In a recent Production Expert podcast, when posed with the question of what I thought was the best pop song, my answer was Summer of ‘69 by Bryan Adams and Jim Vallance. Sure, I could think of hundreds of great pop songs from different eras, but this one has stuck with me from the very first time I heard it.

What makes this song so memorable that I would choose it decades later as a “best” anything? Perhaps the fact that I still remember it at all speaks to that. Maybe I’m still just tickled by that key change in the bridge, like I was when I first tried to learn to play the song. Or maybe, just maybe, it’s because it does what a great song is supposed to do: it makes me part of the story, and the images and feelings that play out in the song all become my own. Whatever the case, let’s take a look at Summer of ‘69 and see what makes it tick, and why it is a great pop/rock song and production.

I was a songwriting major in college, so I will dive into the internal relationships of the song elements because that is what makes a great song to me. For me the song form, lyrics and rhyme scheme are equally important to the arrangement and production.

Song Form

It all starts with the form. The odd thing about Summer of ‘69 is that it comes from an era of very tight (predictable?) song forms, but it veers from the norm and is, in some ways, ambiguous. Let’s walk through it.

We start with an intro of just the I chord (a D major in this case) for 4 bars, which seamlessly flows into the first verse “I got my first real six-string…”, which flows right into verse 2 “me and some guys from school…”. From there we hit this section that, in every way, sounds and feels like a pre-chorus (a.k.a the transitional bridge), but is it? You don’t really question it until you realize the next section should be the chorus, but it has no lyrics (at least at first). It’s almost a re-intro, except it extends to the V chord (an A major), and adds a melodic guitar hook. There's definitely a little bit of “not yet” going on here with the production.

Then we come up on verse 3, which moves back into another pre-chorus, but this time we get some payoff, because it goes to a real chorus. Lyrically it’s nothing more than “back in the summer of ‘69”, but we get the title and the harmonic cadence that signals the “this is it!” of a chorus.

This next section blew my 14 year old mind when I first heard it. This is the primary bridge (a.k.a the B section, middle 8). Up until now we have been happily plodding along in the key of D Major. The bridge does something really interesting here, it moves to the key of F Major. That’s relationally the key of b3.

This does several things. First, it sets the section apart from the rest, which every good primary bridge does. Second, it creates a sense of tension. Third, it allows the lyrics to change their voice (more on this a little later), and fourth, it provides an opportunity for reframing the sections we’ve already heard to feel fresh and new when they come back around.

This all culminates with the last verse, pre-chorus and final chorus with the ad-lib fade out. Which, as I just said, feels fresh and new because we come back home to the starting key of D Major.

The Lyrics And Rhyme Scheme

It’s all about the story. As I said in that same podcast, a good song emotionally connects you to the story. A great song lets you see yourself in the story, as if it were about your life.

The lyrics tell a story of youth. Being young and free, falling in love, and losing that love. But the story is told from the perspective of looking back “those were the best days of my life.” This is already something most anyone can relate to. It’s about as universal a theme as any.

The verses do what any good verse does, they set the stage. They are like photographs, revealing images that get their focus refined by the chorus. The verses are all simple couplets with an x a x a rhyme scheme. What that means is that the second line rhymes with the fourth, while the first and third lines do not rhyme.

I got my first real six-string [x]

Bought it at the five-and-dime [a]

Played it till my fingers bled [x]

It was the summer of '69 [a]

The pre-chorus, at first glance, shouldn’t work. It’s rhymeless. It leaves you feeling a little empty, and wanting resolution. And then you realize, this is exactly what it’s doing in the story! This is where the storyteller tips his cards just a little. We are brought to the realization that we are looking back on the nostalgia of those days, and musing how they were the best days of the storyteller's life. How could that be all nicey-nice and tied together with pretty rhymes? Prosody (the patterns of rhythm and sound used in poetry) at its finest.

The chorus in this song is a little atypical. The first time around you get a hint of the chorus’s harmonic structure, but with no lyrics. It almost feels like a re-intro. The second chorus finally gives us lyrics, in the form of the title. The same is true for the last chorus, while adding some ad-libs. There are no rhymes in the chorus.

