Best Summer Country Music Songs: Essential Tunes For BBQs
Summer’s seemingly endless days are laced with joy, fun and also melancholy – the emotions sparking so many great country songs into life.
It probably shouldn’t surprise us that so many great country music songs are set in the summer. After all, it’s a time of year that provokes both joy and melancholy – and such strong emotions are nearly always present in the finest country songs. The summer’s propensity for romance and heartbreak also offers unlimited possibilities for this singular musical genre’s rich storytelling tradition, so that means it’s always a good time to celebrate this pivotal time of year with a selection of the best summer country music songs.
Toby Keith – I Love This Bar
Most folk would probably agree that a cold beer is the perfect accompaniment for a hot summer’s day and that’s surely the sentiment behind late country music star Toby Keith’s 2003 smash “I Love This Bar.” A laid-back, yet heartfelt paean to the singer’s favorite hang-out (“Just walkin’ through the front door/Puts a big smile on my face,”) “I Love This Bar”s broad appeal resulted in the song topping the U.S. Billboard Hot Country Singles chart for five weeks and its title later inspired the singer’s ‘Toby Keith’s I Love This Bar & Grill’ restaurant chain.
Luke Bryan – Play It Again
Another memorable song about a romance heating up during the summer, Luke Bryan’s “Play It Again” concerns a young couple who click and start dating thanks to a mutual love of a favorite song they hear played on the radio. Though broadly country in design, “Play It Again” is a finely-executed, guitar-driven song with a truly universal appeal and it richly deserved to top Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart on single release in April 2014.
Listen to Luke Bryan’s official summer playlist now.
Sam Hunt – House Party
The third single taken from Sam Hunt’s multi-platinum debut Montevallo, “House Party” finds the Cedartown, Georgia-born singer-songwriter blurring the boundaries of both country music and accepted party etiquette. Musically, this striking U.S. Billboard Top 30 hit draws upon R&B, hip-hop and acoustic pop, while its lyric (“I’m bringin’ the good time home to you”) subverts the idea that you need to leave home to attend the best party in town. Familiar, yet refreshingly different, “House Party” remains one of the best summer country music songs doing the rounds.
Billy Currington – People Are Crazy
On first listen, Billy Currington’s Grammy-nominated 2009 smash “People Are Crazy” appears to be cut from the same cloth as Toby Keith’s “I Love This Bar” inasmuch as it’s based around two guys enjoying chewing the fat over a few beers one night. However, the plot has one hell of a twist in that it ends with the death of the older of the two guys (a millionaire) who seemingly randomly leaves his fortune to his drinking partner, even though he was “some guy he barely knew.” A poignant and beautifully-related tale of the unexpected, “People Are Crazy” is definitely one of the best summer country music songs – albeit one that will probably bring a tear to the eye.
George Strait – Here For A Good Time
Venerable Texan singer-songwriter George Strait makes it plain that life is to be celebrated to the max on “Here For A Good Time”: a Billboard Hot Country Songs No. 2 hit and also the title song of his 26th studio album from 2011. Very much a feel good hit for the summer, this rousing, roots-y anthem acknowledges that our lives are finite, yet it always accentuates the positive (“I ain’t here for a long time, I’m here for a good time/So bring on the sunshine”) and it’s the sort of song that can’t fail to get any decent party started.
Listen to George Strait’s official summer playlist now.
Little Big Town – Pontoon
Many of the best summer country music songs are life-affirming, party-friendly affairs, yet they generally take place on land. Alabama’s Little Big Town, however, suggested an alternative with “Pontoon,” an infectious, country-tinged pop tune about a celebratory water-bound get-together on board the kind of flat-bottomed boat referred to in the song’s title. The Alabama group’s first Billboard Hot Country Songs chart-topper in the late spring of 2012, “Pontoon” enjoyed a lengthy season in the sun as it also won a Grammy and eventually went platinum five times over.
Listen to Little Big Town’s official summer playlist now.
Eric Church – Drink In My Hand
The second single from his third album Chief, “Drink In My Hand” provided North Carolina singer-songwriter Eric Church with his first chart-topper on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart in 2011. It’s not hard to hear how that happened either, for “Drink In My Hand” is a rowdy, but perfectly formed country-rock salute to a regular guy for whom a few beers and a great band are the formula for fun on a hot summer night. It’s not rocket science, but as Roughstock’s review declared, it is “downright perfect as the theme tune to a perfect weekend.”
