Recently in Summer Category

Summer is here, and we all know what that means: beaches, barbecues, road trips, soaring temperatures, plummeting inhibitions, and generally lots and lots of what our good friends LMFAO refer to as "party rocking." We've put together the ultimate Summer Spectacular to guide you through it: learn what your favorite summer jam says about you and thrill to our epic, decades-spanning summer jam playlist, from "Heat Wave" to "Umbrella." Take a bluegrass-steeped road trip through the Blue Ridge Parkway. Explore our 10 favorite sticky Southern rock albums. Behold the literally (well, sort of literally) hottest heavy metal album covers of all time. Transport yourself with our surf-and-seagulls beach-centric playlist. Discover our favorite records of 2011 (so far). And most importantly, enjoy our exclusive leak of LMFAO's new album, Sorry for Party Rocking. Then go party rock yourself.

	Watch LMFAO answer your questions about shufflin' through the hard times and baby unicorns in LMFAO vs. The Box			The Best of 2011 (So Far): Killer records from Adele, Antlers, Raphael Saadiq, Blind Boys of Alabama and more
	Hotter than Hell: From Slayer to Deicide, kneel before the hottest heavy-metal album covers of all time			What Your Summer Jam Says About You: Take our eerily accurate personality test
	Ultimate Summer Jams: From "Heatwave" to "Umbrella," a decades-spanning playlist of the hottest hits			Road Trip: Journey through the heart of Appalachia with Del McCoury, Bill Monroe, Carolina Chocolate Drops and more
	Hot Southern Nights: 10 killer Southern-rock albums for a sticky, humid summer			Sounds of the Surf: The finest in beach-sound FX, brought to you by PJ Harvey, Otis Redding, M83 and more

One aspect of summer that never fails to surprise is that the year is now nearly half over: we are closer to 2011's year-end critics-poll season than we are to 2010's. You've started drafting your own Top 10 list already, right? No? You haven't? Don't panic: here, Rhapsody's genre editors each pick their five favorite records of the year so far. How many will survive until November? Which ones will be replaced by Lil Wayne, by Beyoncé, by the soundtrack to Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark? Time will tell, but for now, here are our picks for the year's best, half a year early.

Summer, summer, summertime. It's that time of year again: barbecues, bikinis, lazy days at the beach and, of course, summer jams — those songs that just somehow define the best season of them all. We've assembled a massive collection here: more than seven hours of summer-themed classics, from "Heat Wave" to "Hot in Herre" to smash hits of more recent vintage, plus our predictions for some of the jams that'll be blaring out of every car window this year. Basically, it's the perfect soundtrack for all your summer adventures. So put together a pool party or a road trip, throw this sucker on, and sit back and unwind.

Click here to listen to the entire playlist: Ultimate Summer Jam Playlist.

Summer jams. Everyone's got one. That song that evokes instant images of sun and fun, that makes you smell the barbecue and taste the daiquiri, that just sings summer to you. But what does your summer jam of choice say about you and, more importantly, your summer personality? We've developed this handy-dandy little guide to psychoanalyzing your summer anthem —or at least finding the perfect drink to pair with it.

Your Summer Jam: "Summertime" by DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince
You're a classicist. None of these new-fangled, frenetic dance-floor anthems the kids get all sweaty for these days. You prefer your summers lazy, hazy and chill … and your summer jams slow, smooth and swaggering.
Your Summer Activities: Barbecuing. Riding down the street in a lawn chair on the bed of a truck. Sitting back and unwinding.
Your Summer Drink: Henny and coke. Spiked Kool-aid.
Your Summer Destination: Philly, or anywhere your family and your crew is.
Your Summer Outfit: Anything really, as long as it involves bright colors and a ball cap shoved rakishly to the side.
Your Summer-Romance M.O. You'll dance with whoever, but when the sun goes down, you're in bed with wifey.

