"Summer Girls" is a song recorded by the pop groupLFO. It was released in June 1999 as the lead single from their album, LFO. The song peaked at number three on the U.S. Billboard 100 the week of August 28, 1999. "Summer Girls" was certified Platinum by the RIAA and reached number one on the BillboardHot Singles Sales chart in 1999. In 2010 Billboard magazine named it the 14th biggest summer song of all time. In 2019 Billboard also ranked the song the 43rd Greatest Song of 1999.
Background and content
The song was written by Rich Cronin, Dow Brain, and Brad Young. Cronin said that the song included numerous inside jokes, and that he never anticipated its success. He claimed this was because the song was made strictly for a demo tape, but was leaked to WWZZ, a top 40 radio station in Washington, D.C. PD Dale O'Brien at the radio station got an unmixed copy of the song from Kelly Schweinsberg, GM of LFO's initial label, Logic Records. He listened to it a few days later, his "jaw dropped, and the song was added in a hot second." Many of the song's rhyming lines appear to be randomly inserted. The formula often consists of writing a line about Cronin's summer relationship with a girl and following it with a non sequitur that rhymes, similar in fashion to "The Thanksgiving Song" by Adam Sandler. It is considered the most popular song by the boy band. "Summer Girls" is often identified by one of the lines in the chorus: "I like girls that wear Abercrombie and Fitch" and "You look like a girl from Abercrombie and Fitch." The song was also featured in the 2002 movie Longshot, in which LFO appeared. The song has a myriad of primarily 1980s and early 1990s cultural references, including Cherry Coke, Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone, Michael J. Fox and his Family Ties character Alex P. Keaton, New Edition, Kevin Bacon in Footloose, New Kids on the Block, Beastie Boys "The New Style" and "Paul Revere", Larry Bird, Abercrombie and Fitch, Cherry Pez, Mr. Limpet, Chinese food, pogo sticks, Eric B. and Rakim, "Candy Girl", The Color Purple, Boogaloo Shrimp, and Fun Dip. The song also references The Wizard of Oz and Shakespeare's sonnets.
