasses often show us a version of the times that made us, and there is a wonderful innocence to “Summer of ’96.” It doesn’t say that the world has changed for the worse or that things can never be as good again; the world moves on, things are different, we evolve, it’s called life. But like looking through a photograph album, it is an excellent snapshot of growing up. We all have one; this is theirs.
In the world we find ourselves in today, where every moment of young people’s lives seems documented, recorded, pictured, captured, edited, exaggerated, and promoted, songs like this serve as a brilliant way to replay our own home movies, the ones that only ever get a screening via our own memories.
Thanks for the memories Tillerman.
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