I'm attempting to nail two themes with this, my latest cheat sheet. The first is a celebration of summer, of hanging on front porches while cranking killer rock 'n' roll. I know this concept has been slayed to death through the years, but only because it's a durable one. Rock music is capable of speaking to the deepest depths of the soul, as well as the most abstruse pockets of the brain. But oftentimes its most potent powers manifest themselves when in service of nothing more than good times and hanging out. The perfect chair, a rickety porch and sunlight filtered in just the right way can fuse with your favorite jams to elevate summer-month leisure time into something sublime and unique, something that infuses life with real meaning. Example: to this very day, I'll never forget the first time I heard The Flying Burrito Brothers' debut album, The Gilded Palace of Sin: the ice-cold beer bottle sweating into my palm, the blistering heat, the tattered recliner that should've been junked years ago and those incredible harmonies ... wow. What a wonderfully memorable slice of time.

As for my second theme, it's considerably more straightforward. Below you''ll find 10 (or so) albums that feature some of the latest and best sounds in modern Southern rock, blues rock, country rock, etc. Because genre classification has splintered into a million tiny shards over the decades, most of the artists I feature aren't often tagged rock: more like Americana, alt country or modern blues. Yet every one of them explore the same sounds and styles that were first established by The Band, The Allman Brothers Band, Gram Parsons, Tony Joe White, the mighty Lynyrd Skynyrd and other rootsy pioneers in the first half of the 1970s. So yeah, this stuff is rock 'n' roll.

Nothing says "summer" quite like the murmur of the tide and the shrieks of seagulls wheeling in the setting sun.

In fact, there's a long tradition of pop songs infused with those very sounds, from the rolling waves of Otis Redding's "Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay" to the electronic birdsong that opens 808 State's ambient-techno classic, "Pacific." Lately, the trope seems to be enjoying a renaissance, as chillwave artists build nostalgic sand castles studded with '80s relics, and house-music revivalists evoke the Edenic splendors of Balearic disco's heyday.

We've gathered a sampling of some of our favorite examples into a 90-minute playlist spanning Metronomy, Quiet Village, Natalie Cole, Kool & The Gang, Procol Harum, M83, The Shangri-Las, The Temptations, Talk Talk, PJ Harvey and more. (We cheat a little bit—Don Henley's "The Boys of Summer" may not have actual seagulls in it, but between the squealing guitars and memories of the song's iconic video, it's impossible not to hear at least an echo of the shore in it.) Check out the full playlist here, and see if you don't feel the sand between your toes.

As the sun shyly reintroduces itself, the alluring pull of summer becomes a strong tug at the heart. Visions of warm weather, barbecues at water's edge and a general sense of relaxation pervade mind and body. And with summer comes an insane amount of music festivals. But where are they? Who is playing at them? Which ones, if any, are family-friendly?

We're running down country music's Top 5 summer festivals, giving you the inside scoop on the performers and the highlights each festival has to offer concertgoers. Get ready for summer!


Stagecoach: Indio, Calif., April 30-May 1

The dust will barely have settled (literally) from the alternative music festival Coachella when the boots-and-buckles crowd descends on the same venue, the Empire Polo Club in Indio, for the two-day country event known as Stagecoach.

Stagecoach debuted in 2007 and immediately filled a gap in the West Coast touring circuit. That first year, the festival featured Alan Jackson, Sara Evans, George Strait and newcomers Miranda Lambert and Eric Church. With that home-run lineup, the festival was off and running.

Stagecoach features three pricing tiers: the $149 general admission weekend pass is, without a doubt, the most economical. Additionally, there are two reserved seating areas: at $799 per weekend ticket, the P1 area places you right in front of the mane stage (mane stage. Get it?), while the P2 seating (at $499 per weekend ticket) puts you in the section just beyond the P1 area. Both reserved seating areas have access to an adjacent VIP area that consists of shaded areas, picnic tables, couches, extra restrooms, food & beverage vendors, and a full cash bar. Sounds heavenly after a hot afternoon baking under the desert sun!