Dear listeners,
In previous installments of this newsletter, I’ve compiled collections of songs about specific months, like June and August. But we’re now entering one that has a particular and persistent hold on the musical imagination (sing it with me now): Sep-tem-ber. This definitely calls for a playlist.
Why are there so many songs about September? I think some of it has to do with the musicality of the word itself — its meter, its mouthfeel and the fact that it rhymes with one of the more evocative verbs in the English language: “remember.” That moment when late summer gives way to early fall is also a period of transition, a handy metaphor for growing older and a poignant seasonal reminder that time is indeed passing. Exactly the kind of poetic sentiment out of which countless great songs have emerged.
For all the wistfulness that the month inspires, I find it interesting that the song most closely associated with it — Earth, Wind & Fire’s “September” — is ecstatic and joyful. It makes prominent use of that September/remember rhyme scheme, but the tone is far from the self-reflective nostalgia of, say, Frank Sinatra’s “The September of My Years” or Green Day’s “Wake Me Up When September Ends.” I wonder if that variation on the theme has something to do with the Earth, Wind & Fire song’s continued popularity. Plenty of tracks about remembering focus on loss. “September,” instead, reminds us that there is an alternative: to celebrate a beloved memory by throwing a party and filling the dance floor in its honor.
Naturally, Earth, Wind & Fire kick things off on today’s playlist, which also features more introspective songs from Big Star, Barry White and — a great artist with a seasonably appropriate name — Fiona Apple.
Sharpen those freshly purchased No. 2 pencils, pull that favorite sweater out of the back of the closet and press play.
Also, if you’re not ready to say goodbye to summer just yet, there’s still time to submit your personal song of the summer for a future Amplifier playlist. Keep those recommendations coming!
Ba-dee-ya,
Lindsay
Listen along while you read.
1. Earth, Wind & Fire: “September”
Ever since its 1978 release, people have wondered about the significance of Sept. 21, the specific date this song commemorates. A decade ago, its co-writer Allee Willis admitted to NPR that there was no deeper meaning: “We went through all the dates,” she said. “‘Do you remember the first, the second, the third, the fourth’ … and the one that just felt the best was the 21st.” In recent years, the comedian Demi Adejuyigbe made an annual series of increasingly high-concept videos honoring the arrival of this hallowed date; that Earth, Wind & Fire simply chose Sept. 21 because of the way it sounds only makes these odes to banality even funnier.
2. Big Star: “September Gurls”
I would be remiss if I did not include this autumnal gem from one of my all-time favorite bands, the power-pop cult heroes Big Star. “December boy’s got it bad,” the frontman Alex Chilton (a Capricorn) sings on this bittersweet ode to juggling relationships with multiple Libras — one of the band’s finest and most succinctly perfect songs.
3. Felt: “September Lady”
The jangly English indie-rock band Felt made quintessentially autumnal music, and the mononymous frontman Lawrence seems to have acknowledged this by including, on Felt’s great 1986 album “Forever Breathes the Lonely World,” a lightly melancholic song called “September Lady.” Amid lush backing vocals, chiming guitars and playful tempo changes, he sings of a minor romantic disappointment: “September lady’s just not for you/You can try someone new.”
4. Fiona Apple: “Pale September”
Many of the songs on Fiona Apple’s striking 1996 debut, “Tidal,” sound like long-forgotten jazz standards, but all were written by the precocious Apple when she was just a teenager. She imbues this piano ballad with a sophistication well beyond her years.
5. Barry White: “September When I First Met You”
Released the same year as Earth, Wind & Fire’s classic, this tune from Barry White’s 1978 album “The Man” also makes use of the trusty September/remember rhyme scheme, here employed as a hypnotic backing vocal that recurs throughout the sensuous, mid-tempo track.
6. Frank Sinatra: “The September of My Years”
Recorded and released shortly before his 50th birthday, Frank Sinatra’s ruminative, orchestral 1965 release “September of My Years” is a kind of concept album about middle age. (Its songs include “How Old Am I?” and the classic “It Was a Very Good Year.”) For all the poignancy of the title track, Sinatra does not experience this metaphorical September as a cold season: “I find that I’m sighing softly as I near September,” he sings. “The warm September of my years.”
7. Green Day: “Wake Me Up When September Ends”
The played-out memes that recur each year on Oct. 1 — somebody wake up Billie Joe Armstrong! — disregard the personal pathos at the heart of this song, from Green Day’s hit 2004 album “American Idiot.” Armstrong wrote the punky power-ballad about his father, who died in September 1982, when the Green Day frontman was 10. The small changes that unfold across the song’s verses — from “seven years has gone so fast” to, eventually, 20 — suggest the calendar’s cycle of renewal and remembrance. Each subsequent September is, somehow, both a fresh start and a resonant echo of the past.
The Amplifier Playlist
“Ease Into Fall With 7 Songs for September” track list
Track 1: Earth, Wind & Fire, “September”
Track 2: Big Star, “September Gurls”
Track 3: Felt, “September Lady”
Track 4: Fiona Apple, “Pale September”
Track 5: Barry White, “September When I First Met You”
Track 6: Frank Sinatra, “The September of My Years”
Track 7: Green Day, “Wake Me Up When September Ends”
Bonus Tracks
The Bangles included a reverent cover of “September Gurls” on their hit 1988 album “Different Light.” Good for Alex Chilton, getting those “Walk Like an Egyptian”-adjacent royalties.
Also, I decided to limit the playlist to just one Frank Sinatra tune, but he also did a heck of a “September in the Rain.”
The post Ease Into Fall With 7 Songs for September appeared first on New York Times.
