“Summer’s Comin'”
Clint Black
Written by Clint Black and Hayden Nicholas
Billboard
#1 (3 weeks)
June 3 – June 17, 1995
Radio & Records
#1 (1 week)
May 26, 1995
Clint Black’s worst No. 1 single.
The Road to No. 1
One Emotion produced the No. 1 hit “Wherever You Go,” which was followed by the set’s second No. 1 single.
The No. 1
“Summer’s Comin'” is an inane and joyless record.
Sung in a monotone with no discernable melody, Black undercuts any of the enthusiasm the clunky lyrics attempt to convey with his checked out performance.
This is the laziest songwriting that he ever took to the top of the charts:
When the day gets cookin’ gonna grab my toys
And it really doesn’t matter which wave we’re on
Get to turnin’ up them good old boys
Crankin’ into the night, by the break of dawn
All the towns are red and I still see blonde
The man who wrote “Killin’ Time” actually put these lyrics down on paper and determined that this was good enough to record. And radio played the hell out of it, as did CMT.
I remember dodging this one for months on the radio and on television, and after revisiting it for this feature, I hope I never have to hear it again.
The Road From No. 1
Next up is the title track of One Emotion, which will also go No. 1. We’ll cover it later in 1995.
“Summer’s Comin'” gets an F.
Every No. 1 Single of the Nineties
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The song always felt so cheap, the laziest of summer tropes. Seeing the nonsensical lyrics written out feels almost offensive.
What brought Clint Black to this lowly place?
No arguments from me here. This has always been one of my least favorites of Clint’s 90’s singles, and even as a kid in 1995, this one never really did much for me, despite radio playing it a lot. It’s so incredibly dull and boring for an upbeat rocker, both in production and performance, with little to no memorable melody. While summer anthems have never been my thing personally, I can usually always at least find something exciting or catchy about the better ones from the 90’s and early 00’s and see why people liked them. I get nothing from this one. Instead, it just makes me more glad that I’m NOT a summer person. And that video…yikes!
Yeah, Black was pretty much phoning it in at this point in his career. Hard to believe it’s the same man who gave us classics like “A Better Man,” “Nobody’s Home,” “Nothing’s News,” ‘Loving Blind,” “Where Are You Now,” “Burn One Down,” “When My Ship Comes In,” etc. just a few years earlier.
Very weak. I always had the feeling Clint used up all his best material on his first couple of albums, but was then unwilling to cut good outside songs.
I tend to agree, although subsequent albums issued after his charting years were over always contained a number of really good songs
9 year old me loved this, but yeah…this one doesn’t hold up. I also forgot about how weak the video was…taking out the fact that the material isn’t that great, I don’t believe Howie Mandel, David Hasselhoff, the guy who played Major Dad, and Joey Lawrence were exactly huge gets back in 1995.
I forgot this song ever existed until I read this entry, and then all I could remember was, “Wasn’t there some horribly cheesy video for this song?” Yes. Yes, there was.
I’ve never been big on Clint overall but that may be because this is still the song I hear from him most often.
Not defending the song, but it’s nice that a lackluster song about summer in 1995 could be released in March and top the charts right as summer was actually coming.
In 2022, having to put up with a lackluster Thomas Rhett offering about summer since November only for it to maybe peak in the same timeframe.
Middling record but its got, some eneregy i guess and a some decent guitar work, and that solo is smokin, spices things up, id go up to like, a C, or like, 6/10 since i grade songs on a 1-10 scale