If when you think beach music all that comes to your mind is cheesy, flash-in-the-pan-type summer hits with annoying repetitive hooks that target an audience with the taste and sophistication of a 12-year-old girl, sadly, you’re not alone. That’s kind of the rule, particularly in the Spanish music market.
Summer is almost here, and depending on your coordinates, beach season is about to kick in or has already started, and here at Remezcla we wanted to put together a list of songs that refer to the beach without being, you know, Luís Miguel’s “Cuando Calienta El Sol” or the cliché reggaetonto du jour. So we dug a bit deeper beneath the sand to try and find some beach-themed songs that you can actually listen more than once without wanting to jump into Sea World’s shark tank with an open wound.
So, stop blaming the beach for your lame-ass summer playlist. Here we offer you some variety to pick from, you can love them or hate them (would that make you a “playa hater”?) or you can simply ignore them, at least you can (unlike the regular summer hit songs that will follow you everywhere for the next three or four months).
by Los Problemas
[Costa Rica]
At first you’re like, these kids must really have some serious problemas. They are from Costa Rica, of all places, and they made a song titled “La Playa,” so you expect it to be all about hot girls and palm trees, and you listen to it and it’s like, what? Is that even a beach song? What’s wrong with these guys?
But a second closer listen provides you with all the clues. He’s talking about a place that he doesn’t want to leave because he’s surrounded by the essence of life and the air has some unique qualities. You don’t need sunscreen and a swimsuit to enjoy the beach.
by La Oreja de Van Gogh
[Spain]
Summer flings are awesome but they all inevitably end in overly melodramatic manners. This girl here says that fifty (fifty?!) summers had passed since that one tragic goodbye at the beach and she still can’t get over it.
How old was she? Two? Because, from here, she doesn’t look a day older than 52. I’m just saying…
by El Pueblo
[New York]
It’s an instrumental jazzy dub tune and it will certainly transport you to the beach-side bar. Doesn’t need any lyrics. In the description they wrote that if you’re from the Caribbean, you completely understand what this song is about.
Well, I’m not, I haven’t even been to the Caribbean once, but I think I get it. Or is there a hidden message I’m missing here?
by Manu Chao
[France/Spain]
Manu’s song is not explicitly about the beach lifestyle. In fact, quite the opposite, it’s about wanting to leave the beach (because the tide keeps rising) and going to grab a bite (you know how the smell of the ocean opens up your appetite), and then he goes into some food-centric free association.
Guess he was smoking a joint by the sea and got paranoid and hungry at the same time when he wrote this song.
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by No Te Va Gustar
[Uruguay]
And another beach break up.
In this case, the guy spent all night in the sand alone after he broke up with his girl, after they spent the evening together looking at the sea. I’m having some uncomfortable flashbacks to my teenage years here…
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by Linda Mirada
[Spain]
On that side of the dunes, people prefer to sleep during the night, on this side, people are having sex on the beach, and no, it’s not a cocktail. That’s what it’s all about, according to Linda Mirada.
Why spend crazy money on resort rooms with a balcony overlooking the ocean when you can do it at the beach, at night and with a hangover?
Advice: make sure to bring a beach towel, you don’t want sand getting in some places and enhancing the friction.
by Babasónicos
[Argentina]
A mid-’90s alternative rock classic. In their early days, Babasónicos used to talk quite a bit about extreme sport on their songs, skateboarding, rollerblading… This one is about surfing, and fortunately it sounds nothing like surf rock. The video doesn’t look like a video for a surf-themed song either.
I guess they didn’t have budget to go shoot it at an actual beach, so they had to do it by some river and they replaced the surf boards with motocross and sand buggies.
by Ely Guerra
[Mexico]
Ely Guerra’s playa is probably a metaphor for something else. She says that she’s giving her beach away and I don’t think she actually owns a piece of land by the sea. I don’t know, but whatever it is she wants to give me, I’ll gladly take it..
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by Sólo Los Solo
[Spain]
Rappers love the streets so much that most of the times they even forget there’s a beach near by.
Barcelona’s Sólo Los Solo however is not big on the “thug life” motto and have no problem taking some summer days off to go down to the Mediterranean and enjoy the waves.
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by Los Amigos Invisibles
[Venezuela]
If there’s something these Venezuelans living in New York must miss from their homeland is the beach. This song came in their first album released after they relocated to The City where there’s absolutely nothing even similar to the blue beach they describe in the lyrics of this bossa nova.
The video is painful to watch (and hilarious at the same time), you can see in their faces the expression of “What the fuck am I doing here? Why did we have to move to New York?”
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“Vamos A La Playa”
by Righeira
[Italy]
Not happy with our selection? Don’t worry, you can always go back to the classics and have some self-indulgent dumb fun. After all it’s just pop music and beach, you don’t need to take things so seriously.
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