And now we come to the Primary Bridge. As already mentioned, this section changes keys to F Major. The mood change is not subtle. Overall, it feels harmonically darker and more aggressive than the rest of the song and really sets off the voice change of the story. Up until now the verse has been giving us these images of life, the pre-chorus has set the emotion of those vignettes as “the best days of my life”. The chorus (when we finally get lyrics) is nothing more than the title lyrics, but that sets the focal length of the rest of the story….so we see it as a “before” story. Something that happened in the past. But this Bridge shifts the story from the “now or never” feeling of reliving those glory days to the finality of “nothing can last forever,” pulling us back. The entire story shifts, just as the harmony and melody shift. As we come out of the Bridge with the pivot chord modulation of bVI bVII I, we also pivot to the present.

The Bridge also uses the rhyme to quicken the emotional pacing by coupling the first 2 lines as a rhyme, and leaving the last line unrhymed.

Man, we were killing time [a]

We were young and restless, we needed to unwind [a]

I guess nothing can last forever [x]

The song ends in the present, with a last verse, pre-chorus and final chorus. Bringing the story not so much to a close, but to the present, where we carry it forward as life. Our life, the storyteller’s life. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that we know the story, because it’s our story as much as it was the storyteller’s.

The Arrangement And Production

I think the first thing we have to acknowledge is that the genesis of Summer of ‘69’s overall production is a classic pop/rock band: drums, bass, keys and 2 guitars. With a core like this, a lot of the arrangement and production can be done through the performance alone. Even though it’s possible to shape the arrangement and production during mixing, having musicians who know when to play, and more importantly when not to play, gets you 80% of the way to a great production. Let’s look at the song through our producer glasses.

The intro is not huge, but it feels huge. You get that patented Clearmountain snare that hits at the start to create some energy and drive, with a fair amount of that ‘80s big reverb. Then the guitar takes over. You have hard panned dirty, but not super overdriven, guitar doubles playing that driving accented eighth note rhythm on nothing more than a D chord. I have to point out that the first verse of the song revolves around this storyteller's first guitar and the guitar is the sole catalyst of the song through the whole first verse. Don’t you just love prosody?

The 2nd verse brings in the rest of the band, minus the bass. Again pointing out the prosody of how the rest of the band shows up when he starts singing “me and some guys from school had a band…”. These are not accidents. This is a very well thought out arrangement/production. The production enhances and extends the message of the lyrics.

The bass plays a pickup line into the pre-chorus, and we now have the full bloom of the build that has been carrying us along since that lone snare hit on beat 1, bar 1.

When we finally get to the chorus, it doesn’t totally feel like a chorus. There are no lyrics, no title. It simply introduces the guitar hook that becomes prevalent through the rest of the song:

I’d like to point out that the density of the arrangement has been increasing throughout these sections. Adding elements as you get further into the song to keep adding interest. But what happens next is equally important.

The 3rd verse thins out. It opens back up and gives more space. Again, this is good production. Not just because it gives a release to that build that creates space for it to happen again, but because it clears space for the story to continue. As I said before, the verses are our photos. The snapshots of a moment, and an emotion. The highlight needs to move back to the lyrics, especially because they are more introspective here. And that is exactly what we get. The difference between verse 2 and this verse is that we now have the bass in the verse for the first time. This adds enough definition and change to carry the feeling of forward motion. That carries us into the pre-chorus, which builds with harmony vocals (for the first time in the song) leading us into the 2nd chorus.

Finally! That chimey guitar line picks back up, and we get the ad-libs lyrics and restatement of the title floating above that guitar hook. This really brings the rest of the song more into focus musically and lyrically. We’ve finally focused our lens, and the previous sections now fall into place. We have a better understanding of the point of the song. And then…

The bridge turns us upside down. The key changes, the storyteller’s voice changes (not physically/sonically, but the angle from which the story is being told changes). And we suddenly feel the emotion of having the past ripped from us. Everything in the bridge is about letting go. Can you feel the restless storm clouds in those big held guitar chords?

And then we come out the other side into the sunshine. The guitar hook comes back in, and stays with us for the rest of the song. The final verse and pre-chorus feel fresh again. You’ll notice the liberal vocal harmonies adding to the build along with that guitar line. And this is where we ride out into life, with the last chorus repeating and fading out into eternity. The story isn’t so much over. We’ve just come to the point where we don’t know the rest of it. The fade out is where we ride off into the sunset to finish the story ourselves.

And there we have it. To me the marriage of the lyrics, music, and the production combine to create my choice for the “Perfect Production”. What do you think?