After launching our best of the decade feature yesterday, Craig Manning took to his blog to write about his top 200 favorite albums of the 2010s; because he’s a mad man. It’s a great walk back through the decade, and it made me realize I forgot to put Yellowcard’s Southern Air on my list because I’m an idiot.
You have summers all your life, but you only have summers when you’re young. If you grew up in a place where summer was the season you lived for, then you know what I’m talking about. Sticking out the grueling winters with the knowledge that hot, sunny days would surely come again. Counting down the weeks in the spring, waiting for that first day when the temperature went above 50 so you could roll down your windows, crank the volume, and pretend it was already July. Making every waking minute of every August day and night count, because you knew Labor Day was coming way too soon. More than maybe any other band, Yellowcard understood what made a summer a summer. Songs like “Ocean Avenue” and “Miles Apart” defined a certain brand of beachside pop-punk that sounded perfect on teenage mixtapes traded during summer flings. Southern Air was the pinnacle of that sound, and the end of it. Because you can only have summers when you’re young, and we all have to grow up eventually.