“Summertime: The Gershwin Version” by Lana Del Rey, Tuesday, June 22, 2021

In 1935, George and Ira Gershwin's opera Porgy & Bess premiered with a classically trained African American cast. The opera was one of the last innovation of composer George Gershwin, whose short life's work was to marry classical and jazz, the popular music of the day. Classical music had always made room for popular and folk styles, whether it was Brahms playing piano at a local tavern or Chopin playing mazurkas, a traditional Polish dance. Gershwin was that composer sneaking into the speak-easy listening to improvised bars of the big bands. This inspired his jazzy classical orchestral pieces like "Rhapsody in Blue" and "An American in Paris." However, George wasn't just confined to the orchestral hall. Together with his brother, Ira, the two produced hit after hit of songs that would be sung for nearly a hundred years. One of their biggest hits comes from the beginning of this opera.

OH, YOUR DADDY, HE'S RICH AND YOUR MA, SHE'S GOOD LOOKIN' "Summertime" has been covered by thousands of artists, each taking a unique take on the Gershwin classic. I remember when my music teacher gave me the bars of the song to play on the guitar. The strumming moody sound of minors being slowly strummed then muted with the palm, letting the feedback from my amp--it was one of my favorite songs to play. My music teacher said that if I wanted to play that piece, I had to be good at it. My music teacher held a reverence for "Summertime" and "Over the Rainbow." "Not just anyone can play this song," she told me when I was playing around, trying to get my cheap Squire Stratocaster to stay in tune. I would play "Summertime" for hours, sweating in my room before my parents got air conditioning. The moodiness of a summer's night where you have to stay awake until really late for the heat to break and you to be able to go to sleep, the iced tea that keeps you awake through the afternoon heat, the cicadas roaring outside the window, the stench of the chicken farm down the road mixed with sweat in the stagnant breeze, the occasional thunderstorm that calmed things down and gave you a few moments of relief from the North Carolina summer heat --that was the imagery of the song to me.

ONE OF THESE MORNINGS YOU'RE GONNA RISE UP SINGING. My musical education was just the chords and my teaching banging out the melody on the piano. It wasn't until much later that I heard "Summertime's" lyrics. The song is a lullaby, cooing the baby, shielding the baby from the hard facts of life. In fact, the father isn't rich and there is a lot to harm a baby growing up in poverty among the drug dealers and racial unrest of pre-Civil Rights America. The mournful song longs for it to be true that this baby "one of these mornings [is going to] rise up singing." The melancholy lullaby still ring true in cities ravaged with gun violence and police brutality, where things have changed on paper, but the same stories continue to play out generation after generation.

SO HUSH LITTLE BABY, DON'T YOU CRY. So why the Lana Del Rey version of this song? I chose Lana's "Summertime" for two main reasons. 1. It seems to fit right after Sufjan Stevens better than the other versions. 2. While Lana's "Summertime" isn't the best version, it's the version we get for 2021. Lana Del Rey continues to become a more and more problematic artist as she tries to explain herself on social media. Whether it's about domestic violence, COVID, or race, we're coming to expect the wrong answer from her. However, in the wrongness, Del Rey has actually become a bit of a centrist in the raging culture war, this is not to defend her outlandish statements, but in a 2021 musical landscape we usually only see two sides when really there are many more. Furthermore, "Summertime" is one of the most Lana Del Rey songs written, an artist who makes music nostalgic of pre-1980s Americana, Del Rey has taken much inspiration from the 1920s in albums like Born to Die and Honeymoon as well as recording "Young and Beautiful" for 2013's The Great Gatsby. Recorded and filmed as a fundraiser for the New York Philharmonic and Los Angeles Philharmonic orchestra to help bridge their finances during the pandemic, Del Rey released the track last November. Yesterday was the solstice, so is 2021 the Summer of Lana? Probably not. Let's race a glass of sweet (or New York unsweet) tea and say "Cheers to sweeping all the issue under the rug for just a little while longer."

https://genius.com/George-gershwin-summertime-lyrics

Scene from Porgy & Bess