My high school girlfriend was named Angie, and she had a great singing voice. I mean, I assume she still does; the last I heard she was a high school choral teacher. Anyway, I remember that I used to bug her (what a great boyfriend I was) by serenading the Rolling Stones’ “Angie” to her. I didn’t actually perform the whole song; I would just do my best Mick Jagger impression while singing the bit with the title name: “AHN jay… Ah-AHHHHHN jay…“
Angie was not a fan of this. Firstly, because she didn’t particularly like the Stones; secondly, because she did not know the song; and thirdly, when she looked up the lyrics she found them to be sad. She threatened to sing me a song with my name in it, but quickly ran into the problem that in spite of it being the most bog-standard male name in English, there are no memorable songs about “John,” which has always struck me as unfair. Think of all single-name songs out there, and you can probably come up with a dozen for women’s names: “Laura,” “Beth,” “Alison,” “Brandy,” “Peg,” “Jolene,” “Lola,” “Mandy,” “Windy,” and even “Tangerine,” although I was never clear if that were actually the song subject’s name or some sort of citrus-based metaphor.
I was recalling this memory the other day and wondering why some things get all the songs and some things don’t. And this brings me to the actual topic of this essay: What is it about September? Why does this month get all the songs? I mean it, how many songs can you list that are about other months? Without Googling, I can only think of two: “June is Bustin’ Out All Over” and “November Rain.”1
I guess the primary appeal to songwriters is that “September” rhymes with “remember” and so it’s easy to hack out some schmaltzy lyrics. But beyond this, September is a liminal month, hovering between summer and fall, a month of change, both the start of the harvest and the sad anticipation of the frost to come. Metonymically, it represents looking back from the vantage of middle age, for the end of youthful possibilities, and the sober realization of one’s mortality. Which is why it’s my favorite month! Let’s look at some September songs.
“September in the Rain” (1937) Music by Harry Warren, Lyrics by Al Dubin
Our first example chronologically, “September in the Rain,” was written for the 1937 cinematic musical Melody for Two. In the movie it’s sung by tenor James Melton, who was a box office draw in the 20s and 30s, but mostly forgotten today, as is the film, which I have never seen myself so I can’t summarize it here. (From the clip available on YouTube, the song doesn’t seem to be thematically related to the movie anyway.)
If they are aware of it at all, most people my age know the song through its many, many uses by Carl Stalling in his soundtracks for Looney Tunes cartoons. While these musical quotations generally took the form of brief instrumental snippets in the background, sadly there were also in many segments portraying caricatured versions of Al Jolson crooning the song in blackface2. While most of these shorts are (thankfully) out of circulation, there were examples—such as a rooster in the cartoon “Swooner Crooner” (1944)—of animal characters imitating Jolson’s performing style, and these were confusing to all of us who were born after the Kennedy administration.
“September in the Rain’s” lyrics are pretty fluffy. September is depicted as a month of love, a perfect moment in time, even when raining. In its second verse we learn that it’s actually spring, at least in time of the song, but for the singer, it’s always fall. In its original form, “September in the Rain” is pleasant enough, but the song’s real longevity comes from its having become a jazz standard. In 1961 Dinah Washington recorded what is probably the best-remembered version:
“September Song” (1938) Music by Kurt Weill, lyrics by Maxwell Anderson
Kurt Weill had a strange career trajectory. In his native Germany he was known primarily for his collaborations with playwright Berthold Brecht, and their best known musical was The Threepenny Opera (Die Dreigroschenoper) (1928), a bleakly humorous socialist critique of capitalism. Once he fled Nazi Germany in 1933, he composed music for the American theater, writing for librettos that were decidedly apolitical and audiences that were pretty bougie. However, his music was just as inventive, experimental, and weirdly beautiful as ever, and “September Song” is probably his best song, and one of the greatest of the 20th century.
Weill milks every ounce of pathos out of Maxwell Anderson’s sentimental lyrics3 with a melody that is both off-kilter and heartbreaking. It’s remarkable that a composition that’s full of crazy melodic intervals and non-diatonic harmonies has become such a standard, with covers by everyone from Frank Sinatra to Ian McCulloch of Echo & the Bunnymen.
“See You in September” (1959) Music and lyrics by Sid Wayne and Sherman Edwards
Unlike most of the other songs in this list, “See You in September” isn’t about experiencing its titular month, but about anticipating it. Specifically, it’s about being parted from your loved one over summer vacation, which is a particularly teenaged concern, especially when compared to “September Song.” Although it was first recorded by obscure Pittsburgh-based group the Tempos, it is the 1966 version by the Happenings that is remembered today.
