Let's Go Surfing

Photo Credit Clark Little

I know summer is starting to come to a close, so I’m a little late on the uptake here, but I’ve got your perfect summer jam. It’s called Let’s Go Surfing (doesn’t that title just scream “SUMMER!”), and it’s by New York-based The Drums. It’s sunny twee-pop reminiscent of the Beach Boys circa 1965, when all that seemed to matter was the sun, the waves, and beautiful girls. There’s even whistling on the track. I don’t think I have ever disliked a song that has whistling in it.

Funny enough, this song actually has some political undertones. In the chorus, when Jonathan Pierce sings what sounds to be “Oh mama, I wanna go surfing,” he’s actually saying “Obama.” This song was written right after the 2008 presidential election, when all of us liberals were giddy at the idea of change and new beginnings. As The Drums stated in an interview with NME,

“Obama came through and it was just impossible not to kind of get swept up with the whole nation…so that’s when we wrote Let’s Go Surfing. It just felt like things might change; nothing really changed…but you know everything was really sensationalized and romanticized…so Let’s Go Surfing is really about [that] sort of unbridled freedom.”
Regardless of what your views are on the current political state of affairs, hope and a sense of unbridled freedom are unmistakable on the track, and that raw naiveté and youthful optimism are what sets it apart.

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Let’s Go Surfing—The Drums