Story Behind "Feels Like Summer"
A Reimagining of the Childish Gambino Hit
What makes the music video for Childish Gambino's "Feels Like Summer" so brilliant is the fact it's completely unrelated to the song's lyric. It follows a cartoon Donald Glover walking through a neighborhood, passing by celebrities doing normal summertime activities: playing basketball, riding bicycles, or just relaxing on the lawn. Yet, the song's lyric highlights a subject far more profound: environmental degradation.
"Air that kill the bees that we depend upon/Birds were made for singing waking up to no sound."
By contrasting the video with the lyric, I believe Donald Glover was trying to emphasize the public's apathy towards this critical issue; we tend to fixate on celebrity culture while ignoring the destruction happening around us.
As an advocate for climate causes, I resonated with this message, yet I was eager to experience the song without that any hidden layers. After all, there are very, very few songs in the singer-songwriter world about the environment, and the lyric has an extremely compelling message. So, I decided to cover it, putting it its lyric front and center while reimagining its instrumentation in a way that felt true to my style.
While it retains much of chill atmosphere of the original, I've added a slightly uneasy edge to it. Out now on Spotify, iTunes, Apple Music, and Amazon Music!
Finally, check out this blog on the song by Performers on the Go!
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Phone: 617-512-2872, Email: chrisdag@brandeis.edu
Grey Horizon 3:30