My last column was about the heat, but apparently it was technically still spring. I guess it depends on who you ask.

Astronomically, each season goes from solstice to equinox or equinox to solstice. That, of course, makes sense. Some, however, consider it to go from the first day of a month with an equinox or solstice to the first day of a month with a solstice or equinox. This presents an interesting dilemma: The astronomical definition is like reading temperature in Celsius; it’s based on a hard, scientific line. The meteorological definition is like Fahrenheit, it’s calibrated to human comfort and perception.

Usually, I am all about human comfort and perception. But in this case I’m siding with astronomy. Summer started this past Wednesday.

I couldn’t find a solid, consistent definition of “Song of the Summer” let alone a list of what they were, so instead here are five songs celebrating summer for some reason.

The Beach Boys — “Surfin’ USA”

I had to start with a Beach Boys song. I’m still listening to them all the time after the Brian Wilson show at the Concord Pavilion.

I’ll be honest right up front: I don’t get the appeal of summer. It’s nice that it stays light later, but it’s also brutally hot all the time. It absolutely had an appeal as a kid when we didn’t have to go to school, but now I have to work anyway and it’s less pleasant out.

Then again, in 1963 when this song came out, humanity hadn’t succeeded in breaking weather yet. Summer was probably a lot more fun before we spent half the season in triple-digit temperatures.

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Sly and the Family Stone — “Hot Fun in the Summertime”

It’s not “Everyday People,” “Dance to the Music” or “Family Affair,” but it’s hard to find a bad song by Sly Stone and his family. And I’m not just saying that because he’s a Bay Area native.

Two quick Sly and the Family Stone facts: First, it was in part a family band! Being from the ’60s, it’s easy to assume that he just called it a family for hippie reasons. But his sister played keyboard and his brother played guitar, and they both also sang. So that’s cool!

Second, and more importantly, it was the first major band to be integrated in terms of both race and gender. It’s a little sad it took until 1966 for that to happen but hey, better late than never I guess.

Mungo Jerry — “In the Summertime”

I do like this song, but I mostly put it on the list so I can tell you this: Mungo Jerry isn’t a guy, it’s the name of the band. And they got the band name through the best possible means.

In 1939, T. S. Eliot, one of the greatest poets of the 20th century and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, published “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats,” a book of poems for children. One of those poems was called “Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer,” which were the names of two of the cats. That’s where they got Mungo Jerry in 1970.

About a decade later, Andrew Lloyd Weber decided to adapt Eliot’s poems into a musical. You may know it as “Cats.” If you don’t know the musical, you know the glorious train wreck of a movie from 2019 in which inexplicably famous actors and actresses are poorly CGI’d into cat-people.

Easily the weirdest legacy any collection of poetry has ever had.

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The Ataris — “The Boys of Summer”

Why am I using this cover rather than Don Henley’s original version? For a couple reasons.

I actually like it better. I swear it was a pop-punk song written before the genre existed and just waiting for someone to discover what it was always meant to be. It was good in the ’80s but the older version feels like a soft rock cover of the newer one.

Also, as I outlined in my last column, Don Henley is a creep. I won’t go over it again but you can look it up if you want to wince and get mad at the same time.

Bananarama — “Cruel Summer”

This isn’t exactly a summer song, and it doesn’t fit the theme, per se, but it has “summer” in the name and I really like it, so it makes the list.

I still haven’t totally forgiven Taylor Swift for doing a song called “Cruel Summer” that wasn’t a cover of “Cruel Summer.” It’s a missed opportunity and she owes me that cover. I have long pondered a heavy metal cover of this song, which I’m sure would be fantastic. The band that performs it will be called Plantainpocalypse. I’ve given this a lot of thought. Now I just need to learn to, like, make music.

Follow editor Daniel J. Willis and tweet column ideas to him at Twitter.com/BayAreaData.