12 essential songs for Arizona summers

Summers in Arizona are both a truly wondrous and deeply awful experience. The cities and nature come alive like no other time, but everything will also scorch your skin on contact. So, then, how do you balance these dueling ideas and make the most out of your long summer months? Why our latest Valley-centric playlist, which shows you how to take advantage of the unique physical and even emotional nature of summers when the air is on fire and your skin may crack and snap. It's like a jug of water and SPF 50, but for your very soul.

‘Hurts So Good,’ John Mellencamp

Sure, we're starting this list off on a seemingly obvious note. Because summers here do physically hurt — the heat makes you want to peel your skin off, and that's not to mention the endless seatbelt burns. There has to be some upside to all this pain, or no one would stay. That's why this song is so essential: It sets the pace for the kind of mental gymnastics required to really make the most out of Arizona summers. If you can't at least do that, and really lean into the experience, then you just can't make it here. If you're fleet-footed enough mentally, you can find a way to make all that pain and suffering speak to some shared strength or maybe how suffering tempers the spirit.

‘Hell,’ Squirrel Nut Zippers

Maybe this selection's even more on the nose. That's totally fair. But here's the deal: Plenty of people know that our state is a scorcher, but few know its hellish reality. Survival 101 for summers is to recognize that you're practically in the bowels of Hades, at which point you can, as the song does, have a little laugh at the entire situation. It's truly the only logical response to, "I have raised my family in the third circle of Hell itself." Because it is a little funny that we all came here, experienced our first summer and kept right along thinking we'd live out the American dream. Maybe not "funny haha" but funny enough to merit a slight chuckle throughout summer.

‘X Gon’ Give It To Ya,’ DMX

The defining song of DMX's career is this big, boastful anthem about his own sense of power. What does that have to do with summers in Arizona? It's all about fostering a kind of mood — you have to truly own a lifestyle that may include accumulating a $300 monthly power bill. At the same time, the sheer sense of bravado emanating from this track will just hype you up. And while that won't make anything feel better or less miserable, you'd be wholly surprised at how a solid mood can really make summers infinitely more bearable. And if nothing else, X has some connections to the Valley, so why not bump someone who knows our pain?

‘Dog Days Are Over,’ Florence & The Machine

The phrase "dog days" is meant to refer to the "hot and humid period of summer between early July and early September." Here, that's maybe a little closer to mid-October, sometimes November, but the end result is the same: knowing the shape of these doggone awful days does have certain power attached to it. Namely, you can almost force yourself to power through them, and when you're on the other side, Florence Welch has your go-to anthem for shaking lose all the bad vibes. Until, of course, they inevitably return, at which point you'll need to rinse and repeat the cycle. Thus, the perfect song for encapsulating the ritual of all Arizonans.

‘Summertime,’ Sublime

A lot of the songs already have been about surviving summers. (You need every perspective, really.) But sometimes the only way through isn't to get psyched up or delve into your emotions for power; sometimes you've just got to accept the situation. This Sublime standout does just that — it embraces the slow pace of a sweltering hot city, celebrating those vibes with an understated hipness. Only then can you not only survive, but turn summer into something else, slowing it down and embracing its nougat of excitement (and perhaps countering those sticky undershirts). Sublime is a mega-cool band, and this anthem helps you latch onto that with gusto.

‘Music of the Night,’ ‘The Phantom of the Opera’

Sure, we've oversold summer a touch. The Valley does turn into the inner core of a volcano for half the year, but lest we forget, there's almost nothing more magical and wonderful than a summer night in the Valley — the heat's more bearable, the insects chirp in tune and the moon puts on a show almost every night. So what better way to encapsulate the sheer magic than with perhaps the most seductive and whimsical "Phantom" song, a ballad that crystallizes the way that night can erase all your fears and anxieties and let you embrace something outside yourself. Totally cheesy, but summer nights are that wonderfully, dramatically great.

‘If You Love Somebody, Set Them on Fire,’ The Dead Milkmen

No more apologies for the fire/flame motif. Yes, it's going to keep on happening, but this Dead Milkmen classic is actually a little different. It's actually sung from the perspective of a serial arsonist, someone who solves problems with the cleansing power of fire. But even if that weren't massively tongue-in-cheek, it's a song about embracing who you are and building the best life from that acceptance: to know yourself and your downsides and be the very best you can be. That's another reminder of being OK with the things you can't control and trying to make the best of them. Even if it's just life out here from late April to October-ish, you've got to sing a little song for the wonderfully weird arc of life.

‘Hot Hot Hot,’ Buster Poindexter

If you're really going to make it through summer, there's help: David Johansen. The sexy New York Dolls frontman spent part of the '80s cosplaying as the weird lounge singer Buster Poindexter, whose own career peaked with 1987's "Hot Hot Hot." At face value, it's a slightly goofy, slightly spicy weirdo summer jam. But go deeper and look to Johansen's whole gimmick for inspiration. Because if you really buy into the pure shtick, there's fun to be had (like turning a kooky side project or a weird quirk of life into a genuine, totally rare win). Life's a dance party, baby, now get in the conga line.

‘Helena,’ Misfits

This song's based on a movie called "Boxing Helena," which is about a love-sick, limb-removing surgeon but is also clearly about avoiding people who can't connect with you. What's that have to do with summer? Mostly that you ought to move away if you can't stand the heat in a meaningful, life-affirming way. Because you won't get anything from trying to make it work in a place that just isn't meant for you and yours. Not everyone can make it out here, and that's totally cool; those who do have the ability can celebrate this unique place while living through the hellish temperatures.

‘Cruel And Thin,’ Sun City Girls

This song has to be absolutely perfect for this rather specific list. Not necessarily in terms of its overarching message or themes or whatnot, but how much this song captures the actual feel of a summer's night in Phoenix proper. The way there's a slight echo and the air cracks and hums. The mix of warmth and loneliness. Even the vaguely timeless quality of it all. It effortlessly exudes a properly Phoenician energy, and this sense that you're standing in the city watching everything unfold right in front of your eyes. Welcome home.

‘All Along the Watchtower,’ Jimi Hendrix

Forget any biblical interpretations; this song's all about this overwhelming sense of atmosphere. The song almost overtakes your life for the few minutes that it's playing, and it brings you into its grasp to control the mood and make you feel its heft and weight. That's exactly what summers are like: It's not just the heat but the fact that you can't escape it, and the season dictates so much of our world and day-to-day routines. Sure, that sounds a touch scary, but it's also rather cool, and just another reason our summers are so unique and powerful in the fact that they're practically alive.

‘5 O’Clock in the Morning,’ Village People

"5 O'Clock" is a generally interesting and evocative song (even if it also feels deeply '80s in its hooks and sense of appeal). It's about waking up early in a city you either don't recognize and/or has been shaped and changed by your actions. That whole emotional motif is perfect for the Valley — there's a kind of emptiness, that could be good or bad, to waking up on a summer morning. A sense that the world is full of as much promise as it is the potential for hardship, and maybe it's up to us to decide what's on the menu for the day. (The actual song's a bit of a desperate love ballad, but you get the idea.) It's enough of a song about real life to almost make you want to do the "Y.M.C.A."