A Musical Path to Summer Peace

“Summertime, and the living is easy…” serenades the lullaby from Porgy and Bess, creating visions of hazy afternoons, slow porch swings, and the kind of ease we long for all year, including the warm embrace of mother. Whether sung with operatic elegance or Janis Joplin’s bluesy grit, “Summertime” anchors us in a feeling that’s both nostalgic and aspirational. We have a longing not just for warmth but for a rhythm of life that’s unhurried, connected, and alive.

In a time when the world feels hotter, louder, and more chaotic, a few mindful musical moments may be the best medicine.

Summer is the season of memory. Just a few notes can send us back to the community pool, the boardwalk, or a sweaty car ride with the windows down and radio up. Music is the common thread that binds our beach days to family reunions, holding hands on the Ferris wheel, garden harvests, and first kisses.

“Under the Boardwalk”, especially Bette Midler’s version, wraps us in seaside romance. We’re not just hearing a song; we’re transported to the shade beneath a sun-faded pier, sharing ice cream, sand sticking to our skin, waves crashing just out of frame. The best summer songs don’t just soundtrack our experiences; they become part of them.

Powerful Cues

The neuroscience of memory shows that songs serve as powerful cues, helping us store and retrieve memories with vivid emotional color (Janata). “June Is Bustin’ Out All Over” may take you to dance recitals or summer musicals, while “See You in September” sparks the bittersweet swirl of back-to-school anticipation, even decades later.

Sharing music, whether singing along in a crowd or listening together on the porch, our brains can release oxytocin, a hormone linked to social bonding (Hennessy and Habibi). When a song hits us emotionally, it triggers dopamine, the neurotransmitter that fuels motivation and pleasure (Salimpoor). This chemical duo helps reinforce the connection between the music and the moment, making those memories easy to recall.

When we hear a familiar piece of music, especially one linked to personal memories, the hippocampus is activated because it plays a key role in memory retrieval and consolidation. At the same time, the amygdala becomes active because it is central to processing the emotional content of those memories.

Functional MRI studies (Janata) indicate that music-evoked autobiographical memories typically engage both brain structures: The hippocampus helps “place” the listener back into the original time and setting, while the amygdala adds the emotional intensity. The dual activation is part of why familiar songs, especially those tied to formative or meaningful experiences, can produce such vivid, emotional flashbacks.

The Brain’s Summer Soundtrack

Summer playlists do more than preserve memories. Group music-making may increase empathy, trust, and belonging, thanks to the release of oxytocin. Dopamine adds pleasure and motivation, amplifying the joy of communal listening.

Some summer hits pull us into the past; others meet us in the here and now. Chart-toppers like Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso” or Chappell Roan’s “Good Luck, Babe!” capture the humor, heartbreak, and joy of recent summers. The songs, pulsing through car stereos, backyard speakers, and festival grounds, remind us that every summer is also this summer, still being written, danced to, and felt.

Music, Memory and Emotion

• Auditory Cortex – sound is processed in the auditory cortex.
• Hippocampus – the song is linked to stored autobiographical events.
• Amygdala – often activated alongside the hippocampus, the amygdala assigns emotional significance.
• Prefrontal cortex – helps evaluate the memory in the context of your life story.
• Reward system – nucleus accumbens and ventral tegmental area can release dopamine.
• The hippocampus supplies the where and when, the amygdala adds how it felt. Together they make music a powerful trigger for vivid, emotional memories (Janata; Salimpoor).

Mindful Action

When we choose the music that fills our summer, whether to calm ourselves during a heatwave or an evening with iced tea and friends, we gain agency. We become the conductors of our lives. We not only curate a playlist, we create memories and connections.

If political headlines feel unbearable or the temperature rises, resist the urge to doom scroll. Put on “Summer in the City.” Let the pulsing energy match yours. Follow with something slower, like Norah Jones’s “Sunrise” or an instrumental piece like “Morning Mood” by Edvard Grieg. Use music to match your state, then shift it to where you hope to be. This is the mindful magic of summer music, meeting us where we are and gently nudging us forward.

Intentionally curating playlists to match and then gently shift emotional states can reduce stress and improve mood, according to research from the University of Waterloo. This is partly due to neural entrainment (Large and Snyder) whereby brain waves sync to rhythmic patterns.

In a quiet evening, fireflies (remember them?) blinking outside, try silence between songs. That pause, the breath between the notes, is where peace often lives. We can intentionally find space to reflect, to notice the world around us—and within us.

Small Moments

Summer is filled with small joyful moments: peach juice on your fingers (didn’t peaches used to be fuzzier?), a toddler giggling in a sprinkler, the smell of tomato vines in the community garden, a neighbor offering a cold drink, an annual family trip to Smith Mountain Lake, memories of playing softball in New Hampshire, going to a summer music camp (a Vermont buzz or Ukraine on the Black Sea). These are the moments when we hope that life could always feel like this. While we can’t stop time, we can mark it with music.

Whether you’re dancing barefoot in the grass, swatting at mosquitoes on a muggy porch, or just trying to survive the news cycle, music is always present. Music is a companion through the highs and lows, a touchstone to your memories, a pathway to summer peace.

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