While this is music for teenagers, kids were the ones buying all the records at the time. Released only a year later, 1960’s “Sealed with a Kiss” is pretty much equivalent lyrically, to the extent that before I researched this article I remembered them being the same song.
“Try to Remember” (1960) Music by Harvey Schmidt, lyrics by Tom Jones
As I have mentioned before, my parents’ record collection had a lot of musical soundtracks, and so I grew up singing the songs of Camelot, Man of La Mancha, and Little Mary Sunshine. But my favorite were the songs from The Fantasticks, the longest-running off-Broadway musical ever. The conceit of The Fantasticks was to take the minimalist set from Our Town and combine it with the plot of the Pyramus and Thisbe bit from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and then write some songs with dodgy lyrics that will age poorly. But the title song is still okay, and has become a standard for vocalists, and if it’s not exactly in the Great American Songbook it’s definitely adjacent.
I mentioned earlier that one of the attractive points about “September” is the way it rhymes with “remember,” and boy howdy do Tom Jones’s lyrics lean heavily on this fact. “Try to Remember” is the song that both opens and closes the musical and as such it’s a doorway into its simple, fabular world with its theme of naïve love and initiation into adulthood.
“The September of My Years” (1965) Music by Jimmy Van Heusen, lyrics by Sammy Cahn
Like songs about September? How about an entire album of songs themed on the month? Frank Sinatra’s 1965 album The September of My Years is an extended rumination on getting old and taking stock of one’s life, and in addition to the title song contains Sinatra’s maudlin anthem “It Was a Very Good Year,” along with a cover of the wistful “Once Upon a Time” and even his aforementioned cover of “September Song.” Even the lesser-known tracks are about the passage of time, lost youth, and regret: in “Don’t Wait too Long” Sinatra admonishes “You are the summer and I am the autumn […] Your song’s beginning while mine’s nearly sung.” Clearly Old Blue Eyes was going through something, although he was only 50 at the time. I mean, I’m 58 but do you see me crying about it?
“September of My Years” is a lugubrious and amorphous track, even by Sinatra’s standards. Almost half of its running time is taken up by its introductory section, which in the parlance of jazz singing is confusingly called the “verse,” and the lack of repetition of the chorus makes this all feel like an art song. It’s really a song that requires a rainy afternoon and a double of bourbon to fully experience.
“September” (1978) Music by Al McKay, lyrics by Allee Willis and Maurice White
Jumping from that downer, here’s the exact opposite—one of the most joyful, funkiest, and soulful songs to come out of the funk/soul years of the 1970’s. Earth, Wind & Fire are particularly know for their sweeping use of horns and backing vocals, and “September” has those in abundance. Written at the height of the disco craze, the arrangement combines a four-on-the-floor beat and session-musician strings with funk guitar riffs and juicy brass runs.
Thematically, the song’s connection to the actual month of September is less universal. Marilyn White has said that the 21st of September was the due date for her and co-lyricist Maurice White’s child. But in the odd way of such things, specific and personal subjects can become universal, as with the final song on this list.
“Wake Me Up When September Ends” (2004) Music by Green Day, lyrics by Billie Joe Armstrong
American Idiot (2004) was Green Day’s most ambitious project to date in terms of its mature and cohesive themes and its formal variety, which is either a good thing or a bad thing, depending on whether or not you prefer your pop punk to be loud and dumb. I myself love song suites, and the album has two, which makes it alright by me. Many songs on the album deal with disillusionment, alienation, and loss. Lyrically, “Wake Me Up When September Ends” is about singer Billie Joe Armstrong’s loss of his father in September of 1982 when Armstrong was 10; and as is often the way with the poetics of trauma, the words used are abstract and opaque.
The song was released as a single nearly eight months after the album—younger readers of this essay might not recall a time when record companies slowly dosed single releases over many months to string along sales. But its reemergence in the summer of 2005 was tragically fortuitous when the song became linked in the public imagination with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, which hit the Gulf Coast in August of that year. (The way this happened was chronicled by NYT writer Sarah Boxer.)
So anyway, that’s my list. There probably are more September songs out there of which I’m unaware, but this is enough for one blog post. To summarize, “September” rhymes with “remember.” Also, I’m sure you will all agree that it’s time for songwriters to give other months a shot. And if you know of any “John” songs, let me know. Perhaps my wife can tease me with them now.
- If you can think of others, you win. ↩︎
- Strangely enough, I cannot find any references to Jolson actually singing this song in a movie or recording. Was he known for singing this, or was it an invention of the cartoons? ↩︎
- The song’s original lyrics were much more specific to the plot of the musical and more wryly comedic. Once lifted from the musical to be a stand-alone song, passages were rewritten to be more universal. ↩︎
