The Sound of Sunbathing

I was well into my thirties before I became familiar with this song, but when I hear it, I flash back to summers of teenagerhood and the sleepy sad hopeful dopey feeling of adolescence. Though it is by a band who are likely unknown to most of us (The Sinceros...I googled), it sounds like it belongs on the soundtrack for Valley Girl, The Karate Kid, and all those John Hughes teen films. It was released in 1980 and it feels like it foreshadowed what was to come, compressing a good chunk of the decade within its three and a half minutes; it's wistful, it has the occasional non-sequiter shoehorned in to complete a rhyme, it seems embarrassingly earnest and self-important and though it sounds simplistic, but it alludes to deeper feelings of loss and longing. Not to mention, it is filled with synthesizer magic. It just strikes me as being the quintessential New Wave summer song. (Obviously someone at WXRT agreed as they played it this afternoon. Usually this song only gets played on Saturday Morning Flashback, but I guess the 90+ degree weather and the forecast for even hotter temperatures inspired them to hit the archives).