Dierks Bentley – Somewhere On A Beach
Dierks Bentley described the fallout from an ill-fated marriage and honeymoon in 2014’s “Drunk On A Plane,” so it’s logical to view his 2016 U.S. Top 40 hit “Somewhere On A Beach” as a sequel as the song’s narrator details meeting a new girlfriend and whisking her off on holiday to enjoy sunnier summer climes. The lyric expresses some regret over what previously went down (“I wish it could’ve worked out,”) but this soulful country-tinged pop song mostly concentrates on enjoying the here and how (“I’m on a beach towel with my shades on”) before it rides off into the sunset.
Deana Carter – Strawberry Wine
If the weather holds, summers can be glorious, but the long days of sunshine eventually lead into a slightly bittersweet time where the evenings get colder and the summer turns to fall. Deana Carter’s wonderful signature hit, 1996’s multiple award-winning “Strawberry Wine” captures this seasonal change in human terms. A beautifully-executed rites of passage ballad based on the song’s writer Matraca Berg’s own teenage experiences in rural Wisconsin, it perfectly captures the time when an adolescent girl is “caught somewhere between a woman and a child” and falling head over heels in love for the first time.
Keith Urban – Long Hot Summer
Timing is always important with record releases and Aussie country legend Keith Urban got that spot on with June 2011’s “Long Hot Summer,” issuing the song just as that year’s warmest weather was kicking in. Its vivid lyric also perfectly captures the thrill of a summer romance (“The only place I wanna be is where you are now”) and while it leaned towards mainstream rock in the musical sense, “Long Hot Summer” still topped Billboard’s Hot Country Singles Chart and yielded a well-earned platinum disc for Urban and co-writer Richard Marx.
Jon Pardi – Dirt On My Boots
A U.S. Top 40 hit in 2016 hit for California’s Jon Pardi, “Dirt On My Boots” documents the life of a regular guy who works the land on a sweltering summer’s day (“Been hotter than a hundred suns/I can’t find no shade”) but lives to take his girl dancing at night and shake off the dust from his favorite footwear. Lyrically, it’s a fun and easily-relatable tale of “blue-collar romancing,” but its musical marriage of rustic Americana, hip-hop grooves and big rock guitars radically broadens country music’s traditional horizons.
Carrie Underwood – Southbound
Similar in spirit to Little Big Town’s “Pontoon,” Carrie Underwood’s “Southbound” describes a boat-bound party set in super-hot weather when it’s “drippin’ summer off of us.” A bright, carefree country-inflected pop song with a good-time lyric about wearing cheap sunglasses, basking in the sunshine and drinking “two-for-one redneck margaritas,” the irrepressible “Southbound” became the third single from Underwood’s 2019 album Cry Pretty. It only narrowly missed out a Top 10 placing on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart on its way to going platinum in the U.S.
Listen to Carrie Underwood’s official summer playlist now.
Brothers Osborne – It Ain’t My Fault
The best summer country music songs are often especially memorable because most listeners can easily relate to them – and that’s certainly the case with “It Ain’t My Fault” by Maryland duo Brothers Osborne. A passionately earthy ode to a man who stubbornly refuses to accept the blame for his negative, alcohol-fuelled actions (“Blame the ex for the drinkin’/ Blame the drinkin’ for the ex/ Blame the two for one tequila’s for whatever happens next,”) “It Ain’t My Fault” depicts the kind of person we’ve all dealt with at some stage, so it’s no surprise it became a popular radio hit and a Top 20 smash on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart in 2017.
Listen to Brothers Osborne’s official summer playlist now.
Trace Adkins – Honky Tonk Badonkadonk
Plenty of the best summer country music songs involve drinking and having fun, though in Trace Adkins’ “Honky Tonk Badonkadonk” the female protagonist perhaps over-indulges a little too enthusiastically. One of the song’s co-writers, Jamey Johnson later told CMT it was inspired by an extremely drunk lady at a saloon bar he’d seen one night who was “bouncing into people and running folks over and causing a ruckus.” With its slashing riffs and stabs of Hammond organ, Adkins’ recording of the song duly captures its subject matter’s wild abandon and it rewarded the Louisiana country star with a Billboard Top 40 hit in 2005.
Jordan Davis – Next Thing You Know
One of the key songs from Louisiana singer-songwriter Jordan Davis’ second album, 2022’s Bluebird Days, the excellent, U.S. Top 30 hit “Next Thing You Know” describes a summer romance that rapidly hots up – and then continues to flourish. Based upon the story of a guy burned by a relationship gone wrong who vows to stay single, Davis’ narrator instead meets the girl of his dreams and before long he’s “sitting sunburnt on a honeymoon beach.” Accompanied by a poignant video following the couple’s relationship into old age, the heartfelt “Next Thing You Know” is one of the best summer country songs, but it’s also strong enough to convince any time of the year.
