Summer hit

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Summer hit is an expression of the music industry for songs of popular music , which many music consumers with the summer associated in a particular year and by intensive airplay are known as other songs the same season.

History of origin

Summer hits, the textual content of which was focused on holiday or summer topics, initially emerged from the rather random publication of songs during summer time. So who published June 11, 1958 Summertime Blues by Eddie Cochran or Here Comes Summer by Jerry Keller from June 1959 to explain. Both developed into million sellers and were thus models for more hits of this kind. First number one hit was then a year later Brian Hyland's Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polkadot Bikiniwhich has also been sold over a million times. The first summer hits therefore also had topics related to the summer, but this was not always the case later.

Contents of a summer hit

In the retrospective, at least one summer hit can be assigned almost every year, although there is no official and neutral decision-maker who declares a song the summer hit of the year. Rather, the music industry advertises certain songs with the predicate “summer hit” in the spring of each year for promotional reasons. Occasionally, companies also try to make the music used in advertising as part of their communication policy into summer hits.

According to a study by the University of Huddersfield (Great Britain) in September 2005 for the in- flight magazine British Airways High Life Magazine , there is a stereotypical formula that creates the perfect summer hit. Rupert Till analyzed classified as summer hits chart hits and reached in this way to a " catchy quotient" ( "catchiness quotient"), composed of different variables. This includes in particular the distance from semitones to the highest and lowest tone in the chorus , the number of chords used , the number of steps in a dance sequence or the expenses for promotion by the record company. According to the study, the quotient confirms that there is a formula for the phenomenon of a summer hit and why, for musicological reasons, the hit parades are invaded almost every summer with such catchy and memorable songs. The study leaves open, however, whether all of the summer hits it examined follow this pattern and whether the buyers of sound carriers base their purchasing behavior on it.

Characteristics of a classic summer hit are usually a simple melody, a danceable rhythm and simple text. Latin American dances such as samba , salsa and merengue are often used as rhythm templates . In addition, a summer hit is very often associated with a very simple party dance , while the text mostly moves between holiday and summer themes.

Mungo Jerry: In the Summertime (Maxi-Single)

As a rule, the summer hit or the performer is a one-hit wonder or at least only of short-lived duration in the music business. In addition, summer hits stand out from other simultaneous titles thanks to intensive airplay on the radio. In terms of sales, it is well known in the music industry that a summer hit requires less record sales than a title released in winter if it is to achieve the same position in the charts. This is because the seasonal sales focus of the record industry is in winter. The phenomenon of the summer hit is only known in the best-selling sound carrier markets (USA, Great Britain, Japan, Germany, etc.). Here, compilations of summer hits with titles such as Biggest Hits of Summer or Hit Giganten - Sommerhits (both Germany) appear almost regularly as part of secondary exploitation .

One of the most successful summer hits of all time is In the Summertime by Mungo Jerry , which was released on May 22, 1970 and has sold at least six million times. It fulfills all the requirements of a summer hit: leisure content related to the summer, danceable rhythm, catchy melody, timely publication and number one in the charts in 26 countries. Even Lou Bega's Mambo No. 5 from 1999 belongs to the category of the top-selling summer hits.

Summer hits in Germany

On August 13, 2014, GfK Entertainment named the official “Summer Hit of the Year” in Germany for the first time, with the choice of Prayer in C (Robin Schulz Remix) by German DJ Robin Schulz and French folk pop duo Lilly Wood & the Prick . In the same year, the summer hits up to 2009 were presented retrospectively. With the presentation for the “Summer Hit of the Year 2016”, the list was extended retrospectively to 1990. GfK Entertainment cites the following criteria for a summer hit: “It has a catchy melody, is suitable for dancing, spreads a holiday mood, and was in first place if possible of the charts, was not known through any major event, is played up and down in clubs and comes from an artist who could not celebrate any major chart successes in the years before. In addition, there are high hits on music streaming portals and in the social media area. "

Web links

Wiktionary: Summer hit  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Joseph Murrells: Million Selling Records. 1985, p. 130.
  2. ↑ a b Andreas Güntert: We're making a summer hit - play it, dance through it, collect it - the business plan for the big hit of the summer. In: Cash . Issue 29/1997, p. 17.
  3. ↑ Jens Holst: The arbitrariness of the eccentric - Coke wants to produce an eye-catcher with his summer campaign - and forgets the connection to his brand. In: horizon . Issue 22/2009, p. 10.
  4. ^ Proven By Science: The Catchiest Songs of All Time. nme.com, September 16, 2005
  5. ↑ cf. Cornelie Dietrich and Volker Schubert: Education and Pop Music - Self-Thematization in the Representation of Aesthetic Experience. In: Journal for Educational Science. 2002, pp. 326, 331.
  6. ↑ Peter Lau: From industrial product to artist - the transformation of the technopop star Blümchen into the singer Jasmin Wagner. In: brand eins . Issue 4/2006, p. 128.
  7. ↑ Marcel Eng: In: Michel Clement, Oliver Schusser, Dominik Paper (eds.): Economics of the music industry. 2nd edition, Gabler, Wiesbaden 2009, ISBN 978-3-8350-0685-0 , p. 104.
  8. ↑ gfk Entertainment: “Prayer In C” is the 2014 summer hit . Gfk-entertainment.com, August 13, 2014, accessed on August 9, 2020 .
  9. ↑ gfk Entertainment: GfK determines the official summer hit 2016: “Don't Be So Shy” by Imany. gfk-entertainment.com, August 2, 2016, accessed on August 9, 2020 .